iilo Benefit Report, Year 4

On a mission to make a difference together

iilo Creative Alliance expanded in new and exciting ways in our fourth year of business. From being publicly recognized for our accessibility efforts to hosting the first iilo Summit, we had a lot to celebrate this year. In this report, we’re proud to share our highlights from year 4.

We’re prepping for our B Corp recertification

It’s been over two years since we became a Certified B Corp, and we’re prepping for recertification in 2025-2026. B Lab recently released the biggest rewrite of its standards in 18 years, and we look forward to learning about the updated assessment model as we work through the recertification process.

We’ve been participating more in the B Corp community, attending events like the B Local Vancouver social event in March 2025. We also crafted a blog post explaining why iilo is a proud women-led B Corp, as part of the B Corp Stories: Women’s Month series on LinkedIn. These connections make us grateful to be in the company of other awesome women-owned B Corps.

Note: We posted regularly on Instagram in 2024, but paused activities since January 2025 because our values are not aligned with Meta’s new policies. While we reassess our approach to social media, we’re using our newsletter and LinkedIn to cheer on and champion our clients.

We’re a registered Benefit Company

Since our launch in 2021, iilo has been a registered Benefit Company in BC. This means our core values are fundamental to our operations. We’re dedicated to amplifying impact-focused organizations and businesses, particularly those committed to environmental and social sustainability. As a Benefit Company, we also publicly report on our annual impact.

We’re aligned with the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

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

Continually growing our team and services

In year 4, we bolstered iilo’s communications team with new collaborators specializing in marketing strategy, writing, and editing. This breadth of skills enables us to support clients across a wide range of marketing and content needs.

We continued to build our core team of employees within our hybrid employee/contractor team model. We transitioned a part-time project manager into a full-time employee. He is joined by a full-time graphic designer, a part-time graphic designer, and a part-time project coordinator. This well-rounded core team provides added capacity to handle client work.

With our ongoing growth, iilo continues to be a proudly women-owned and operated agency. We’ve also heard this year that almost all iilo clients want to work with us because we’re a women-led business and Certified B Corp that specializes in impact-focused clients.

Our impacts & actions

Our goals for year 4 (as stated in year 3 report)

• Keep increasing the number of B Corp clients on our client list
• Continue with in-house learning opportunities and increase the use of iilo’s professional development benefits
• Increase our team’s collective knowledge around accessibility and AI, and explore related operational efficiencies
• Lean into the hybrid team model we have created, and continue building leaders within the company
• Retain our KPI of 100% of 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

Governance

• Learning from other business owners is a priority for us. We’re ongoing participants in The Forum Mentor Program, working one-on-one with an experienced business mentor. This year, our mentor was Heidi Ruggier from Matte PR.
• We were recertified as a Living Wage Employer and take pride in the fact that our workforce can make a decent living by collaborating with us.
• We continue to work with professional service partners that are dedicated to serving B Corps and values-driven businesses. HR consultants Reimagine Work is helping to enhance our people management practices, and Lift CPA is supporting our accounting. We’re continually looking for values-aligned partners to support our business.
• iilo is dedicated to promoting accessibility in our work and in our workplace. We continue to learn about and apply accessibility best practices in how we operate our business, engage with our team and clients, and produce our work.

Community

• Our annual team survey showed that the percentage of iilo team members who identify as Black, Indigenous, or a person of colour, immigrants, or members of the 2SLGBTQQIA+ community has risen to 79%.
• We sustained our KPI of 100% of our team reporting that we helped them maintain their life/work balance.
• iilo team members got together in both Nanaimo and Vancouver for food, conversations, and in-person connections this past year, including our first-ever iilo Summit hosted at Tigh-Na-Mara Seaside Spa Resort and Conference Centre on Vancouver Island.
• AI is still top of mind for iilo, and we have been working on how to create efficiencies for the business using AI tools.
• Leaning into our value of lifelong learning, we hosted three lunch and learns: Jessica Oddi guided us on accessible design, Megan Sheldon from Be Ceremonial helped us look at life transitions in new ways, and Jason Aune facilitated an interactive discovery session on AI tools.
• iilo was nominated for an Untapped Workplace Inclusion Award in the Inclusive Culture Champion – Small Business category. It was an honour to be nominated alongside our colleagues working to make the world more accessible.
• Lisa Hemingway, iilo Co-owner and Director of Creativity & Opportunities, was recognized in the Community and Social Responsibility Category at the 2025 Women of Influence Nanaimo Awards Gala.

Environment

• Our environmental footprint is relatively small as a virtual-forever creative agency. We consistently meet virtually, limit work travel, and prioritize reducing, reusing, and recycling materials and equipment in our workspaces.
• Prioritizing sustainable design is core to iilo’s mission. Therefore, we refine and improve our workflows and processes on an ongoing basis.
• We also continued to add to our team’s internal resources library to educate our collaborators on sustainable design principles and accessibility.
• As an ongoing member of 1% for the Planet, we continued to donate 1% of iilo revenues to organizations focused on supporting causes that are close to our team members’ hearts. 1% members we all donated to for Giving Tuesday 2024: A Better Life Foundation, Nanaimo & Area Land Trust, Neighbours United, Redd Fish Restoration Society, Rugged Coast Research Society, Second Harvest Canada, The Land Conservancy of British Columbia, and Waves for Water Philippines.

Customers

• We continued to measure the revenue generated from mission-aligned clients, and we’re excited to share that 100% of our revenue came from clients who lead with their mission to make the world a better place.
• Our clients’ impact areas leaned toward the social space in fiscal year 4, with 89% of clients focused on addressing social causes, and 10% addressing primarily environmental causes.
• Thanks to increased customer awareness and greater team capacity, we completed more branding and communications projects this year.

Workers

• After making our first hire in 2023, we have steadily grown our core team of employees with a full-time graphic designer, a full-time project manager, a part-time graphic designer and marketing assistant, and a part-time project and marketing coordinator, which has expanded our capacity as a business.
• Overall, more team members took advantage of iilo’s professional development benefit (offered to both employees and contractors). For some of us, that meant attending the DesignThinkers Conference in Vancouver organized by the Association of Registered Graphic Designers (RGD).
• We have continued to deepen our knowledge of accessible design and communications, and we engaged a disabled designer, Jessica Oddi, to consult with us.
• To support the growth and management of our team, we set up a human resources software management system and began implementing foundational HR best practices.

We’re learning and growing

As we enter iilo year 5, we plan to apply our diverse learning to deepen impact in all areas of our business. We believe our team and clients will benefit from our ongoing investment in personal and professional growth.

Our goals for year 5

• Keep increasing the number of impact-driven and values-aligned clients on our client list
• Continue increasing in-house learning opportunities, sharing our learning, and operationalizing best practices
• Implement operational efficiencies, including leveraging ethical AI solutions
• Continue building leadership within iilo’s core team
• Retain our KPI of 100% of our team reporting that we helped them maintain their life/work balance
• Retain our KPI of 100% of our clients reporting that we helped them amplify their missions with our work together

We look forward to year 5 as iilo Creative Alliance!

To learn more about our vision, mission and values as a company, explore iilo Creative Alliance’s brand platform and subscribe to our newsletter to stay connected.