The San Francisco Business Times writes about B Corporations:
What may have seemed a kooky idea 16 years ago has become a bona fide trend. Nonprofits are starting businesses and for-profit companies are investing in nonprofits. Philanthropies like Omidyar Network and Google.org are playing venture capitalist. Top business schools like Haas and Stanford are filling social entrepreneurship programs. Green chambers of commerce are cropping up.
The loose notion of "social benefit" unites these disparate threads, but until now consumers have had no clear way to distinguish good business practices from merely good marketing.
A Pennsylvania-based nonprofit called B Lab has started a ratings system for "B corporations" in hopes of someday creating a new legal entity, the for-benefit corporation, that can stand alongside C-corps, LLCs and S-corps.
And quotes me:
"People realize there are times when a for-profit business model allows them to do more good faster. If they can raise capital, they can scale more quickly than they can as a nonprofit," said Sean Stannard-Stockton, director of tactical philanthropy at Ensemble Capital in Burlingame.
If B Corps are news to you, check out Lucy Bernholz’ write up from last week. Lucy’s company Blueprint Research & Design is one of the newest B Corporations.
One Comment
Social benefit organization would also make a nice replacement name for nonprofit organization.