What the B Impact Assessment is
The B Impact Assessment is a free scoring tool developed and maintained by B Lab, the nonprofit that administers B Corp certification globally. The tool scores a business across five pillars: Governance, Workers, Community, Environment, and Customers. The maximum possible score is 200. The minimum threshold to qualify for certification is 80 points.
Since January 2026, reaching 80 is necessary but no longer sufficient on its own. B Lab's updated certification standards now require businesses to meet mandatory minimum thresholds across seven specific impact topics. A strong overall score doesn't offset a gap in a mandatory area. Full breakdown of what changed in 2026 →
The average score for businesses that complete the full B Impact Assessment without preparation is 50–65 points. Reaching 80 puts a business in the top performance tier globally among businesses that have attempted it. A score above 100 is considered exceptional.
The assessment lives at bimpactassessment.net. It's accessible to any business at no cost. You can begin scoring today without engaging B Lab or paying anything. Before going through the full BIA, the free 2-minute assessment gives you a directional read on where your business stands.
How the five pillars break down
The BIA tool is organized around five pillars — and the 2026 certification standards map their mandatory topics across these same categories. Understanding the pillars is still the right starting point.
How the business is structured to consider all stakeholders. Mission lock provisions, transparency, board diversity.
Compensation, benefits, flexibility, health and safety practices, and employee feedback systems. Often the highest-weighted pillar.
Supplier diversity, local economic impact, charitable giving, and civic engagement. Supplier data gaps hit here hardest.
Energy use, emissions, waste, water, and supply chain environmental practices — relative to your industry benchmark.
Whether products or services directly benefit underserved populations or address a documented social or environmental problem.
Not every pillar applies equally to every business type. B Lab adjusts questions based on your industry, company size, and geography. A manufacturing company faces different environmental questions than a professional services firm. A 12-person craft brewery isn't assessed the same way as a global supply chain business. The tool adapts to your context.
What actually determines your score
Most businesses are surprised to find that the biggest gap between their current score and 80 points isn't operational. It's documentation.
A business might already pay living wages, run flexible work arrangements, track its energy use, and source from local suppliers. If none of that is formally documented, the assessment can't score it. The BIA is evidence-based. What you do matters. What you can prove matters equally.
"The gap is documentation, not an overhaul. Most businesses already operate more responsibly than their unaided B Impact Assessment score reflects."
This is the core insight that changes how you approach certification. You're not rebuilding your business. You're making your existing practices legible. Policy drafts. Tracking systems. Evidence compilation. That's the work.
All businesses beginning certification under the 2026 standards must complete a Year 0 self-assessment through the B Impact Assessment portal before submitting their application. This is a documented baseline inventory across all seven mandatory impact topics — it's the standard BIA completed as a formal first step, not a separate tool. Skipping it will stall your application. See what the 2026 standards require for the full context.
How B Lab verifies your score
Completing the self-assessment is the first step. Reaching 80 points on paper is the second. The third is verification — and this is where underprepared businesses stall.
Once a business submits for certification, B Lab assigns a verification analyst who reviews the submission and schedules a call. On that call, the analyst requests supporting documentation: HR policy documents, governance records, financial data, supplier information. The analyst uses this to validate the scores claimed in the self-assessment. Scores without documentation get adjusted downward.
Roughly a third of businesses that submit for B Corp certification don't pass on their first attempt. The most common reason isn't that they scored below 80 on paper — it's that their documentation didn't support the score when the analyst reviewed it. Submitting before you're ready adds two to four months to your total timeline.
The audit will tell you what actually needs to change. Some businesses discover their score is higher than expected. Some find a specific pillar with a concentrated gap that's straightforward to close. Either way, you're working from fact, not assumption.
Candor scores your business on the B Impact Assessment as the first step of every engagement, identifies the specific documentation gaps, and maps out what preparation work actually looks like. If you want to know where your business stands before deciding anything, that's the right starting point. It's also worth reviewing what the full process costs and how long it realistically takes alongside this.