Ethos is a not-for-profit organization, founded in Brazil in 1998 by a group of businessmen and executives from the private sector. Ethos clusters knowledge management, exchange of experiences and tools development to support firms to analyze their management practices and set commitments toward social responsibility and sustainability.

Ethos became a reference in Brazil for CSR and sustainability, building awareness and being a key player in making sustainability a mainstream topic in the news media and closer to individuals.

The mission of Ethos is to ‘mobilise, sensitise, and support firms to manage their businesses in a socially-responsible way, towards the construction of a more just and sustainable society’. The Ethos Institute ‘develops, organises, and adapts materials on Tools for Business Management to keep them up to date and relevant to issues of global and national Corporate Social Responsibility.’ Tools include instruments for self-evaluation and learning, developed to meet the needs of firms at different stages of management, but primarily for internal use in diagnosis, planning and implementation, as well as benchmarking for the evaluation process.

The basic tools include Best Practices Bank, Social Accountability Guide, Compatibility Guide, Ethos Indicators, Contextualising tools, Matrix of Essential Criteria, Evidence Matrix, Sustainability Reporting.

Timeline entry contributed by Carolina de Andrade