Under current Australian Corporations law, incorporating for social impact is challenging. The binary options at present are “for-profit” by issue of shares through a Pty Ltd company, “not-for-profit” by membership through incorporation of a Limited company, which cannot distribute profit to members, or a cooperative structure in which members are productive contributors to a business model, and equal representives in the co-op, and a profit distribution to members is possible
There is also the possibility of a hybrid structure for those wanting to embed social impact into the DNA of their incorporation structure by having both a NFP entity and a for profit Pty Ltd entity and creating a relationship between the two. We have prepared a free guide with links for download on some of these below.
