Full Circle Funerals and B Corp
Since Full Circle Funerals opened its first funeral service in Yorkshire in 2016, we have always believed in the importance of having a positive impact on the people we support, the community, our team, and the world in which we live and work.
If you are on a similar journey and would like to share ideas, discuss challenges, and learn together then please don’t hesitate to get in touch. We have much to learn and are happy to share everything that we have learnt so far!
Why become a B Corp?
As we have grown, our commitment to be a “business for good” has gained in strength, and we have been able to develop the systems and process to support our impact-focussed culture. Imagine our delight when we became aware of the B Corp movement – like minded business who also wanted to meet the highest possible standards of social, community and environmental impact.
Many businesses talk about “CSR” and their desire to “do good” but B Corp provides a structure and accreditation process which has helped us to continually improve and can provide external validation for the work that we do. We were delighted that we became a Certified B Corp in November 2021.
What is our purpose?
Full Circle Funerals came into being because the founding team wanted people who are dying or grieving to get the support they need.
So, having a positive impact on customers (although not really a word we use), drives everything that we do.
To clearly articulate the principles that guide us and the purpose that we want to achieve, we have created a Theory of Change to guide us. The infographic below shows our purpose, the outcomes that will help achieve this and the actions that we commit to help achieve those outcomes and purpose.
Doing the right thing and living our B Corp Values
We engage in a variety of activities to ensure that we support community cohesion and partnership working and have a positive contribution to the community, our team, and the environment.
The list below provides a few examples of how we try to live and work B Corp values.
Social and professional connection – Each of our funeral directors spends time understanding how best to support their local community. This often involves connecting people with organisations or people with shared goals, volunteering and delivering workshops and events to benefit people locally.
Education and learning – We work hard to share gentle and helpful information about funeral choices and wellbeing after bereavement in our monthly webinars and on our social media channels. We offer work experience, currently have two Kick Start team members and as part of our 5th anniversary celebrations, we donated £5,000 to Yorkshire Dales Millennium Trust to support their Environmental Apprentices program.
Community events – Rather than trying to “reinvent the wheel” we would rather support local events and contribute where a need has already been identified. Many of the team are proud members of local rotary clubs and support local and regional initiatives such as Kinder Leeds, vocational workshops by Bramley Community Centre.
Team wellbeing – Being a funeral director is rewarding but like all vocations, it can be challenging (physically and emotionally) at times. In addition to a structured process of reflection and supervision, we meet regularly as a team and share our challenges and good practice. We arrange well-being focussed workshops and continually review our processes to make them as gentle on our team as possible. We were delighted to be recognised in the 2021 Modern Work Awards.
Environmental impact – Using goal-focussed supervisions, team meetings and quarterly environmental performance review we are continually working to minimise the impact that we have on our physical environment. We calculate our GHGe, have targets to reduce our impact and offset our emissions with our partner, Make it Wild.
Green funerals – By sharing information about greener funeral choices in a gentle and positive way, we believe that this will help people to make funeral choices which are better for the environment. We encourage people to understand the environmental impact of different options, without making anyone feel uncomfortable – for example by sharing blogs and enabling people to offset the GHGe associated with their chosen funeral. Our recent work with Planet Mark has contributed to making information about green funeral choices publicly available and we hope it will ultimately help to decarbonize funeral care.
Electric funeral cars – Funeral vehicles are traditionally large and incompatible with greener funerals. We have a 100% electric hearse (a converted Nissan Leaf) and we are proud to be able to offer this unusual option to people in Yorkshire.
Dementia Friends – Every member of the Full Circle team is a Dementia Friend and our funeral director in Guiseley is a Dementia Friends Champion. She hosts workshops to enable other individual and business to be better able to make our communities a better, safer, and more welcome place for people living with Dementia.
