The Benefit Corporation: Drive Towards the Future

It’s been over a year since the United States was first gripped by the Occupy Movement that spread across the country. Looking back, it’s worthwhile to see how the movement altered the political landscape.

For starters, members of both political parties now address the issue of income inequality. And other topics, like the impact that Citizens United has had on campaign finance are sure to resonate across this fall’s presidential race.

Regardless of your political leanings, however, the Occupy Movement imagined a county where capitalism wasn’t purely profit-driven. To some that may sound naive; after all, the sole goal of corporations is to maximize shareholder value, yet alternatives do exist. One such alternative is what’s called a “social enterprise,” or a Benefit Corporation a for-profit company that operates in a socially conscious and environmentally sustainable way. We at Cohesian refer to it as Conscious Capitalism.

Such arrangements can be structured as a Benefit Corporation, or B-Corp. Under this structure, a business is a kind of hybrid model, between a traditional profit and non-profit. California became the seventh state in the Union to recognize such arrangements, and we expect more states to follow.

Tags | b corp, benefit corporation, cohesian, conscious capitalism, occupy movement