Boboto: being a Benefit Corporation

Boboto is an innovative company which has always been committed to the principles of the Benefit Corporation (B-Corp), those for-profit corporate entities which voluntarily set themselves objectives in the areas of social impact, sustainability and transparency and aim to positively affect society and the environment.  Benefit Corporations are therefore companies whose end goal is not simply profit, but rather their profit must have an impact in terms of public benefit.

To become a Benefit Corporation a company needs to meet certifiable and measurable requirements in terms of:

• Governance (system of values and transparency)
• People (relationships, integration, employee ethics)
• Community impact (suppliers, clients, local community)
• Environmental impact

These requisites must be certified and proven every year by means of an annual report whereby a company illustrates the ways in which it has operated in order to achieve public benefit, and this document must be attached to the company accounts. The report must consider: the description of the specified objectives of public benefit which the administrators intended to achieve, as well as the manner and procedures by which they plan to operate; the reasons for which the pursuance of public benefit has been slowed down, impeded or limited; the estimate of social impact reached; the new goals which the company hopes to reach in the course of the following year.

Boboto and the principals of B-Corp

Boboto chose to become a Benefit Corporation because it sets itself the objective of having a positive impact on society and on the biosphere, setting itself apart in its market, unlike other types of company, by means of a fair and innovative legal status.  To be a B-corp means to guarantee the assumption of responsibility and transparency towards one’s employees, shareholders and entire community.

Since our foundation we have been committed to the B-CORP “Declaration of Interdependence” which urges every company to create a “new economic sector, which uses the strengths of businesses to everyone’s benefit”. It urges us to be “the change that we seek in the world”, encouraging all existing businesses to “be managed to as to create wealth for people and the planet”. To put all of this into practice “we should understand that we are each dependent on another and thus responsible for each other and future generations”.

Since its first steps, Boboto became a for-profit company which was able to put sustainability and wellbeing at the centre of its values and its charter. The non-profit spirit contaminates the enterprise, which in this case pushes itself far beyond the renowned concepts of cooperation and social responsibility.

Beginning with the South of Italy, Boboto wants to be an entity and a presence which is able to demonstrate the need to return to a participatory society and yet not betray the original purpose for which it made the decision to go into business: being a sound part of a complex system whilst maintaining one’s own financial independence. 

The B-Corp regulatory overview

"Use business as a force for good”. This is the payoff of the Benefit Corporation which Robert J. Shiller, Nobel for Economic Sciences 2013, defines as: “companies that have a dual purpose and will have better economic performance than all other companies”.

The global movement of B-Corp entrepreneurs and businesses was founded in 2006 in order to spread a more evolved and restorative standard of business which is essential in order to face the great challenges of our times.

B-Corps are operating in over 50 countries and Italy has a starring role: last October it was rewarded by B-Lab, the organisation which coordinates the global movement, both for the increase of B-Corp certificates, currently over 40, and for having being the first in the world to introduce the legal status of Social Benefit with the approval of the Stability Law.

The Benefit Corporations are companies that have a dual purpose and will have better economic performance than all other companies

Robert Shiller - Nobel prize for Economic Sciences