| Course | SUST 5013 People First: Creating Value Beyond Profit |
|---|---|
| Module | Module 4 |
| Paper type | Benefit report and transparency assessment |
| Length | 1,180 words, about 4 pages plus title and reference pages |
| Format | APA 7 student paper |
| School | American College of Education |
| Program | M.S. in Organizational Leadership |
| Updated | October 2026 |
Free sample paper for SUST 5013 Module 4
A B Impact Score of 98.6 and a Goal Still at 59 Percent: Assessing Vital Farms' Impact Reporting
Student Name
American College of Education
SUST5013: People First: Creating Value Beyond Profit
Module 4 Assignment
Instructor Name
September 25, 2028
Introduction
Earlier papers mapped Vital Farms' stakeholders and examined its practices toward crew members, farmers and host communities, often noting that key measures were missing from its 10-K. This paper turns to the company's impact reporting itself. As a Delaware public benefit corporation, Vital Farms must report on its public benefits, and as a Certified B Corporation it is assessed by B Lab. The paper evaluates its reporting against the statute's requirements and research on corporate disclosure, using the company's 2025 Impact Report announcement, its 2026 Impact Update and its FY2025 10-K, and recommends improvements.
What the Law Requires
Under Delaware's statute, a public benefit corporation owes its shareholders a report no less than once in each two-year period describing how it has advanced its stated benefits and served the people its operations affect. Four things must appear in it: goals chosen by the board, the yardsticks used to track them, objective data gathered against those yardsticks and the board's own judgment of how well the company did (Delaware General Corporation Law, 2025). The law does not prescribe a particular standard or require third-party verification, although a company's charter may. These four elements give a practical test for any benefit report.
What Research Says About Disclosure
Research warns that voluntary reporting is often selective. Lyon and Maxwell (2011) modeled greenwashing as selective disclosure of positive information while withholding negative information, and showed that the threat of audit or activist scrutiny can discipline it, though it may also discourage firms from disclosing at all. Marquis et al. (2016), studying thousands of firms worldwide, found that companies with worse environmental performance were more likely to disclose selectively, and that greater scrutiny and stronger global norms reduced this behavior. These findings suggest asking not only what a report says, but what it leaves out.
Vital Farms' Reporting Cadence
Vital Farms' 10-K states that it released its most recent full Impact Report in April 2025, released an Impact Update in March 2024 and planned a new update in the first half of 2026 (Vital Farms, Inc., 2026b). It thus alternates full reports with shorter updates, which satisfies the biennial requirement and gives stakeholders information every year. The 10-K also notes that information in these reports is not incorporated into its SEC filings, which means the impact figures are not subject to the same legal and audit standards as the financial statements.
Objectives and Standards
The 2026 Impact Update lists specific goals with deadlines and measures: engaging 100 percent of farmers in regenerative practices by the end of 2026, reducing operational greenhouse gas intensity 25 percent by the end of 2027 compared with 2022, raising favorability in an annual inclusion survey by five points by the end of 2023, ensuring more than 95 percent of crew complete ethics training by the end of 2025 and maintaining more than 80 percent agreement that the company operates ethically by 2026 (Vital Farms, Inc., 2026a). These meet the statute's first two elements well: objectives are stated, and each comes with a measurable standard and date.
Factual Information and Progress
The update reports progress on each goal: 59 percent of farmers engaged in regenerative practices, an 18.3 percent reduction in operational emissions intensity, a seven-point gain in inclusion favorability, 99 percent ethics training completion and the ethical culture goal in progress (Vital Farms, Inc., 2026a). The April 2025 announcement added that the company had reduced operational emissions intensity at its Missouri plant by 17.7 percent since 2023, provided more than $600,000 in philanthropy and recertified as a B Corp for the fourth time (Vital Farms, Inc., 2025). Reporting a goal still at 59 percent, with its deadline approaching, is a sign of candor.
Third-Party Assessment
B Lab's assessment provides an outside check. The company's most recent certification, in March 2025, produced an overall score of 98.6, with 32.7 points in Environment, 25.1 in Workers, 20.0 in Community, 17.2 in Governance and 3.2 in Customers (Vital Farms, Inc., 2026a). A score above 80 is required for certification, so 98.6 is solid. The breakdown is informative: Environment and Workers contribute most, while the low Customers score likely reflects how B Lab's assessment awards points rather than a weakness in product quality, a point the company could explain.
Consistency Across Documents
Comparing documents reveals inconsistencies that a reader must resolve. The April 2025 announcement describes a network of over 425 family farms (Vital Farms, Inc., 2025), while the 10-K filed in February 2026 refers to more than 600 small farms (Vital Farms, Inc., 2026b). The difference may reflect rapid growth, consistent with the upfront farm recruitment costs the 10-K reports, but neither document explains it. Similarly, the emissions figures use different baselines, 2022 for the goal and 2023 for the Missouri plant figure. Small explanations would make the reports easier to trust.
What Is Missing
Applying the research's warning about selective disclosure, several measures are absent from the documents reviewed. There are no absolute emissions figures or Scope 3 estimates, even though most of a food company's emissions arise on farms. There are no crew turnover, wage or injury figures, no farmer income or contract renewal data and no animal welfare outcome measures, such as mortality, beyond certification status. Not all of these may be absent from the full report, which this paper could not review in full; but the shorter documents that most stakeholders read emphasize goals the company is meeting.
Assessment
Measured against Delaware's four elements, Vital Farms' reporting is strong on objectives and standards, adequate on factual information and modest on assessment, since it reports progress without much analysis of why some goals lag. Compared with the research, it shows candor in reporting an unfinished goal and accepts outside scrutiny through B Lab, both of which reduce the risk of greenwashing. Its weaknesses are reliance on intensity rather than absolute measures, unexplained differences across documents and the absence of measures for some stakeholders central to its charter.
Recommendations
Four improvements would strengthen the reporting. First, add a short data table each year covering absolute Scope 1 and 2 emissions and an estimate of farm-level Scope 3 emissions, crew turnover and injury rates, the number of farms joining and leaving and basic animal welfare outcomes. Second, reconcile figures across documents, explaining changes such as farm counts. Third, obtain limited third-party assurance for key impact figures. Fourth, add a brief analysis of lagging goals, such as regenerative agriculture, explaining obstacles and next steps, which would satisfy the statute's assessment element more fully.
Conclusion
Vital Farms reports on its impact more regularly and specifically than many companies, with dated goals, measured progress, a B Impact score of 98.6 and candor about a regenerative agriculture goal still at 59 percent. Tested against Delaware's requirements and research on selective disclosure, the reporting is solid but incomplete: it relies on intensity measures, leaves some figures unreconciled and omits measures for crew, farmers and animals. The final module brings together this and earlier findings into recommendations to improve the company's impact on people.
References
Delaware General Corporation Law, Del. Code Ann. tit. 8, ยงยง 361-368 (2025). https://delcode.delaware.gov/title8/c001/sc15/index.html
Lyon, T. P., & Maxwell, J. W. (2011). Greenwash: Corporate environmental disclosure under threat of audit. Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, 20(1), 3-41. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1530-9134.2010.00282.x
Marquis, C., Toffel, M. W., & Zhou, Y. (2016). Scrutiny, norms, and selective disclosure: A global study of greenwashing. Organization Science, 27(2), 483-504. https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2015.1039
Vital Farms, Inc. (2025, April 16). Vital Farms publishes 2025 Impact Report underscoring commitments to long-term positive impact for all its stakeholders [Press release]. https://investors.vitalfarms.com/news/news-details/2025/Vital-Farms-Publishes-2025-Impact-Report-Underscoring-Commitments-to-Long-Term-Positive-Impact-for-all-its-Stakeholders/default.aspx
Vital Farms, Inc. (2026a). 2026 impact update. https://vitalfarms.com/impact/
Vital Farms, Inc. (2026b). Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 28, 2025. U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1579733/000119312526073423/vitl-20251228.htm
Reading the SUST 5013 Module 4 instructions
The fourth SUST 5013 paper commonly asks you to assess a company's benefit report and its transparency. Expect to identify what the law or certification requires, then judge whether the report states objectives, uses measurable standards, presents factual progress and assesses its own performance. Most prompts reward comparing several documents, such as the impact report, filings and press releases, and noticing what is missing as well as what is reported. Research on greenwashing and selective disclosure can frame the analysis. Recommend specific improvements, connect to earlier modules and cite every document in APA 7 with its date. If a full report is too long or unavailable, say which documents you used and how that limits your conclusions.
Inside the SUST 5013 Module 4 example
The sample sets out Delaware's four requirements for benefit statements and research on selective disclosure. It then reviews the company's reporting cadence, five dated goals with standards, reported progress including 59 percent farmer engagement and an 18.3 percent emissions intensity reduction and B Lab's 98.6 score by area. A comparison across documents finds farm counts of over 425 and more than 600 without explanation and emissions figures on different baselines. Missing measures are named, an assessment is given and four recommendations follow, including absolute emissions and limited assurance. Throughout, the paper is explicit about which documents it reviewed and which it could not.
Where the points sit in the SUST 5013 Module 4 rubric
Benefit report assessments are graded on criteria, evidence and balance. Graders look for clear criteria drawn from the law, certification standards or research, applied to the company's actual reports. Strong papers compare several documents, credit genuine strengths such as dated goals or candor, and identify omissions and inconsistencies precisely. Recommendations should be specific enough to adopt. Papers that summarize a report without judging it, accept every figure without checking or criticize without criteria tend to score lower. Cite each report, filing and press release separately in APA 7, with year suffixes where needed, and say plainly which documents you could not review. Recommendations read as stronger when each is labeled as either a legal requirement or a matter of better practice.
SUST 5013 Module 4 help: mistakes that cost points
Impact reports are long, glossy and hard to judge without clear criteria. We can help you identify the requirements that apply to your company, compare its reports with its filings and find what is missing. Name the company from your earlier modules, attach the prompt and share any reports you have, so a writer can draft an assessment grounded in law and research on disclosure. Benefit corporations and B Corps of almost any size can be assessed this way. Most assessments are ready within two days, with every document cited by date so you can trace each figure to its source. A one-page criteria table, if your instructor allows it, keeps the whole assessment organized, and we are glad to prepare one.
Write yours, or have the desk draft it
This paper is an original model document written by our desk, not a submitted student paper and not an official American College of Education document. Read it for the moves, then write your own to the instructions in your classroom. If you want one built to your exact prompt and rubric, the first custom sample is free and arrives in 24 to 48 hours.
More SUST 5013 and M.S. in Organizational Leadership sample papers
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- SUST 5013 Module 5: Vital Farms Impact Plan
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SUST 5013 Module 4 questions, answered
What does SUST5013 Module 4 usually ask for?
Module 4 of SUST5013 usually asks you to assess a company's benefit or impact report for completeness, accuracy and transparency, and to recommend improvements.
What must a Delaware public benefit corporation report?
At least every two years: the board's objectives, the standards used to measure progress, factual information based on those standards and an assessment of success.
How do I spot selective disclosure in an impact report?
Compare what is reported with what matters most for the company's stakeholders, check consistency across documents and note when only intensity or favorable figures appear.
Where can I find a free SUST 5013 Module 4 sample paper?
This page has one: Vital Farms' impact reporting assessed against Delaware's rules, with a B Impact score of 98.6, a goal at 59 percent and unexplained farm counts.
Where can I find a B Corp's impact scores?
B Lab's public directory lists certified companies' overall and area scores, and many companies repeat them in their impact reports.