WBA Allies represent organisations working at global, regional, and local levels to shape the private sector’s contributions to achieving the SDGs. Echoing the true spirit of SDG17 – Partnerships for the Goals, our Allies are committed to WBA’s mission, vision, and values, and believe in the power of benchmarks and cross-sector partnerships to drive systemic progress on the SDGs.
We strongly believe that our multi-stakeholder Alliance plays a significant role in helping WBA become a truly effective global organisation and drive system transformation to achieve the SDGs. As the Chair of our Supervisory Board, Paul Druckman said at our annual Allies Assembly, “the Alliance is WBA”. WBA Allies help us ensure our consultations and benchmarks are used by companies, investors, policy-makers and civil society; and help us tranform our work to create meaningful centres of impact.
Participation in the Alliance is designed to be voluntary, and there are no financial obligations between WBA and Allies. The Alliance does not include companies, whether they could potentially be ranked or might never be in scope for a benchmark. This is to ensure impartiality – in line with one of the WBA’s core values to stay independent – throughout the benchmarking process. The WBA maintains an ongoing dialogue with companies and business leaders to ensure that the Alliance remains relevant for the business community.
The Alliance does, however, include participation from financial institutions as they are a key user group for our benchmarks and play a critical role in influencing company behaviour. With the development of WBA’s Financial System Benchmark, for which keystone financial institutions are in scope, WBA has internal guard rails in place to ensure continued independence from undue influence in the development of the benchmark.