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B Corp: what it is and what it signals

B Corp is a certification issued by B Lab, a nonprofit that began in 2006. B Lab describes it as an integrated business certification that assesses and verifies a company's social, environmental and governance impact against the B Lab Standards. It covers a whole company rather than one product or site, and it is a private certification, not a legal status.

Type

Certifications and standards

Run by

B Lab

Since

2006

Headquarters

United States

Official site

https://www.bcorporation.net/en-us/certification/

Public list

https://www.bcorporation.net/en-us/find-a-b-corp/

What B Corp is

Certification has two parts. The first is performance: a company is measured against the B Lab Standards, which B Lab describes as a framework spanning social and environmental impact from climate action to human rights. The assessment is independently verified and audited by a third party, based on ISO 17021-1 requirements, rather than accepted on the company's own word.

The second part is legal. To certify, a company adopts the B Corp Legal Requirement: embedding stakeholder governance principles into its legal framework and signing B Lab's Declaration of Interdependence. That commitment lives in the company's own governing documents; no government confers it.

Who runs it and since when

B Lab is the nonprofit behind Certified B Corporations. In its own account, B Lab began in 2006, founded by Andrew Kassoy, Bart Houlahan and Jay Coen Gilbert. Certification is delivered through the B Global Network, which B Lab describes as an interdependent system of global, regional and national B Lab and Sistema B organizations.

The standards are developed with an independent Standards Advisory Council, described as a global multi-stakeholder group with expertise in responsible and sustainable business. B Lab launched what it calls the biggest update to the standards in its history in April 2025. B Lab also runs a public complaints process for misconduct or misrepresentation by certified companies.

How an organization gets it

Eligibility comes first. B Lab says most for-profit companies can apply regardless of size or sector, provided the company is legally incorporated in a country or territory, has been in operation for at least 12 months, complies with local and national laws, and is not significantly involved in an excluded industry.

A company then registers on B Impact, B Lab's free tool, and completes a self-assessment of its current performance against the standards. It also builds a risk profile using B Lab's risk profiling tool, which sets any additional due-diligence sub-requirements it has to meet. Verification is carried out by approved third-party assurance providers rather than by B Lab itself. Certification is not granted once and left alone: B Lab's guidance covers the journey from first steps through recertification. Start-ups and smaller companies that cannot yet certify can register instead as Pending B Corps.

What it signals, and what it does not

A current listing tells a reader that an outside assurance provider checked this company against a published framework covering governance, workers, community, environment and customers, and that the company changed its governing documents to take stakeholders into account. That is a whole-company signal, and it is stronger than a self-declared policy.

It does not tell you the company is a legal benefit corporation; several jurisdictions offer such a form in statute, and this certification is separate from it. It does not rate a specific product, supply chain or factory, it is not a measure of outcomes achieved for any community, and it says nothing about solvency or repayment. Scores are relative to an assessment B Lab designs and periodically revises, so a score earned under one version of the standards is not comparable to one earned under another.

How to verify a claim

Search the company by name in B Lab's public directory. A live record shows its location, the month it has been certified since, its industry and sector, the countries it operates in, and an overall B Impact Score set against the median for businesses that complete the assessment.

If a company is missing, the claim is unsupported at the moment you check, whatever a website badge says. Certification can lapse when a company does not recertify and can be withdrawn through the complaints process, so an old press release is not evidence of current status. A company describing itself as a Pending B Corp has registered an intention, not an outcome. When in doubt, ask which assurance provider verified it and in which year.

Size and geography

B Corp publishes a total of over 10,000 companies on six continents, in B Lab's description of the B Corp movement. Source.

Our copy of the public list holds 10,684 organizations across 103 countries, pulled 2026-08-06.

• United Kingdom 2,907
• United States 1,754
• France 624
• Australia 601
• Canada 564
• Netherlands The 473
• Italy 366
• Brazil 346
• Spain 292
• Argentina 291
• Chile 266
• New Zealand 185

Often held together

Organizations carrying B Corp in our data most often also hold:

• AIM2Flourish (81 organizations)
• USDA Organic (29 organizations)
• Endeavor (15 organizations)
• IKEA Social Entrepreneurship (14 organizations)
• Ashoka Fellows (13 organizations)
• Miller Center (13 organizations)

In the Tokens for Good directory

None of the organizations researched so far carries this label. Submit one, or contribute research with spare Claude capacity.

Frequently asked questions

Sources

1. B Lab, About B Corp Certification checked 2026-09-17
2. B Lab, About B Lab checked 2026-09-17
3. B Lab, Who is eligible to be a B Corp? checked 2026-09-17
4. B Lab, Why B Lab uses third-party certification checked 2026-09-17
5. B Lab, About the B Lab Standards checked 2026-09-17
6. B Lab, Find a B Corp directory (company profile) checked 2026-09-17
7. B Lab, Pending B Corps checked 2026-09-17