Governing and Financing Blended Enterprise

The image of nonprofit and for-profit as dual and exclusive categories is misleadingly simple. This blurring of the boundary between for-profit and nonprofit has gone on for years and appears only to be gaining steam. Yet, traditionally, the law has put to organizations a choice of either the nonprofit or for-profit form of organization. In the first decade of this century, organizational law is beginning to catch up with the boundary-blurring trend. In the United States and abroad, legislatures are creating new forms for blended enterprise, including several U.S. states\u27 low-profit limited liability company (the L3C ) and the community interest company (the CIC ) in England and Wales. Along with these more formal efforts, at least one self-regulatory scheme provides a framework to fashion a blended form (the B Corporation ) under traditional state for-profit corporation law. This article will describe and compare these forms and evaluate whether they can enhance the governance and finance of blended enterprise