2023 Impact Report

Innovative Tools and Partnerships to Power the Impact Movement.

Unit of Impact is a catalyst for small business impact. We’re a team of impact industry professionals that has created a first-of-its kind platform to help socially responsible small businesses efficiently manage their impact data and turn their impact reports into a powerful marketing asset.

Our Mission

To measure and communicate positive small business impact.

Our Values

  • ACCESSIBLE - Make social & environmental impact ridiculously simple and available to any business.
  • DESIGN-DRIVEN - Clean and clear design to portray the innovative nature of the impact movement.
  • HUMAN - Keeping it fun, light, human - make it fun for people to do this work.
  • COLLABORATIVE - Joining with others multiplies our resources, our impact, and our opportunity.

Our Social Impact

We provide tools and resources that support the success of small businesses and help increase their social and environmental impact.

#5: Gender Equality #8: Decent Work and Economic Growth #9: Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure #17: Partnerships For The Goals We use the impact framework provided by the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

Letter from our CEO

To our wonderful community of supporters,

We’ve chosen “Collaboration” as the theme for this year’s impact report, our second year of operation. It’s central to our founding, our mission, and our stakeholder impact strategy.

We came together as a pandemic baby as a collaboration by three longtime Certified B Corporations: Roundpeg, Unity Web Agency, and Oliver Russell.  

From that beginning, we pursued our purpose of helping small businesses succeed by inspiring them to collect, measure, and share their impact with the world. That’s our true calling as a benefit corporation: lifting up social entrepreneurs and helping them flourish. 

In 2023, we pursued this by forming partnerships with 11 socially responsible businesses that align with our values. These marketing partnerships create the opportunity to generate brand awareness and much-needed incremental revenue through marketing referrals and promotion to one another’s networks. 

While a tough economic climate made it harder to acquire new customers in 2023, we were able to increase brand awareness for Unit of Impact and add new features for our impact measurement and reporting software:

  • Integrated a supplier’s section to make it easier to track the supply chain.
  • Developed new helper’s guides for our design templates to make it seamless for customers needing guidance to produce their impact reports.
  • Launched a Concierge Service, a consulting offering to provide strategy and hands-on help for time-pressed customers who need it.

Collaboration. It’s just smart business, especially for small business. 

With gratitude,

Polina Pinchevsky

Annual Highlights

Creating Collaborations for Community Impact

Real Leaders Nomination

We were nominated for the Most Collaborative Company in the international impact awards from Real Leaders.

Launching Concierge Services

We debuted our new Concierge Services with our first customer, Kelly Weber of The Wander Project.

By The Numbers

97
Companies have used our platform in the past year
59%
Women-owned companies on our platform
98%
Reports published by companies for the first time
11
Partnerships with values-aligned organizations

“Not only do I respect your work and vision for Unit of Impact, but I (and our company) have received real value from your products. Impact reporting is arduous and time-consuming, and when I think of the hours (likely days) of time that you have saved me over the past two years, I am grateful.”

— Crystal Mario, CEO and Founder, Rivanna Natural Designs, Inc.

Impact on Community

Impact Training for Small Businesses

We produced four educational workshops on LinkedIn Live, free to all – and provided impact measurement and reporting sessions for several groups: 

  • Forum for Naturals together with Aimee Koval, founder of Metis Consulting and Chronicle Advisers
  • BLD PNW Conference together with Kim Allchurch-Flick of Mighty Epiphyte.
  • BLD SouthEast 2022 and 2023
  • WetheChange
  • B Corp B2B communities
  • Start-Up Week DC 2023
  • Verizon Digital Ready Community
  • Shift Co, together with JB Media Group
  • University of Florida, Warrington College of Business graduate and undergraduate classes run by professor Dr. Kristin Joy
Collaboration and Connection

We joined Sustainable Business Network of Greater Philadelphia (SBN) and Vermont Businesses for Social Responsibility (VBSR) and sponsored the BLD Southeast B Corp conference. In addition, we provided educational webinars to each of these organizations to help their member companies spread their impact more broadly. Plus, we sponsored the Triple Bottom Champion Award given by SBN; the winner of this award also received free annual access to the Unit of Impact platform. Congrats to the winner, the nonprofit The Wardrobe, based in Philadephia, PA. Myti, based in Burlington, VT, won the free annual plan in a silent auction through the VBSR fundraiser.

Brewing Change

We formed a collaborative impact learning cohort with 9 independently-owned breweries across the nation, of which 4 are B Corp craft beer breweries: The Alchemist, Creature Comforts Brewing Co., Lawson’s Finest Liquids, and Lost Grove Brewing. Extra special thanks to Zach Godfrey who volunteered his time and talents to run this cohort. 

Impact on Environment

Pursuing Environmental Impact through Remote Work

As a scrappy startup, we use a remote-work structure with three independent home offices. That doesn’t mean we left sustainability in the old way of doing things at a commercial office. Remote work eliminates carbon emissions stemming from commuting to work. Plus, two of our home offices primarily use solar power, with one home powered 100% by the sun. These homes also employ recycling and composting — a lot of composting, in fact, as one home office doubles as an organic flower farm.

Our Partnerships

With Unit’s tools, it’s easier for us to have control over our own reporting format. It’s so very well laid out. We could plug in what’s relevant to us and take out what isn’t. I think the software is such a gem, and I wish more businesses knew about it. Nonprofits, too.”
—Devi Ramkissoon, Executive Director, SBN

Goals

A future with more impact

The movement of businesses for good is growing – and we want to provide the tools to fuel it.

  • Begin the B Corp certification process
  • Increase our Benefit Corporation customer base
  • Raise investment capital to add features and expand marketing
  • Offer more resources and education for companies growing their impact
  • Foster an engaged community of change-makers for growth and collaboration

Public Benefits and Disclosures

We’re proud to be a Maryland public benefit corporation. This impact report offers evidence of the work Unit of Impact has done in 2022 to generate benefits for the public, primarily as a platform to help small businesses successfully increase their social and environmental impact. As a Public Benefit Corporation registered in Maryland, Unit of Impact is legally bound to use our business for the creation of general public benefit, defined as “a material, positive impact on society and the environment, as measured by a third–party standard, through activities that promote a combination of specific public benefits, which include the following:

  1. Providing individuals or communities with beneficial products or services
  2. Promoting economic opportunity for individuals or communities beyond the creation of jobs in the normal course of business
  3. Preserving the environment
  4. Improving human health
  5. Promoting the arts, sciences, or advancement of knowledge
  6. Increasing the flow of capital to entities with a public benefit purpose
  7. The accomplishment of any other particular benefit for society or the environment