I would encourage everyone to read about what a Benefit Corporation is. It’s still for-profit, but being public benefit gives the officers a little protection from shareholders suing them when stock performance goes down. In theory, this protects them from being driven solely by profit.
However, there’s no real guidance or oversight on whether a company still qualifies for that designation. They can self-audit, they can vote to change to a normal corporation at any time, switch back again, etc. This is not a different tax classification, this is a corporate board promise, and I have no reason to think they’ll stay a public benefit corporation, even if they have the best intentions right now.
I would encourage everyone to read about what a Benefit Corporation is. It’s still for-profit, but being public benefit gives the officers a little protection from shareholders suing them when stock performance goes down. In theory, this protects them from being driven solely by profit.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benefit_corporation
However, there’s no real guidance or oversight on whether a company still qualifies for that designation. They can self-audit, they can vote to change to a normal corporation at any time, switch back again, etc. This is not a different tax classification, this is a corporate board promise, and I have no reason to think they’ll stay a public benefit corporation, even if they have the best intentions right now.