AbilityFirst is a Southern California nonprofit serving people with developmental disabilities.   They came to La Piana Consulting at the height of the Great Recession in 2009 in order to think about strategies for responding to economic change.  Our Real-Time Strategic Planning (RTSP) process was a perfect fit for their needs because they wanted to know how to make good decisions in the face of change, and RTSP focuses on creating a Strategy Screen—or list of criteria—to guide decision making.

The challenge: the state of California provided approximately 50% of AbilityFirst’s funding either directly or indirectly—and the state was in the throes of a major budget crisis.  The last state budget process had resulted in significant cuts to state funded services, and the prospect for additional major cuts in coming years was certain.  AbilityFirst knew they had to be prepared to survive these cuts.

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Yesterday brought some exciting news for California – Governor Brown signed into law what was Assembly Bill 361, putting into place a new form of corporate entity: the Benefit Corporation.

Traditional corporations are legally bound to put profit maximization ahead of other goals. If they don’t, shareholders may sue. Benefit corporations operate under a broader definition of success – one that includes material positive impact on society and the environment. Specifically, benefit corporations must: 1) have a corporate purpose to create a material positive impact on society and the environment; 2) redefine fiduciary duty to require consideration of the interests of employees, community and the environment when making decision; and 3) publicly report annually on its overall social and environmental performance using a comprehensive, credible, independent, and transparent third party standard.

Vermont and Maryland were the first states to enact benefit corporation legislation, in 2010. New Jersey, Virginia and Hawaii followed earlier this year. New York is poised to become the seventh state to join the movement, and similar legislation has been introduced in Colorado, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and North Carolina.

Entrepreneurs with a desire to advance a social or environmental mission while generating value for shareholders now have another concrete tool for doing so. It isn’t the only tool – B Corp status is another way for a for-profit corporation to signal its intention to prioritize social and environmental benefit along with the creation of shareholder value. B Lab, the nonprofit organization that certifies B Corporations, was one of the sponsors of the California’s benefit corporation legislation.

Like many, we’re still following the evolution of the L3C (low-profit limited liability company), a corporate form just a little over three years old. Over the course of those three years nine states and two federal jurisdictions have enacted L3C laws, and according to a recent tally by interSector Partners, there are now 488 L3Cs organized across the country. The L3c movement has not progressed without controversy, but much of that has focused on the usefulness (or not) of the L3C in paving the way for foundations to fund for-profit entities via program-related investments (PRIs). A 2010 research study indicated that the ability to pursue PRI’s wasn’t, in fact, the primary motivator for most early L3C founders – that the appeal lay more in the ability to create “a for profit with a nonprofit soul.”

Time will tell which corporate form – or forms – will truly take off. For now, I’m just excited that there are an increasing number of options. May the momentum continue.