How can Minnesota businesses be a force for good?

How can Minnesota be a leader in social innovation? How can its businesses better serve people and the planet?

Those questions were the inspiration for Minnesota's newest corporate model, a public-benefit corporation.

In January, Minnesota will join 26 other states in enacting public benefit corporation legislation. In Minnesota, public-benefit corporations (PBCs) will be businesses that, among other things, produce a "positive impact on society, the environment, and the well-being of present and future generations." In order to receive the designation, a public-benefit corporation would be required to report to the Secretary of State's Office its positive net impact, which would be available to the public.

While making a positive impact on society sounds like giant work shoes to fill, as public demand for accountability and transparency grows, businesses across the globe are reshaping how they view success.

One doesn't have to know much about economics or the history of corporations to know that "stakeholders" has long meant someone looking to maximize their profit share in a company. Thanks to decades of deregulation and the new corporate personhood, it's easy to conjure a stakeholder as Rich Uncle Pennybags, aka Mr. Monopoly, the cash-bag-grabbing cigar-puffer whose image was said to be inspired by a J.P Morgan financier.

Today, the term "stakeholder" is evolving, as business leaders and entrepreneurs are including the community, the environment, employees, and customers in their stakeholder model. Now an increasing number of change-makers and entrepreneurs are asking: How can busineses—and our communties—benefit when a stakeholder is...all of us?

Jeff Ochs, a social entrepreneur and board member of the Social Enterprise Alliance Twin Cities Chapter, helped draft Minnesota's public benefit legislation. Ochs says the goal was not to put structure and restraint on social benefit models, but to see what they could become.

So how can "impact" be measured? Ochs says it's about reshaping what business models look like. "It's about taking what traditionally has been an externality in the business world, and making it an internality."

In other words, it's making profit as important as people, the community, and the environment.

Ochs cites Sunrise Banks, a local community bank whose mission it is to empower the underserved to achieve, as an example of the changing local business environment. Sunrise Banks is also a Certified B Corp, which means it must complete a third-party audit of social and environmental performance to meet the B Corp certification process. In January, Sunrise will also pursue Minnesota's Public Benefit Corporation status.

If reporting to the Secretary of State seems too much to muster, there's another way Minnesota businesses and social enterereneurs can collaborate and be a force for good. Just last week a new networking and co-working space opened in downtown Minneapolis. Called the Minnesota Social Impact Center, it promises to be a space for "accelerating social impact by building an ecosystem for innovators." According to its website, the "'Impact Garage,' is designed as an interactive and inspiring hub that accelerates our collective efforts to co-create social impact."