You may feel good about giving to worthy projects online, but now Kickstarter wants you to feel even better.
The crowd-funding giant announced this week that it is becoming a “public benefit” corporation, according to a story in the New York Times. Public benefit corporations add certain responsibilities into the corporation’s charter, with the legal obligation to chart and report on activities beyond its direct services that provide positive value to society.
Kickstarter co-founders Yancey Strickler and Perry Chen say that they are making the move to stand out in the tech sector, where the public perception is that money-making is the sole driving force. While other for-profit companies are responsible only to shareholders, being a public benefit corporation means that the company voluntarily agrees to also consider the impact of their decisions on workers, the community, and the environment.
Kickstarter’s mission is “to help bring creative projects to life.” The company states that, since 2009, 9.5 million people have pledged support of projects, with $2 billion raised for more than 90,000 projects posted by designers, support specialists, writers, musicians, painters, poets, gamers, robot-builders and others.
Last year, Kickstarter was designated a “B Corporation,” which binds the company to a set of strict environmental and social responsibility metrics.