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Research

Just Good Business: An Investor’s Guide to B Corps

Whatever your interest in Certified B Corps—supporting the triple-bottom line, their strength as investments that bring a more comprehensive set of risks into focus—this guide delivers what investors need to know about Certified B Corps and Benefit Corporations.

Just Good Business: An Investor’s Guide to B Corps

There is a profound shift underway in how capital markets value companies. So if you’re an investor, what do you need to know?

In partnership with Patagonia and wealth advisory firm Caprock, the Yale Center for Business and the Environment has released a new publication to answer this question. Entitled “Just Good Business: An Investor’s Guide to B Corps,” this report explores the distinct financial value offered by Certified B Corporations and Benefit Corporations.

"B" designations, created and overseen by the nonprofit B Lab, offer a certification program and legal framework by which companies can fold social and environmental impacts into their bottom line.

The B Corp movement is, to me, a product of a general improvement in our understanding of economic behavior. Through greater appreciation of the real motives that drive and excite people, B Corporations provide a significant new opportunity for investors. I think they could make more profits than any other types of companies, and this guide helps investors understand why.

—Robert Shiller, Sterling Professor of Economics, Yale University and Nobel Laureate

Report

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About the Authors

Just Good Business Author Photo
From left to right: Alex Buerkle, Max Storto, Kylee Chang

list of authors

Alex Buerkle

Kylee Chang

About the Partners

The Yale Center for Business and the Environment

The Yale Center for Business and the Environment provides a platform for generating, incubating and launching innovative action at the intersection of business and the environment. The Center joins the strengths of two world-renowned graduate schools—the Yale School of Management and the Yale School of Forestry & Environmental Studies—together with an extensive network of internal and external thought leaders at the business- environment interface. Driven by student interest, we develop partnerships with a wide range of actors across Yale (students, faculty, staff) and in the professional world (alums, companies, NGOs, governments). Our work covers finance, entrepreneurship, marketing, operations, and strategy on issues involving energy, water, carbon, food, natural areas and society.

Patagonia, Inc

Founded by Yvon Chouinard in 1973, Patagonia is an outdoor apparel company based in Ventura, California. A certified B-Corporation, Patagonia’s mission is to build the best product, cause no unnecessary harm, and use business to inspire and implement solutions to the environmental crisis. Since 1985, Patagonia has dedicated 1 percent of sales each year to environmental causes.

Caprock

The Caprock Group is a wealth advisory firm engineered for the 21st century, offering both an innovative approach to conventional investing as well as a market-leading platform in sustainable, responsible and impact investing. In so doing, Caprock blends deep investment experience with unconventional investment strategies to future-proof their client’s lives: re-thinking wealth from the ground up. Advising on over $3 billion in family, foundation and philanthropic capital, the firm features regularly in the world’s leading financial media, is a founding B Corp and is proud to have been honored as one of only three companies in the world to earn B Community “Best for the World” status in three categories: Employees, Customers and Changemakers. 

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People & Partners

Cass Walker Harvey

Founder at CWH Consulting
Senior Advisor at Time4Good
Resident Fellow at Yale Center for Business and the Environment

Stuart DeCew

Executive Director at Yale Center for Business and the Environment
MBA 2011
Master of Environmental Management 2011

Alex Buerkle

VP Product Management, Chase eCommerce at JPMorgan Chase
MBA 2018

Kylee Chang

Principal Consultant at Anthesis Group
Master of Environmental Management 2019

Max Storto

MBA 2020
Master of Environmental Management 2020

Vincent Stanley

Director of Philosophy at Patagonia
Resident Fellow at Yale Center for Business and the Environment

Heather Fitzgerald

Managing Director at Yale Center for Business and the Environment
Staff Lead, Business and the Environment Learning Community at Yale School of the Environment

Peter Boyd

Faculty at Yale School of the Environment
Founder & CEO at Time4Good Group
Resident Fellow at Yale Center for Business and the Environment