November 19, 2025
At B Local, our focus is amplification, collaboration, and supporting fellow B Corps with a mandate to do good as we do well.
Northern Village is up next in our Spotlight series with a goal to promote B Local member businesses, as well as bolster greater community through shared learning and experiences.
Talk to us about your WHY. Why a purpose driven business, and why the pursuit of B Corp certification?
Northern Village was set up as a company to do good in the world. By choice, we work primarily with social benefit organizations to help them fulfill their missions. We know that this sector was under-serviced and in need of affordable custom web solutions, websites and software. Like many companies doing good in the world, we do so quietly and don't feel we need a certification to validate our work. That all changed after attending Champions Retreat in Toronto in 2017. Interacting with a full event space filled with people who are in business as a force for good helped us to understand the value of networking, collaborating, amplifying and demonstrating our values to our customers.
Can you share a specific example of how your company values have shaped your business practices or decision-making process?
In 2021 Northern Village branched out into producing software as a service products, in addition to websites. We were working with a client to develop a software to help agencies assist people experiencing homelessness to recover their ID. Our values include "enabling social impact" and we wanted to demonstrate this by making the software available to other agencies. Around the same time, Meridian Credit Union launched their inaugural Small Business Contest and was looking for businesses demonstrating resilience, innovation, and community spirit, which we believe are at the heart of who we are and what we do at Northern Village. We ended up winning that award, and used the award funds to confirm our path to create software as a force for good.
What does being a B Corp mean to you? To your team? To your customers?
Being a B Corp means being a part of a community that is dedicated to making the world a better place. Being involved at B Local Ontario gives us the opportunity to be in contact with, learn from, and be inspired by, many different B Corps in a diverse range of businesses. We look forward to those interactions whether at an event, committee meeting or AGM.
