Legacy Vacation Club is currently pursuing B Corp certification. I wrote about the company’s Sustainability and Social Responsibility Specialist earlier this year. For those of you not familiar with the program, Certified B Corporations are businesses that meet the highest standards of verified social and environmental performance, public transparency, and legal accountability to balance profit and purpose. The B Corp movement is 12 years old and certification is administered by Standards Analysts at the nonprofit B Lab. Standards Analysts are located at B Lab’s Pennsylvania, New York, and Amsterdam offices. The standards for B Corp Certification are overseen by B Lab’s independent Standards Advisory Council. Companies are rated on how they treat workers and customers, community involvement, governance and the environment. There are currently over 2,500 Certified B Corporations in more than 50 countries. The B Corp community reflects the world’s business landscape, ranging from sole proprietors to publicly-traded companies. The majority of the 2,500+ B Corps are small businesses.
B Corp Certification doesn’t just prove where a company excels now—it commits a company to consider stakeholder impact for the long term by building it into its legal structure.
Each year B Lab releases lists of the Certified B Corps with scores in the top 10 percent of the community, broken down by size and impact area, called the Best for the World Lists. To access the 2018 list, click here. I did a check of the top 10 percent and could not find any recognizable lodging companies. Perhaps Legacy Vacation Club will be the first B Corps in our industry?
There is an annual fee to be a B Corp. The fees are based on company size. A large company with more than $1 billion in annual sales must pay more than $50,000. Small businesses with $149,000 or less in annual sales: $500.
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