FAQs

Responsible 100 is a tool and improvement process for businesses of all sizes and sectors. It is also for the NGOs, campaign groups and other civil society organisations which challenge and support business. 

It is a unique and powerful new way for businesses to be responsible, and for experts and other stakeholders to support and incentivise businesses to fully invest themselves into this work. 

Responsible 100 enables businesses to balance their own economic interests with the interests of nature, society and a fair, livable, sustainable future. We help companies to operate as responsibly as they possibly can, bespoke to their own particular needs and circumstances.

Being in business has always has been tough and it always will be. Being responsible and sustainable at the same time is harder still. But it is necessary. We propose a powerful new way to approach responsibility. We can help any business, today, no matter its starting point. 

Responsible 100 will help you work out what to stop doing, and what to start doing instead, across all the responsibility issues that impact your business. This will benefit your business, and everyone else.

Key features businesses should consider:

  • An entirely unique and practical approach
  • No lengthy application process or other barriers to join
  • Gaining help today, no matter your starting point
  • Go at your own pace
  • Coaching from experts and support from peers
  • Help and support tailored to your particular challenges and circumstances
  • Making responsibility work a shared, team endeavour
  • Bullet proof credibility and trustworthiness by design 
  • Achieving optimal responsibility: doing nothing short of all you can to maximise your responsibility performance as a driver of your profitability and commercial success
  • Joining a highly scalable innovation with the potential to create change at the systems level 

Subject to new EU laws and regulations, your company will soon be able to display one or more of our badges.

Businesses and organisations that participate in Responsible 100 will be able to display the badge on their websites, packaging, email signatures and other such marketing materials, if they have met the minimum requirements to do so. Minimum requirements are set low currently and will become more demanding as Responsible 100 grows.

We charge a flat fee of £1,000 and supply from 10-15 consultancy support hours over a ten month period as explained in our model.

Benchmarking performance on a wide range of responsibility and sustainability issues, and using the results to inform and empower businesses, is at the heart of what Responsible 100 does.

Over the years, we have explored thousands of different real life policy and practice examples, working with around 800 different businesses and organisations. It was 2012 when we first experimented with ascribing different scores to the policies and practices we helped to uncover.

In our second incarnation, while we still score as either Poor, Okay, Good or Excellent, we’ve made changes to when scoring happens, and by whom, and who validates and how etc. 

Previously, we created detailed benchmarks that included scores and sometimes hundreds of policy and practice examples, and we helped businesses to place themselves on those scales. Now, we define the Poor, Okay, Good and Excellent much more loosely and support businesses in applying the demands and opportunities within each issue to their company size and sector, and moreover to their circumstances, values and ambitions. Routinely businesses misjudge themselves on their performance, more commonly underestimating themselves rather than overestimating how well they perform. 

Fine, valuable benchmarks continue to emerge despite the evolutions in how we do things. 

Most campaign groups focus on a specific responsibility issue. They often seek out and highlight examples of poor practices, and valuably serve society in so doing. Larger NGOs do the same, often working on a range of different or related responsibility issues. All such organisations are welcome to join Responsible 100.

We require a few things that such expert organisations may not have considered that much previously. That is, once Poor practice is identified, what practical and pragmatic changes might then be expected of businesses that are willing and able to improve? Often, simply stopping the Poor things they do, overnight, is so damaging to their business model that they dismiss doing so out of hand.

As such, we ask our partners to consider Okay policies and practices. What are the things a company must start doing, and the things it should stop doing, that are achievable to it, to improve from Poor to Okay? The more reasonable and achievable those things, then the greater the pressure on businesses to make those changes.

Obviously we don’t want to stop there. So, likewise, we’re keen to know how a business could improve from Okay to Good performance. What does Good look like? What are the things a businesses needs to do, or not do, to meet this level?

Excellent is a special case because such performance levels may not actually exist in the real world, or at least not yet. Or, if they do, these are only in rare and exceptional cases. It may be that Excellent performance is imagined and aspired to. This also depends very much on the issue. Suffice it to say, in the Responsible 100 era, partner organisations have the opportunity to imagine tangible standards of Excellent performance that companies can strive for, issue by issue, and inspire and support them in achieving it.

Learn about the benefits of partnership here.

We explore an incredibly diverse range of issues. Those that have huge ethical implications, such as Executive Pay and Rights Of Indigenous Peoples, and those that more operational or business hygiene issues, such as Cyber Security. Some, like for example Causes & Campaigns, relate very closely to the values, beliefs and culture of a business. As such, our 22 issues present utterly different risks and opportunities to companies. Further, they also impact in entirely asymmetric ways according to company size, sector and circumstances.

Nonetheless, there are common themes between the four performance standards we use.

For performance to be Excellent, the issue is usually of fundamental importance to the business, and likely to be relevant to its raison d’être and purpose as an organisation. The business will be keenly focused on implementing the maximum number of positive impact practices and activities, and minimising the number of negative impact practices relating to the issue. It will be net-positive in its overall impacts.

The business will very likely measure, sets targets, monitor and report on progress for ongoing improvement and innovation, or lack of it. Performing better than peers or comparable businesses will likely be very important. 

Excellence on the issue is usually tied to overall business strategy. The business will likely be communicating the importance of the issue to other stakeholders, using multiple means and channels to do so. It will be demonstrating a holistic approach to the issue, and seeking support and contribution to best practices from partners and third parties up and down its value chains. 

The business likely campaigns on the issue. It promotes best practices in as many ways as possible.

For performance to be Good, the issue will be important to the business and it will pursue a number of best practices. It will be demonstrating a considered and joined up approach, adopting as many positive impact practices, and ceasing as many negative impact practices, as far and wide as possible. This stated, it is likely to be under some limitations or constraints to doing more, but will likely be open about this and provide explanation and context. 

The company may not perform much better than net-neutrality in its overall impacts: there will be plenty of positive impacts, but they may be largely offset from various negative impact practices that the business is yet to work out how to cease and prevent, although it will tirelessly seek to. 

Good means regularly communicating the importance of the issue to other stakeholders, and doing solid work on measurement, target setting, monitoring and reporting on progress.

For performance to be Okay, the business will recognise that the issue is important and may pursue a number of best or at least laudable practices, but will only be doing so on an ad hoc basis. Further, while the business may do some things to positively impact the issue, it is still doing things which result in negative impacts and will be net-negative in its overall impacts. 

It may be evaluating if and how to adopt policies and practices to improve. It may be making some effort to alleviate, mitigate or remediate the negative impacts it is responsible for. The business may wish to perform better but be prevented from making the issue a higher priority due to barriers to improvement such as cost, budget considerations and opportunity costs. In contrast to Poor, an Okay business is usually open about the importance of the issue to society and/or the environment and open to the idea of using its influence to encourage openness, debate and the adoption of better and bests practices generally. 

Okay is a special case in that it is the default performance assigned when a business demonstrates that an issue is neither relevant nor material to its operations and outside of all its spheres of concern or influence. Okay is the default performance assigned under such circumstances given assigning Poor, Good or Excellent would be illogical when an issue has no relevance or materiality to a business.

Poor performance usually means that the business is net-negative in its overall impacts yet has no plans to change. The business will make no valid attempt to alleviate, mitigate nor remediate its negative impacts. 

It is likely that the company’s underlying business model is dependent on continuing policies and practices that negatively impact society and/or the environment. The business may refuse to accept responsibility for what it does and fail to demonstrate honesty, transparency or accountability on the issue. 

The business may ignore credible evidence regarding the negative impacts of its activities and practices. The business is likely neither open nor honest about the importance of the issue to society and/or the environment. 

The business may use its influence to encourage poor practices generally. It may sponsor and champion denial and other ways to cast doubt on received scientific knowledge, received wisdoms and best practices. 

Or a business can be Poor because it is significantly net-negative in its overall impacts through accident, oversight, misfortune or bad luck, and/or despite its best efforts not to be. Such Poor performance may be acknowledged and accepted. It may also include the assumption of full responsibility for implementing improvements as soon as possible, and a commitment to openness, honesty and accountability in regards to how it fares in its efforts to improve.

Responsible 100 is delivered by Profit Through Ethics Ltd an independent, for-profit, impact business based in London, UK.

Michael Solomon, Director

Michael devised the Responsible 100 concept in 2012 having worked on various forerunning initiatives prior. He has over 24 years of experience in innovation and entrepreneurship in responsible business. View Michael’s profile on LinkedIn.

Malcolm Bacchus, Virtual Finance DirectorMalcolm is a Chartered Accountant, a company director, an adviser to SMEs on financing, budgeting, strategy and general management issues, and currently the President of the ICAEW. View Malcolm’s profile on LinkedIn.

Responsible 100 dates back to 2012 and was the product of several forerunning initiatives prior. Each of the preceding initiatives offered businesses and partner organisations to opportunity to collaborate on a framework and methodology for demonstrating transparency and accountability on a range of responsibility issues. We’ve long regarded this as the ultimate test of true business responsibility and trustworthiness. 

Towards the end of 2012, performance scores were added to the written accounts that business provided: 10 for Poor, 40 for Okay, 70 for Good and 100 for Excellent. A business was awarded an overall ‘Responsible 100 score’, out of 100, as the average of its performance scores gained on each of the issue benchmarks it assessed against. Scores tended to range from 60 to 90. However, many businesses quickly became more interested in improving their Responsible 100 score, rather than investing in the actual work: improving their policies and practices as far, wide and rapidly as possible. This method of scoring was discontinued as a result, but the name stuck.

Responsible 100 ran in its first incarnation from 2012 to 2019 before being discontinued. A second incarnation has been under development since 2020 and soft launched in 2025. The number 100 takes on a new significance this time around given that the number of tokens a participant business amasses is expressed as an average of the total number of minted tokens. Quite how this impacts the brand or name remains to be seen however.