Oregon has done those interested in social enterprise a great service by posting a list of their benefit companies online. Oregon also has a nice page about becoming an Oregon benefit company.

By my count, the version updated 6/3/15, lists the following number of entities (for a total of 500 benefit companies):

  • 1 professional benefit corporation 
  • 74 benefit corporations 
  • 425 benefit LLCs

Oregon is one of a very few states that provides for the formation of benefit LLCs, in addition to benefit corporations. As you can see, the benefit LLCs are a good bit more popular than the benefit corporations, likely because most social enterprises are small, closely-held entities that should probably be LLCs instead of corporations.  

LLC law is generally flexible enough to allow a social purpose and Oregon's corporation law expressly allows corporations to be formed for a social purpose, so the main draw seems to be branding/signaling based rather than law based.

These are still relatively small numbers in the grand scheme, but it was a fairly short time ago that there were fewer than 500 total benefit companies nationwide.