The B Corporation

The B Corporation is an innovative way to do some good for the community and make money, as reported by the Stanford Social Innovation Review.

An excerpt.

“Being the only one of something—whatever that something is—generally has one of two results. Either it makes you hot stuff or it backfires. In business, you hope for the first. It’s supply and demand at its finest: Less of you increases the desire for you. But move away from theory and into practice, and real life may not always work that way. Sometimes being the only one of something means that fewer people understand you or realize what you truly have to offer. Instead of becoming rare, you become an anomaly—the product people aren’t quite sure what to do with, an outcast.

“I am the owner of In Every Language, Kentucky’s only certified B Corporation. Not only are we the only B in Kentucky, which means we’ve been certified as a socially responsible business, we’re the only B in our industry. So if anybody understands what it’s like to be the only one of something in business, it’s me.

“Even before certification, In Every Language was a social enterprise. Based in Louisville, Ky., In Every Language provides translating, interpreting, and other language services to clients around the world. That’s the business part of what we do. When it comes to the social part, we do two different things.

“First, the community nature of translation is inherent. Translators take what one person says and translate it into another language, so another person can understand. Without translators, information wouldn’t pass correctly between cultures and countries, international misunderstandings would develop, and wars could start. The American Translators Association claims that it takes less time to train a fighter pilot than it takes to train an Arabic interpreter, and the interpreter is more important to national security.

“Less frighteningly, community interpreters help patients better understand their course of care and help immigrants obtain access to community services. Both translators and interpreters provide access to information and knowledge that the language barrier blocked before. Being a translator automatically means being a helper. The sheer fact that In Every Language is a translation provider automatically integrates social cause into our business because, regardless of the message translated, social benefit lies in the act of translating itself.

“For me, though, this wasn’t enough. Although the translation industry is replete with social benefit, not every translation company is a social enterprise. In Every Language is the industry’s only certified B Corporation for a reason: We do translation differently.”