iilo Benefit Report, Year 2

Our efforts to make a difference

After a successful and impactful first year, the iilo Creative Alliance team dove into its second year with momentum and a clear focus to deepen our impact as a business, and with our clients. We’re proud to share our year 2 highlights in this report.

We’re now a Certified B Corp

We founded iilo with an impact business model and the goal of becoming a Certified B Corp as soon as we could. We submitted our paperwork just after our first fiscal year and became a Certified B Corp in March 2023 — during B Corp month, no less, an exciting time to join the B Corp community!

We scored 105.3 on our B Corp assessment, which considers a company’s governance, community, environment, and customers (worth noting, the median score for ordinary businesses who complete the assessment is currently 50.9). It’s common for companies to score higher in some areas than others, often due to the nature of a business. In our case, we have a minimal environmental footprint as a virtual-forever company.

We scored high in the community category (54.3) and customers category (23.8), which is where we aim to make the most impact as a service-oriented business. The assessment identifies not only where a company is doing well, but also areas for improvement. We aim to continue evaluating and refining our
practices to raise our score in the governance (17.8) and environment (9.3) categories.

We’re a registered Benefit Company

Aside from being a Certified B Corp, iilo is also registered as a Benefit Company in BC, which means our values are woven into the foundation of our business. We’re committed to amplifying the work of impact-driven organizations and businesses focused on environmental and social sustainability, and publicly
reporting on our impacts annually.

Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) Alignment

Our impact efforts align with the United Nations’ global Sustainable Development Goals: #5 Gender Equality, #8 Decent Work and Economic Growth, and #10 Reduced Inequalities.

Our impacts & actions

Our goals for year 2 (as stated in year 1 report)

• Become a certified B Corp
• Build on supportive events for our team of collaborators by hosting learning opportunities and extending our commitment to ongoing learning
• Maintain our KPI of 100% of our team reporting that we helped them maintain their life/work balance
• Aim for all of our clients to report that we helped them amplify their missions with our work together
• Continue our commitment to donating 1% of our profits
• Report that 100% of our clients lead with a mission to make the world a better place

Governance

• We took further steps in year 2 to activate iilo’s vision of a world where all creative agencies align their work with meaningful shared values, and provide healthy employment opportunities for underrepresented creatives.
• We participated in The Forum E-Series, a business workshop series for female entrepreneurs, in the fall of 2022. As a women-owned, operated, and self-funded business, the series highlighted that our perspectives and approaches as a creative agency are unique, and something to celebrate and lean into. In year 2, the iilo team consisted of 100 per cent women.
• iilo became a certified Living Wage Employer in 2021, meaning we’re committed to paying all our team members the living wage in their region, or beyond. We’re proud to be a part of this movement and to provide our team with well-paid creative work that affords them a good quality of life.
• Giving Tuesday has become an annual tradition at iilo. In year 2, we topped up each team member’s Giving Tuesday gift by $50.
• Because we believe in supporting local business, we choose to bank with local credit unions.

Community

• Like in our first year, all iilo team members reported in our year 2 team survey that working with us allowed them to have a healthy life/work balance.
• Our annual team survey also showed that 44 per cent of iilo team members identify as a racialized person, an immigrant, or a member of the 2SLGBTQQIA+ community
• We continued our monthly social “Picnics” to support and nurture our collaborative team and build relationships.
• Designing for accessibility and creating an inclusive work environment are priorities at iilo. We joined the Community of Accessible Employers to demonstrate our commitment to inclusion and to continue learning about accessibility. We participated in their Pledge to Measure annual survey, in which 3 iilo team members identified as having a disability.
• We also worked with an accessibility consultant on iilo’s policies and benefits document to ensure that our business practices are inclusive and responsive to the needs and abilities of all our team members. This work is ongoing as we continue to learn and refine our policies.
• To continue our commitment to ongoing learning, we formalized a professional development policy in our policies and benefits document to cover a portion of the costs for workshops and courses that our team members want to take to expand their skills and knowledge. A few team members took advantage of this benefit in year 2, and we expect this to grow next year.
• Our team model evolved this year from an all-freelancer team to more of a hybrid model, and we hired iilo’s first employee, Richelle.

Environment

• Our environmental footprint is relatively small as a virtual-forever creative agency. We continued with our usual practices of meeting virtually as often as possible, minimizing our work travel, and reducing, reusing, and recycling materials and equipment in our work spaces.
• Because we design for sustainability, we continued to follow sustainable design principles and integrated them into our workflow templates, which we continue to refine and improve on.
• We continued to add to our team’s internal resources library to educate our collaborators on sustainable design principles and accessibility.

Customers

• All iilo clients reported that we helped them to meet their mission in year 2.
• We continued to measure how much revenue was generated from mission-aligned clients — 93% of our clients led with their mission to make the world a better place.
• Our clients’ impact areas swung toward the social space this year, with 18% of clients addressing environmental causes, and 82% addressing social causes.
• We remain committed to our partnership with 1% for the Planet. We donated 1% of iilo revenues to organizations focused on supporting local businesses in BC, and environmental and Indigenous justice.

To learn more about our vision, mission, and values as a company, explore iilo
Creative Alliance Brand Platform.

We’re just getting started

As we enter iilo year 3, we’re diving deeper into all areas of our business to maximize our impact.

Our goals for year 3

• Increase the number of B Corp clients on our client list
• Host bi-monthly in-house learning opportunities and increase the use of iilo’s professional development benefits
• Continue evolving our hybrid team model by hiring more iilo employees
• Retain our KPI of 100% our team reporting that we helped them maintain their life/work balance
• Aim for 100% of our clients to report that we helped them amplify their missions with our work together

We’re looking forward to year 3 as iilo Creative Alliance!