10 public benefit corporations tied to U.S. stock market listings

A publicly traded company usually answers to one central question from its shareholders: is it making money? A public benefit corporation, or PBC, has to answer a second question too. Its charter names a specific public benefit, and its directors are legally bound to pursue that benefit alongside profit. That dual obligation does not disappear when the company sells shares on a stock exchange.

The PBC is a for-profit corporate form, not a charity or a nonprofit. It raises capital, pays employees and seeks returns for investors like any other corporation. What changes is the legal standard its board works under. Directors cannot treat shareholder value as the only goal. They must also account for the specific public benefit written into the charter.

The legal framework dates to 2010. Maryland passed the first U.S. benefit corporation statute that year. Delaware added PBC provisions to its General Corporation Law in 2013. Several companies in this list are Delaware PBCs. Their boards answer to that state's version of the rules.

A PBC is also easy to confuse with a B Corp. The two are different. PBC status is a legal structure chosen under state corporate law. B Corp certification is a private credential issued by the nonprofit B Lab. A company can hold one without the other, and several of the companies below hold both.

This article covers a selection of 10 public benefit corporations tied to U.S. stock listings. It is not a ranking or a complete list. The companies span insurance, eyewear, footwear, online learning, food, higher education, life sciences software, jewelry, residential solar and banking. They also show different routes to the same status. Veeva Systems converted to a PBC after its 2013 listing. At Amalgamated, the PBC is the bank, while its parent holding company is the one that went public.

Each slide covers one company: what it sells, when it went public and how its PBC status fits its business. Each one also explains a different part of how the structure works, from the B Corp distinction to the duties of directors.

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Lemonade is an insurance company organized as a Delaware public benefit corporation, and it is also a Certified B Corp. It went public on the New York Stock Exchange in July 2020.

The company sells renters, home and pet insurance through an app.

Its Giveback program links the insurance business to charitable giving. Part of the premium money that goes unclaimed is sent to charities. Customers choose which charities receive it. That places part of the company's social commitment inside the product, not only in its corporate documents.

Lemonade carries two labels, and they come from different places. Its PBC status is a legal form adopted under Delaware corporate law. The public benefit it pursues is named in its charter. That status changes the standard its board works under, and the company remains a for-profit business.

Its B Corp certification comes from B Lab. It is a credential, not a corporate structure. Earning it does not change how Lemonade is incorporated or what its charter says.

The difference shows up in where each commitment lives. The PBC duty sits in the company's governing documents. Its directors must weigh that duty alongside stockholders' financial interests. The certification sits outside the company. An independent nonprofit grants it, not a state legislature.

For a company with publicly traded shares, holding both gives investors two separate signals. One rests on corporate law. The other rests on an outside organization's assessment. Neither replaces the other, and Lemonade holds both as a listed company.

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Warby Parker, the eyeglasses and sunglasses retailer, is a public benefit corporation that became a public company through a direct listing on the NYSE in September 2021. Its Buy a Pair, Give a Pair program supplies glasses through nonprofit partners.

Customers can buy its frames online or in stores that Warby Parker runs itself. The company also holds Certified B Corp status, a credential separate from its PBC charter.

The program links the retail business to a charitable aim. Nonprofit partners, not Warby Parker's retail channels, handle distribution of the glasses.

Warby Parker's route to the NYSE differed from a standard initial public offering. In a traditional IPO, a company issues new shares and sells them to investors. Investment banks usually act as underwriters and help set the offering price before trading begins.

A direct listing skips that step. Shares already held by founders, employees and early investors become available to trade on the exchange. No underwriter buys a block of stock in advance to resell. The exchange typically publishes a reference price beforehand, but it is not an offering price. Buy and sell orders on the first day determine the opening price.

The structure has two practical effects. A standard direct listing raises no new money for the company. The company sells no new shares in the process. Existing holders can also sell on the first day of trading. They do not have to wait out the lockup period that often follows an IPO.

An IPO lockup is an agreement between underwriters and insiders that bars those insiders from selling for a set time. That period often lasts 180 days.

The word standard matters here. NYSE rules also allow a primary direct listing, a variant in which the company sells new shares at the opening auction.

Choosing a direct listing did not change Warby Parker's legal status. Shareholders who bought in after September 2021 acquired stock in a company whose charter names a public benefit alongside profit.

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Allbirds is a public benefit corporation that makes shoes and apparel from materials such as merino wool and tree fiber. It is also a Certified B Corp, and it held its initial public offering on Nasdaq $NDAQ in November 2021.

The company's products are defined by their inputs. Merino wool comes from merino sheep, a breed raised for its fine fleece. Tree fiber is a textile made from wood pulp. It is a plant-based material, unlike polyester and nylon, which are made from petroleum.

Allbirds also publishes a carbon footprint figure for its products. A product carbon footprint estimates the greenhouse gas emissions tied to an item, from sourcing materials through manufacturing and shipping. It is usually expressed in kilograms of carbon dioxide equivalent. The label works much as a nutrition label does on packaged food. A shopper comparing two pairs of shoes can weigh that measure alongside price and fit.

That disclosure is a company practice. Allbirds' legal duty as a PBC works differently. A public benefit corporation records its stated public benefit in its charter, the founding document a corporation files with the state. The benefit is not a slogan on a website. It is part of the legal text that defines the company's purpose.

Environmental goals are one of the recognized types of public benefit. Delaware's PBC statute, for example, names environmental benefits among its listed categories, along with charitable, educational and scientific ones.

Placing the benefit in the charter changes how board decisions are judged. Directors must weigh the named benefit as one part of the balancing duty that state law sets for PBC boards.

For a brand that promotes its materials and its carbon figures, the charter is where a public benefit gains legal weight. Amending a charter generally requires a board resolution and a stockholder vote. That process makes a written benefit harder to drop than a marketing campaign or a sustainability web page.

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Coursera runs an online learning platform that offers courses and degrees from universities and companies. It is a Delaware public benefit corporation and a Certified B Corp, and it went public on the New York Stock Exchange in March 2021.

The courses and degree programs on the platform come from outside institutions. Universities and companies supply the material. Coursera provides the online system that delivers it to learners.

Coursera's PBC status rests on Delaware law. The state's public benefit corporation provisions sit inside its General Corporation Law, the main statute for corporations formed in Delaware.

That placement shapes what the status means for a listed company. A Delaware PBC is still a for-profit corporation organized under the state's main corporate code. What sets it apart is its charter. The charter names a specific public benefit the company is legally bound to pursue.

For Coursera's stockholders, the practical result is a board that operates under Delaware's PBC rules. Those rules require directors to weigh the charter's stated benefit alongside financial returns when they make decisions.

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Vital Farms is a food company based in Austin, Texas, that sells pasture-raised eggs and butter. It is a public benefit corporation and a Certified B Corp, and it went public on Nasdaq $NDAQ in August 2020.

Vital Farms' business shows how wide the group of people affected by a company's conduct can be. As a PBC, its board must weigh that group, not only the stockholders who own its shares.

In a food supply business, that circle starts with the farms that produce what the company sells. It extends to the workers who handle, pack and ship products. It reaches the grocery stores that stock them and the shoppers who put them in a cart.

The circle can also take in the communities near those farms. Those residents may never buy an egg from the company. They still live with the land use, traffic and local jobs that come with nearby agriculture.

Each of those groups has a different stake in how the company operates. A supplier's interest may center on the terms of its contract. A worker's may center on pay, safety and hours. A shopper's may center on whether a product matches what its label describes.

Labels carry weight in this category. A term such as pasture-raised describes how food was produced. A shopper reading it at the shelf has no direct way to check the farm behind it. That gap means the shopper relies on the company's own description.

An initial public offering opens ownership to outside investors who buy shares on an exchange. Vital Farms' August 2020 offering added those public stockholders to the interests its board weighs.

The PBC structure does not tell a board how to resolve a conflict among these groups in any single decision. It gives directors a legal basis to weigh them alongside financial returns.

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Laureate Education is a Delaware public benefit corporation that operates universities outside the U.S. It listed on Nasdaq $NDAQ in February 2017.

The company is also a Certified B Corp, a credential separate from the PBC status written into its charter.

As a Delaware PBC, Laureate is subject to the state's rules on what a benefit corporation board owes and to whom. Its universities sit outside the U.S., but those duties come from Delaware law. The state where the company is organized, not where its campuses are, sets the standard for its directors.

Those rules require directors to balance three interests. The first is the financial interest of the company's stockholders. The second is the interest of people materially affected by the company's conduct. The third is the specific public benefit named in the company's charter.

A conventional Delaware corporation has no charter-named public benefit for its board to weigh. That third interest is specific to the PBC form.

For a company that has sold shares to the public, the stockholder group extends beyond founders and early backers. It includes outside investors who bought in after the listing.

The second group looks different for a university operator than for a retailer or a software maker. Students are the most direct example. Faculty, staff and students' families are also affected by decisions about how the institutions are run. For Laureate, these people are largely outside the U.S., in the countries where its universities operate.

The word "materially" narrows that group. It points to people whose interests the company's decisions touch in a real way, not everyone with a passing connection.

The balancing duty does not tell directors how much weight each interest should receive in a given decision. It requires that all three be part of the board's consideration. A choice that served stockholders while ignoring students or the charter's stated benefit would leave out part of what the law asks the board to weigh.

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Veeva Systems adopted public benefit corporation status after it was already a listed company. The cloud software maker went public on the New York Stock Exchange in October 2013. Its conversion to a PBC took effect in 2021.

Veeva is based in Pleasanton, California. It builds cloud software for the life sciences industry. Life sciences covers fields such as pharmaceuticals and biotechnology.

A company can write a public benefit into its charter before outside investors buy its shares. Veeva took the reverse route. It entered the public market as a conventional corporation. The change to its legal status took effect eight calendar years after its listing.

For the years between its 2013 listing and its 2021 conversion, Veeva's board worked under the conventional corporate standard. The PBC framework arrived partway through its life on the stock market, not at its start.

The conversion did not alter Veeva's standing as a for-profit business. It added a named public benefit to the charter and a board duty to pursue that benefit alongside profit.

For a company that is already public, the switch changes the rules for its board after shareholders have bought in. From the effective date, directors must weigh the named benefit alongside stockholders' financial interests.

The conversion divides Veeva's shareholders by timing. Investors who held stock before 2021 bought into a conventional corporation that later became a PBC. Investors who bought after the conversion took effect acquired shares in a company whose charter already named a public benefit.

Shareholders from both periods who still hold stock own the same shares under the same charter. The difference lies in what the company's legal structure was when each made the decision to buy.

PBC status is therefore not tied only to a company's founding or its stock market debut. A business with years of public trading behind it can still adopt the structure.

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Brilliant Earth is a San Francisco company that sells jewelry, including engagement rings. It is a public benefit corporation and a Certified B Corp, and it listed on Nasdaq $NDAQ in September 2021.

Its PBC status gives shareholders specific information before they buy. The company's charter names a public benefit that the business must pursue. Profit remains a goal, but it is not the only goal written into the company's founding documents.

That disclosure sets expectations at the point of purchase. A conventional corporation is organized around financial returns to its owners. A PBC tells its owners up front that directors will weigh the stated benefit alongside those returns. Anyone who buys Brilliant Earth shares takes on that arrangement as part of owning the stock.

The commitment lives in the charter rather than in a marketing pledge. A purpose written into the corporate charter is part of the legal framework the board operates under.

Brilliant Earth's B Corp certification is a separate layer. It comes from the nonprofit B Lab, an outside certifier, rather than from the company's charter.

The September 2021 listing placed the company among several public benefit corporations that went public that year. Warby Parker reached the NYSE through a direct listing that same month. Coursera went public on the NYSE in March 2021. Allbirds held its Nasdaq IPO in November 2021. Of the 10 companies in this selection, four listed during 2021.

For a jewelry seller, the structure means the charter's stated benefit is part of the governance that stockholders take on. It sits alongside the company's commercial business in engagement rings and other jewelry.

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Sunrun is a San Francisco-based company that installs and finances solar power and battery systems for homes, and it operates as a public benefit corporation. It went public in August 2015.

The business has two parts. The first is installation: putting solar panels on a home and, where a customer wants one, adding a battery. The second is finance. Paying cash for a home solar system is a large outlay for many households. Financing the equipment lowers that barrier for buyers who cannot cover the cost up front.

Solar panels and batteries do different jobs. Panels turn sunlight into electricity while the sun is up. A battery stores electricity so a household can draw on it later, such as in the evening or during a grid outage.

Sunrun shows that PBC status can stand on its own. Its standing as a PBC comes from its corporate charter, adopted under state corporate law. No outside certifier has to sign off on that choice. No private assessment can grant or remove it either.

That separation has a practical effect for investors. A reference to PBC status in a company filing describes how the company is legally organized and what its board must weigh. A B Corp logo reports the outcome of an assessment by B Lab. Neither one confirms the other. A reader checking a company's status has to look for each one separately.

The two also place accountability in different hands. A PBC's commitment lives in its own charter and shapes how its board makes decisions. A certification depends on standards set and applied by a private organization.

For Sunrun, the legal form ties a stated public benefit to a business built around home energy. Its directors must weigh that benefit alongside returns to shareholders rather than looking at profit alone. That duty covers the whole company, including its financing business, not just its installation work.