Thanks Robin, the point you make about couchsurfing being a "corporation" - albeit with a B "certification" - and not a "benefit corporation", does make a big difference indeed, so much so I feel like underlining it - quoting from the article you mention : * * * http://charitylawyerblog.com/2011/01/15/b-corps-is-not-a-new-legal-form-by-k... * * * *"The key difference is that the law requires a third party assessment** ( for a "Benefit Corporation"),* *whereas B Corps is - only - * *a certification." * ... "Why the difference is significant: • One can be a B Corps and yet be incorporated legally as a C corporation, an LLC, even a sole proprietorship. In other words, *a company can be certified as a B Corps without ever incorporating as a benefit corporation* • One can be a benefit corporation under Maryland law without being a B Corps. The Maryland law does not require that benefit corporations be certified as B Corps. Rather, it requires that benefit corporations’ social and environmental performance be assessed by an independent third party that makes publicly available or accessible the following information: 1. The factors considered when measuring the performance of a business; 2. The relative weightings of those factors; and 3. The identity of the persons who developed and control changes to the standard and the process by which those changes were made." On Tue, Sep 6, 2011 at 7:28 PM, robin <[email protected]> wrote:
On Thu, Sep 1, 2011 at 6:01 PM, Michel Bauwens < [email protected]> wrote:
thanks Robin ...
in theory, a B Corporation is not such a bad thing, no, as it is and remains dedicated to a social good?
I don't know. I haven't researched much into this B-corp thing.
Though there is something interesting here in my opinion, which is that CS will be employee-owned. But how this will relate to voting-power we don't know yet.
The employees will have more voting power than the two investors, but how the division will be and how much they can vote for (if it is only the board or example) is publicly unkown.
And we don't know either how the shares are distributed among the employees (equally among employees or not, etc).
As always has been the case with Couchsurfing, there is more we don't know than what we do know :s
The 5-year sage of Couchsurfing purposely misinforming the community continues: Couchsurfing: "This structure legally allows us to put our ideals before our profits." (try to read that sentence again).
And yet Couchsurfing is not even a registered Benefit Corp (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bcorp), but still a normal C-corporation
http://www.bcorporation.net/index.cfm/fuseaction/company.report/ID/5e086197-...
Corporate Structure: C Corporation Ownership: Private
See als: B Corps is Not a New Legal Form
http://charitylawyerblog.com/2011/01/15/b-corps-is-not-a-new-legal-form-by-k...
See also the discussion on the CS-group http://www.couchsurfing.org/group_read.html?gid=45507&post=10059584
Robin.
-- Life happens at the level of events, not of words
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