What Is a B Corp?

B Corps are for-profit companies that have received certification from B Lab, a nonprofit organization that certifies businesses that meet certain social and environmental standards. B Lab reported there were 9,860 certified B Corp companies across 159 industries in 105 countries worldwide in May 2025.

How Does a Business Become a Certified B Corp?

To become a certified B Corp business, companies must apply💧 to B Lab, providing documentation regarding their business practices.

澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果体🐼彩网: To be approved, a company has to:

1. Achieve a score of at least 80 on B Lab’s Impact Assessment, which measures social and environmental performance, and pass its risk review. There are baseline standards that multinational corporations must also meet.
2. Be accountable to all stakeholders, not just shareholders, by making a legal commitment and changing its corporate governance structure. If available in its jurisdiction, a company must also have achieved benefit corporation status. 
3. Be 澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果体彩网:transparent by agreeing to allow its performance on B Lab’s standards to be publicly available on its B Corp profile on B Lab’s website.

In addition, companies must apply for recertification every three years, when there has been a change in ownership, or they have made an 澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果体彩网:initial public offering (IPO).

What Is B Lab?

B Lab, based in the United States, is an international organization founded in 2006. It describes itself as a “nonprofit network transforming the global economy to benefit all people, communities, and the planet.” B Lab certified its first 82 corporations in 2007.

B Lab is supported by a group of well-known foundations, corporations, and government agencies, including the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Business Development Bank of Canada, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, and Prudential.

In addition to its U.S. offices in Philadelphia and New York City, B Lab works with global regional affiliates in Amsterdam, London, Melbourne, São Paulo, and other countries. In Latin America, it partners with Sistema B.

Advantages and Disadva🍷ntages of Becoming a B Corp

Companies go through the process of becoming a B Corp for a variety of ﷽reasons and can gain a number of advantages from doing so. At the same time, there may be a few potential drawbacks.

Advantages

According to B Lab, companies that receive B Corp certificaꦬtion benefit because they:

• Build trust with their consumers, communities, and suppliers
• Are able to attract and 澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果体彩网:retain employees
• Tend to attract investors who back their mission

Additionally, because they must recertify every three years, their focus on improving over time can lead to long-term resiliency.

B Lab Europe puts it a little more simply: “For businesses, becoming a B Corp means attracting more employees, improving their company, and finding power as a community.”

A 2016 Harvard Business Review article that examined companies’ motivations for becoming B Corps found “at least two major underlying reasons,” according to its authors.

One was “the increasing efforts of more conventional profit-driven companies to be seen as ‘green’ and ‘good.’” This, in tꦗurn, motivated smaller competitors (which many B Corps are) to 🦹seek certification as a way to stand out as genuinely committed to social and environmental responsibility.

The second, closely related reason was an apparently sincere desire to “‘join the movement of creating a new economy with a new set of rules and ‘redefine the way people perceive success in the business world.’”

In another Harvard Business Review article, Richard Stammer, former president and CEO of Cabot Creamery Cooperative, which became certified as a B Corp in 2012, wrote that the process “delivered value beyond our expectations. B Corp certification encouraged more ‘whole-systems thinking’ around our 澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果体彩网:social and environmental practices, which led Cabot to develop even more robust customer and consumer programs, cut operating costs, and strengthen our brand reputation as a sustainability-minded company.”

Disadvantages

A largely positi🍎ve report on B Corp prepared by the Yale Center for Business and the Environment and Patagonia (a well-known B Corp) mentioned a few potential drawbacks for companies weighing whether, as it said, “to B or not to B.”

Thoജse included a higher level of scrutiny, in part becauꦿse activists often target companies that make environmental and other claims to ensure that they live up to those claims.

In addition, t♉he certification process itself can be laborious. “It can take months—and in some cases, years—to become a Certified B Corporation, and the amount of time hinges heavily on whether a company already had a system in place to measure its social and environmental impact,” the report noted, adding that, “It is important for a company to assess whether it has sufficient bandwidth to take on the additional work.”

Finally, the extra expenses associated with being a B Corp (such as “paying your employees a 澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果体彩网:living wage”) might result in higher costs to customers and reduced profits for shareholders, at least in the short term.

Which Companies Are Certified B Corps?

Many B Corp companies are 澳洲幸运5官方开奖结果体彩网:small and midsize companies not widely known outside of their countries or particular market niches. Among the larger and more famous U.S. brands on the list are Ben & Jerry’s (food products), Patagonia (apparel), and Seventh Generation (cleaning products).

B Corp Certification Categories

The assessment process used by B Lab looks at a company’s practices across five categories: governance, workers, community, environment, and customers. Its annual “Best for the World” list recognizes top performers in each category, in each region.

Benefit Corporation vs. B Corp

A benefit corporation, sometimes referred to as a B corporation, is a type of company, officially recognized in most states of the U.S., that operates for the benefit of stakeholders such as employees and the larger community rather than simply for its shareholders. In that way, it is similar to a B Corp certified by 🌟B Lab, and for obvious re🔜asons, the two are often confused.

Although B Corps an🥃d benefit corporations have similar accountability and transparency requirements, the performanc🍌e of a benefit corporation is self-reported, whereas a B Corp must “pass” the B Lab Impact Assessment and recertify regularly, as noted above.

Filing fees for benefit corporations vary by state and province, but they tend to be lower than B Lab’s certification fees. Companies can only become benefit corporations in the U.S., the British Columbia province of Canada, and a few other countries, whereas any for-profit firm that has been in operation for a least a year can apply to be a B Corp.

The Bottom Line

B Corp companies are part of a growing movement toward greater social and environmental responsibility by businesses around the world. Their proponents maintain that paying attention to those concerns (and not simply the interests of shareholders) is also good business that pays off in other ways.