[Public] Benefit Corporations¹ are this weird sort of in-between between a non-profit and a regular corporation. My first encounter with this was the benefit corp that was set up for This American Life and Serial (although the latter is now owned by the New York Times) and after reading a whole bunch, it’s still not entirely clear to me what it means. Everything I’ve seen talks about transitioning from a non-benefit corp to a benefit corp, I don’t know if the concept is old enough for the reverse to have ever happened.

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1. Whether it’s called a “benefit corporation” or “public benefit corporation” apparently depends on the state, and not all states have laws to allow them to be established.