Disclosure Questionnaire and Complaints

The B Impact Assessment is a positive impact assessment, meaning that companies earn points for the positive impacts they have on various stakeholders. While there are no negative points in the assessment, the B Impact Assessment also includes an unweighted Disclosure Questionnaire. This section asks a series of Yes/No questions that allow a company to confidentially disclose potentially sensitive industries, practices, penalties, and outcomes that a company or its partners might be involved in. For example:

• Company is involved in production of or trade in tobacco (Yes/No)

• Company facilities are located adjacent to or in sensitive ecosystems (Yes/No)

• Company has experienced litigation or arbitration against company either ongoing, settled, or found against your company (Yes/No)

• Company has been fined or sanctioned in the last five years for penalties regarding financial reporting, tax payments, investments, or loans (Yes/No)

• Company's significant suppliers employ workers under the age of 15, use workers who are currently prisoners, or conduct other practices that are relevant to risk of forced labor (Yes/No)

Responses to the Disclosure Questionnaire do not affect a company’s numerical score on the B Impact Assessment. For companies pursuing B Corp Certification, the Disclosure Questionnaire is used in conjunction with background checks and B Lab’s public complaints process to identify material negative impacts. If B Lab determines the item to be material, it may merit further transparency, and the company will be notified to provide incremental disclosure in their B Corp Profile. In certain cases, the company will be required to implement specific remedies to obtain or maintain the Certification, and in rare cases the company's Certification will be denied or revoked. More information about this requirement of the certification can be found here.

As more companies apply for B Corp Certification, B Lab and its Standards Advisory Council have developed models for how to effectively evaluate the impacts of various controversial industries, policies, and practices. Companies interested in B Corp Certification are encouraged to review these frameworks, publicly available here, in order to determine if additional performance requirements might be applicable.