The Role of B Corps

B Corps can be both the proof point for how all businesses should behave and advocates for systems change. In April 2025, B Lab U.S. & Canada released a significant update to the B Corp Standards. The new standards define a set of ambitious, specific requirements for achieving B Corp Certification around topics like fair wages, human rights, and climate action, giving organizations clarity on where to focus their impact efforts and unifying the community around a concrete set of practices and policies. We believe these policies can define what it means to be a good business.

Part of the new standard includes a new requirement for government affairs and civic action (the GACA Standard). This standard requires B Corps to engage in collective action, such as organized advocacy for public policy. 

In policy, B Corps have the opportunity to play a powerful leadership role. Businesses often use their powerful voice to cause harm, but B Corporations — supported by the right infrastructure and effective partners— can use their standing to counter this political weight. 

Together, B Corps and other responsible businesses can shape an economy that works for everyone.

B Lab’s Policy Agenda

B Lab supports a constituency of for-profit businesses dedicated to shaping an economy that benefits all people, communities, and the planet. We understand the power of this business voice and know that it is most powerful when aimed at specific, actionable, timely policy outcomes. 

There are many policies that contribute to building an equitable economy and society, so in order to focus our power, we have identified three principles to help us prioritize the advocacy campaigns we support. 

We will focus on: 

1. Policies that are directly related to the behaviors we require B Corps to adopt in the B Impact Assessment.

B Corps lead by example. Within the standards, B Lab US and Canada have set forth requirements to help companies meet the definition of a responsible business. We will prioritize policies that create a positive feedback loop between individual company actions to achieve the standard and public policy outcomes that can both make that standard easier to reach and encourage all companies to meet that standard. 

B Corps have immediate standing when advocating for policies that are directly related to the standard. When all B Corps have adopted a particular behavior, B Lab can point to their example, proving it is possible to adopt such a behavior, like paying a living wage, and remain a profitable business. This strengthens our ability to advocate that a similar policy could be a mandate for every business and deliver positive, outsized systems change.

2. Policies where the “business voice” is particularly valued or could constitute a strategic intervention. 

As economic engines for their communities, businesses have an outsized voice in the policymaking process. Yet businesses often remain silent — or speak up in opposition to — policies that will create a more just economic system. 

B Lab seeks to prioritize engaging on policies where the B Corp perspective and our unique business voice can be strategically used. This can take a number of forms: 

• Offering a credible counter to “business as usual.” For example, a commonly cited reason for not instituting policies to mitigate climate change is that these policies would hurt business, particularly small and medium-sized businesses. B Corps can provide a distinct counter-narrative to this rationale and demonstrate why ambitious climate action is necessary to protect businesses from risks.
• Creating the conditions for responsible businesses to thrive. For example, B Lab has led efforts to codify benefit corporations within state corporation law. Or, for example, though it is not covered in the B Impact Assessment, reducing barriers for underserved entrepreneurs is a key part of B Lab’s work and an area where the advocacy of BIPOC-owned and small B Corps will be impactful.
• Speaking to specific business challenges and opportunities.  As an organization that certifies businesses, we believe that our policy agenda must focus on issues that relate to business behavior and business operations. Our constituency and expertise are directly related to the role of business in society. Our role is to focus on how the private sector can be transformed into a force for good and create shared prosperity, not on other areas of rules and laws unrelated to that mission. 

We acknowledge that many important policy issues impact our society that may be left out of this policy agenda because of this determination. Voting rights is a good example of a policy issue that is critical to the protection of our democracy, but that is unrelated to business operations. Applying this principle means that B Lab U.S. & Canada would not engage in policy advocacy related to voting rights. 

3. Policies that grow our power as responsible businesses. 

Today’s political environment is fraught, which makes taking action together all the more necessary and important. However, we aim to take action strategically, constantly assessing risk and opportunity to maximize powerful, positive outcomes and minimize political risks.

We will prioritize our advocacy on issues where there is robust B Corp interest leadership and quality partners who can help enable our and our community’s advocacy efforts. We will strategically approach hot-button issues that might invite undesirable policymaker and media scrutiny and/or inquiry into B Lab U.S. & Canada, weighing carefully the impact of our movement’s voice, the benefits of winning the policy, and the risk that taking action brings to our community. 

Together, we know we can build enduring power for good over time while identifying short term opportunities to drive forward real benefits for workers, communities, and the planet while remaining competitive and resilient.

B Lab’s Agenda Goals 

While the policy agenda below is high-level, it includes broad principles aligned with our new standards and details where B Lab U.S. & Canada will engage in advocacy related to these principles. 

• Realign Business and Investor Decision-Making Incentives and Structures towards Stakeholders, including passing mandatory and voluntary benefit corporation and disclosure statutes, creating incentives that encourage more companies to operate responsibly, and supporting requirements that fiduciaries explicitly integrate Indigenous rights holders’ concerns. 
• Reduce Barriers for Underserved Businesses and Entrepreneurs, including reducing and dismantling barriers to businesses owned by people with historically marginalized identities, including racial minorities, marginalized genders, and sexual orientations, and entrepreneurs operating in impoverished areas. 
• Empower Workers in Corporate Governance, including incentivizing and supporting employee ownership models, expanding workers’ rights and opportunities to organize and unionize, and incentivizing and requiring companies to give workers meaningful governance power.
• Require Fair Wages and Equal Opportunities for All Workers, including implementing a living wage, requiring wage transparency and equal pay enforcement, mandating sick pay and paid time off and other employee benefits, requiring fair hiring practices, and incentivizing and supporting strong, diverse workplaces. 
• Create Sustainable Supply Chains. We support policies that create supply chains that respect human rights and mitigate environmental/climate degradation.
• Ensure a Lasting, Sustainable Economy, including addressing businesses’ outsize contribution to environmental degradation and the climate crisis and supporting a transition to a more sustainable built environment. 

Advocacy Training and Support 

B Lab is here to identify best practices, help B Corps learn from their peers, and build a movement powered by businesses acting together through the B Corp movement.

In developing this agenda, it is meant to be a living guide to taking concrete actions. 

Working with B Corps and B Locals, B Lab is ready to support businesses in meeting their GACA standard and in advocating for the structural policy changes needed to create a more just and equitable economy. 

With headwinds at the Federal level, B Lab has been developing partnerships and tools to help businesses unlock progress at the state level. Companies have the opportunity to both contribute to defending past policy progress at the Federal level, and in building new momentum in the states. 

In state legislatures and governors’ offices, problem solvers are seeking solutions the toughest challenges their constituents are facing, such as access to good jobs, inequality, environmental degradation, and barriers to entrepreneurship. 

B Lab U.S. & Canada believes that policy and regulatory change is necessary to build a more inclusive, equitable, and regenerative economy. B Lab is working to provide the network and tools to effectively engage in public policy debates, including a toolkit on best advocacy practices for state policy campaigns. 

You’ve built your business around a commitment to stakeholder value and social responsibility. This policy agenda will help us move from leading by example, to delivering the structural and systemic changes needed to create a truly just and equitable economy.