Process & Requirements
The Process: What To Expect & How To Prepare
- The B Impact Assessment will be your main tool for B Corp Certification.
- Many people at your company will likely need to be involved to collect information for the B Impact Assessment. Learn how to add your team members to the B Impact Assessment.
- Expect the process to take at least 12 months. There are ways to make sure you’re ready for each stage of the process and anticipate what you need. To help, we’ve created a few B Corp Certification readiness guides.
- Use this checklist to make sure you’re ready. If you scored between 80 and 85 points, we recommend reviewing this resource.
- For more information on how to choose a track in the B Impact Assessment, please see use this guide. If your company has been operating fewer than 12 months, please refer to our Pending B page. If your company has one or more complex structures (e.g. having operations in more than one country or revenue over $100MM) visit this page for more certification information.
- In order to become a Certified B Corporation, eligible companies must submit their assessment to B Lab for verification and pay relevant fees throughout the certification process. To remain a Certified B Corp year after year, a B Corp must also pay an annual certification fee. Learn more about our fees.
Requirements
Verify Your Social & Environmental Performance Every Three Years
Complete the B Impact Assessment, achieve a verified score of 80 points or more, and pass the disclosure questionnaire review.
The verification process will happen after you have submitted your assessment.
Mission Lock Your Company
Your company must adopt a legal framework that accounts for all stakeholders. This varies by country and state/province. Please use our legal requirement tool to determine the right path for your company.
Embrace Transparency
Publish your B Impact Report in our B Corp Directory. This will be done as a final step right before certification.
Pay Your Annual Fee
You are expected to recertify your company every three years, but you must pay an annual fee based on your gross revenue. See our fee structure for more details.
B Corps must recertify every three years. For more information, please see our guide to recertification.
Verify Your Social & Environmental Performance Every Three Years
Complete the B Impact Assessment, achieve a verified score of 80 points or more, and pass the disclosure questionnaire review.
The verification process will happen after you have submitted your assessment.
Mission Lock Your Company
Your company must adopt a legal framework that accounts for all stakeholders. This varies by country and state/province. Please use our legal requirement tool to determine the right path for your company.
Embrace Transparency
Publish your B Impact Report in our B Corp Directory. This will be done as a final step right before certification.
Pay Your Annual Fee
You are expected to recertify your company every three years, but you must pay an annual fee based on your gross revenue. See our fee structure for more details.
B Corps must recertify every three years. For more information, please see our guide to recertification.
Timeline
Before you certify, here are some of the steps your company should follow:
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1 Understand the Business Case for B Corp Certification and the Legal Requirement
Learn more about the value of certifying and amending your legal documents with the B Corp Legal Framework.
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2 Create a Team
Rally people from across your company, including Legal, Human Resources, Procurement, Facilities & Leadership. Once they get on board, the process for collecting information for the assessment will be more efficient.
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3 Complete the B Impact Assessment
Use the bookmark feature to save questions to come back to later to update. Collect any missing answers from your team and identify opportunities for improvement.
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4 Submit for Verification
Once you’ve reached at least 80 points on the B Impact Assessment, submit your assessment for review. A one-time non-refundable fee is due at the time of submission. See our fee table for more details. And see our submission fee FAQ to learn more.
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5 Reach Out
If your company is over $100M USD in annual revenue, please read through this page on how to certify companies with complex structures and reach out to certify@bcorporation.net before submitting your assessment.
What To Expect During the Review Process
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1 Certification Readiness
After submitting your B Impact Assessment, make sure all of your documentation is available and ready to share with our team. During this time you can also learn more about ways to engage with the B Corp community through our articles & resources.
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2 Evaluation
In this step, an Evaluation Analyst will confirm your company’s business operations and Impact Business Model points and track.
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3 Verification
A Verification Analyst will then verify additional questions through documentation and by engaging your team directly. At this point, your score may change and that’s okay!
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4 Sign the B Corp Agreement
Your team will then sign our B Corp agreement and the Declaration of Interdependence and pay the first year of annual certification fees. View our fee structure.
B Corp Declaration of Interdependence
We envision a global economy that uses business as a force for good. This economy is comprised of a new type of corporation – the B Corporation – which is purpose-driven and creates benefit for all stakeholders, not just shareholders.
As Certified B Corporations and leaders of this emerging economy, we believe:
- That we must be the change we seek in the world.
- That all business ought to be conducted as if people and place mattered.
- That, through their products, practices, and profits, businesses should aspire to do no harm and benefit all.
- To do so requires that we act with the understanding that we are each dependent upon another and thus responsible for each other and future generations.