The B Corp certification process

The B Impact Assessment and B Corp certification

The B Impact Assessment is the most credible tool a company can use to measure its impact on its workers, community, environment and customers. The assessment is free and confidential, you can add multiple team members, set goals and compare your answers to thousands of other businesses.

Certifying as a B Corporation goes beyond a product or service certification. It is the only certification that measures a company’s entire social and environmental performance. From your supply chain and input materials to your charitable giving and employee benefits, B Corp Certification proves your business is meeting the highest standards of verified performance.

Positive impact is supported by transparency and accountability requirements. B Corp Certification doesn’t just prove where your company excels now—it commits you to consider your impact on stakeholders now and in the future by building it into your company’s legal structure.

START THE B IMPACT ASSESSMENT

Why Companies Certify

B Corps set the gold standard for good business and inspire a race to the top, creating performance standards and legal structures being used by thousands of other businesses around the world.

Rose Marcario

The B Corp movement is one of the most important of our lifetime, built on the simple fact that business impacts and serves more than just shareholders -- it has an equal responsibility to the community and to the planet.

Logo for Patagonia Works - Rose Marcario, CEO, Patagonia Works

When your company certifies as a B Corporation, you join a community of business leaders who share your belief that business can solve social and environmental problems. Connect online, meet in person at events, or build client and vendor relationships within a powerful community of practice.

Having physical and digital connections with others on the same journey is invaluable for the learning and support needed to increase speed and impact. For 30 years as an activist business under our belt, we’ve searched hard and without success to find a network with similar bold aspiration and willingness to help and share. When we certified as a B Corp, we knew we’d found the people we’d been looking for; nothing else comes close.

Logo for TYF Adventure - Andy Middleton, Founder, TYF Adventure

More and more of the workforce makes decisions about where to work based on the positive impact their work creates and how well an employer treats their team. There’s no better way to attract and engage mission-aligned talent than to verify your values with B Corp Certification.

The team was really excited and proud when we became certified and many new joiners say that our B Corp certification is one of the things that they liked about us when hunting for jobs.

Logo for Lily's Kitchen - Henrietta Morrison, Founder, Lily's Kitchen

Maintaining B Corp Certification through the B Impact Assessment is a powerful mechanism to help your company set goals for improvement, create more positive social and environmental impact, and track performance over time.

The third-party validation that comes with B Corp Certification helps your company stand out and stand by your mission. The B Corp seal on a product, website, sales materials or business card instantly communicates that a company is a verified leader when it comes to positive impact and empowers individuals to confidently vote with their dollars.

Andrea Walker

Aligning our company with B Lab and this powerful movement has been incredibly rewarding. As a bank, we often get perceived as a company that makes profits at the expense of people and the planet, but this certification has helped us differentiate ourselves and show how we are doing the exact opposite. It's provided a credible basis to tell our story of how we are dedicated to healing the banking system for good.

Logo for Beneficial State Bank - Andrea Walker, Beneficial State Bank

Make sure your company is built on a solid legal foundation for the long term. The B Corp legal framework helps you protect your mission through capital raises and leadership changes and gives you more flexibility when evaluating potential sale and liquidity options.

Certification Requirements

Note: The Certification process and requirements may differ based on size and structure. Please be sure to review the process and requirements below that best correspond to your company's size and structure.

COMPLETE THE ASSESSMENT

Used by over 50,000 businesses, the B Impact Assessment (BIA) is a free, online platform that evaluates how your company interacts with your workers, customers, community, and environment. Complete and submit the BIA to begin the performance requirement of certification.

MEET THE LEGAL REQUIREMENTS

Use our Legal Requirement Tool to determine how your company can integrate stakeholder consideration into your governance structure. Your company's specific legal requirement and timeline will depend on location and structure.

VERIFICATION & TRANSPARENCY

After completing the BIA, B Lab will verify your score to determine if your company meets the 80-point bar for certification. Meet virtually with B Lab staff to review your completed B Impact Assessment and submit confidential documentation to validate your responses. To maintain certification, B Corps update their BIA and verify their updated score every three years.

Get all the details on how to meet the requirements for B Corp Certification.

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SIGN AGREEMENT AND PAY ANNUAL FEES

To finalize certification, sign the B Corp Declaration of Interdependence, sign your B Corp Agreement, and pay your annual certification fees. Find your B Corp Agreement.

Annual Sales Annual Certification Fee
£0 - £149,999 £500
£150,000 - £1,999,999 £1,000
£2,000,000 - £4,999,999 £1,500
£5,000,000 - £9,999,999 £2,500
£10,000,000 - £19,999,999 £5,000
£20,000,000 - £49,999,999 £10,000
£50,000,000 - £74,999,999 £15,000
£75,000,000 - £99,999,999 £20,000
£100,000,000 - £249,999,999 £25,000
£250,000,000 - £499,999,999 £30,000
£500,000,000 - £749,999,999 £37,500
£750,000,000 - £999,999,999 £45,000
£1 B+ £50,000+, depending on the structure of the company

*Fees for companies outside the USA and Canada may vary and are paid in their local currency. Contact B Lab with specific questions.

DOWNLOAD THE COMPLETE GUIDE

From articulating the business case for Certification and engaging your leadership team to completing the B Impact Assessment and meeting the legal requirement, the guides below are perfect starting place for your company. Based on your company size, download our best practice guides below.

Large Company GUIDEfile_download
SMall/MedIUM Company GUIDEfile_download

Does Your Company Fall into One of These Categories?

B Corp Certification comes with additional considerations for certain businesses.

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Companies with less than one year of operations

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LARGE COMPANIES

Companies that are publicly-traded or have between $100M and $4.9B USD in annual revenues

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LARGE MULTINATIONAL AND PARENT COMPANIES

Parent companies that have over $5B USD in annual revenue

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RELATED ENTITIES
 

Parent companies, subsidiaries, franchises, and other affiliated entities

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Ready to Get Started?

Register for the B Impact Assessment and start answering your questions about your company's operations and business model. Along the way, you'll be able to set goals for improvement, compare your performance to similar companies, and learn best practices pulled straight from the Certified B Corp community.

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B Impact Assessment

More Questions?

B Corp Certification is based in part on a company's verified performance on the B Impact Assessment, which asks questions about a company's past fiscal year. This means that companies with less than one year of operations are not yet eligible for B Corp Certification. Instead, they may pursue Pending B Corp status, designed to set a start-up on the path to full Certification.

Access to the B Impact Assessment is free. Certified B Corporations pay an annual certification fee, which licenses them to use intellectual property like the Certified B Corp logo. This fee starts as low as £500  for certified B Corps and scales based on a company's revenue. If you have been operating for less than a year, you can become a Pending B Corp which is £250. You can see the full pricing schedule on the Certification page.

The time involved largely depends on the size and complexity (number of operating locations) of your company. For most small businesses, it can take a couple of weeks to complete a rough baseline. For larger or more complex companies, it can take several weeks or months. For your convenience the assessment can be saved and revisited at any time to allow for easy access. The time it takes for a company to submit its application, will depend on its initial baseline score and whether a period of improvement is required to reach 80 points. We recommend expecting up to 6 months for the verification process, however this can be longer or shorter depending on whether your score drops below 80 points during the review.

Companies and other business forms wishing to become B Corps in the UK must meet a legal accountability requirement to maintain their certification, and will need to amend their governing documents to include a commitment to a ‘triple bottom line’ approach to business. In practice, for a typical business, this means amending the company’s Articles of Association to state that the company exists to promote the success of the business for the benefit not only of its shareholders, but also to have a material positive impact on society and the environment.

The governing documents of B Corps will need to state the company’s commitment to consider a range of ‘stakeholder interests’ – including shareholders, employees, suppliers, society and the environment – when making decisions and, critically, that shareholder value is not the supreme consideration but is one factor amongst the many stakeholder interests.

Your company's legal requirement will vary based on your location and structure. For companies looking to certify as a B Corp in the UK, this guide outlines the steps for amending your governing documents to include the B Corp legal language verbatim (the “Legal Test”). If you are outside of the UK please use our Legal Requirement tool.

In order to become a certified B Corp, companies are required to:

1. Achieve a score of at least 80 points on the B Impact Assessment and submit it for review. The assessment is verified by our independent Standards Management Team and companies will be asked to provide documentation and other evidence to support and verify answers. 

2. Meet the B Corp Legal requirement to amend the company’s Articles of Association, making a commitment to consider all stakeholders in the company's decision-making, not just shareholders. Use this legal requirement tool to find out how to meet the legal requirement. 

3. Pay the certification fee. There is an annual certification fee to become a B Corp, based on a company’s revenue.

All B Corps and Pending B Corps are required to amend their constitutional documents to include the B Corp legal language. Companies should seek to meet the B Corp legal requirement before or as part of their certification.

We appreciate that this can be a time-consuming process, and there are some exceptions for larger companies that may require more time to complete the necessary approvals. If you are unsure about the appropriate approach for your organisation, please contact certification@bcorporation.uk.

Yes - you will receive questions that are tailored to the size (number of employees) and type (sector) of business when you register on the B Impact Assessment. Please indicate the appropriate number of employees at this time, so that we can provide you with the most appropriate assessment.

We encourage companies to involve anyone that is interested, regardless of their title or time with the company. We recommend appointing one person as a lead; this individual typically completes a first draft of the assessment and then convenes a supporting team to assist. The size and composition of the team may vary depending on the size and structure of your company, however the most common profiles include CEOs, CFOs, HR Managers, COOs, Finance, Sustainability, Supply Chain, Procurement, and Interns.

The past twelve months or trailing twelve months is the recommended reporting period. We recommend using the 12-month period that most closely reflects the company’s operations as of today but is easy for your company to report consistently on. As a result, if using the last Fiscal Year is easier, we would encourage your company to use this period.

There are a number of different ways you can access support with the B Impact Assessment:

  • The Improvement Report on the B Impact Assessment is a valuable tool and you can find out how it works here. The Improvement Report provides recommendations for how to improve your impact based on your current responses to specific questions on the assessment. Many companies actively use this as an improvement tool to increase their score over time.
     

  • The Knowledge Base hosts useful articles to guide businesses through the assessment and certification process.
     

  • If you require hands-on support to improve your score, B Lab UK trains experienced sustainability professionals in the B Corp certification process and impact measurement framework. These ‘B Leaders’ form a group of external consultants that can support companies through their certification. There are costs to working with these consultants but if that is of interest, you can find out more about B Leaders here and search, filter and contact those consultants that may be most appropriate for you

B Lab recognises that measuring environmental impact will look different in different companies. The majority of the topics assessed in the Environment section (such as energy usage or travel) still apply for virtual businesses. It might be difficult to collate this information if your employees work from home, or in a shared office space. However, the intent is to meaningfully measure and assess the impact of the space your employees use regardless of whether they are company sanctioned or not.

We typically recommend answering affirmatively to questions that are true for a majority of your employees. For example, if a majority of your employees recycle at home, please select “Yes” for that question. You could also ask your workers to report on their monthly energy and water usage and take an average across your employees.

To submit your assessment, go into the B Impact Assessment website and navigate to ‘B Corporation Certification’ then ‘Summary’. Here you will see any outstanding actions you need to complete in order to submit. Once the required actions have been completed, the padlock will turn into a submit button. Find out more here.

FAQ