A Benefit corporation:
- "have an expanded purpose beyond maximizing share value to explicitly include general and specific public benefit"
- are required to consider the impact of their decisions not only on shareholders but also on workers, community, and the environment; and
- are required to make available to the public an annual benefit report that assesses their overall social and environmental performance against a third party standard.
A Certified B Corporation is a certification conferred by the nonprofit B Lab.
- “Certified B Corporations are a new type of corporation which uses the power of business to solve social and environmental problems.
- B Corps are unlike traditional businesses because they meet comprehensive and transparent social and environmental performance standards, meet higher legal accountability standard and build business constituency for good business.” (B Lab: About B Corps.)
A Social Business: is a cause driven business
- "In a social business, the investors/owners can gradually recoup the money invested, but cannot take any dividend beyond that point...Sustainability of the company indicates that it is running as a business.
- The objective of the company is to achieve social goal/s."