Employee Ownership News archive

Financial ownership vs. inclusive multistakeholder ownership leads to different outcomes for Jossey-Bass and Berrett-Koehler

Concerns over business closures reignite interest in employee ownership among Massachusetts lawmakers

Widespread consensus on employee ownership revealed by national survey question.

City’s partnership with Project Equity aims to address wave of business closures.

Participants at the USDA Interagency Working Group meeting see role for government leadership.

Firms united in desire to spread transformative enterprise design model.

Awards go to groups using cooperatives to empower workers and support immigrant rights.

At Fifty by Fifty we’ve been exploring ownership design. Our research has led us to conclude that enterprise design is an important lever of change, the key to building an economy that is both sustainable and equitable.

New report show how ESOPs can close wealth gap.

Preparing Business Advisors to Carry Out New Mandate.

A worker and consumer cooperative powered by renewables.

Fifty by Fifty releases report identifying new ownership design.

Retiring business owners target for employee ownership conversions.

New report proposes giving workers the “right of first refusal.”

Mission-led employee-owned firms embody a powerful model of enterprise design for a new era of environmental sustainability and social equity.

Employee ownership momentum continues to grow.

Employee ownership deepens engagement, builds community.

New executive office on employee ownership poised to become model for other states.

Small Business Administration, DC Metro, holding five trainings for business owners by Karen Kahn In late February, the Washington Metro Area District Office of the U.S. Small Business Administration held its first seminar for business owners interested in employee ownership as a potential exit strategy. The plan is to hold one a month in each of the…

Scaling employee ownership requires dispelling common misunderstandings by Bruce Dobb A number of factors inhibit the growth of employee ownership, among them, common misconceptions among small business owners. The three most common myths we encounter at Concerned Capital when discussing employee ownership with small business clients preparing to sell are: Employee ownership means an ESOP.All employees must…

USDA grants fund employee ownership education workshops targeting business advisors.

Eileen Fisher vs. Donna Karan International

Cerveses Lluna Bio Beer leads organic beer production in Spain.

New Coalition Aims to Raise Awareness and Build Capacity by Karen Kahn Hoda Katebi, an Iranian-American fashion designer, known for her fashion blog JooJoo Azad, has turned her sights to helping immigrant and refugee women by starting a clothing production cooperative in the Uptown neighborhood of Chicago. Blue Tin Production Co-op, says Katebi, will create jobs for…

New Corporate Status Could Protect Company from Outside Buyers by Karen Kahn Heritage Aviation Campus “Making business decisions that give weight to both profit and social impact has made us a more successful company because it has made us a more meaningful organization to our customers, vendors, employees and community,” says Dave Stiller, CEO of Heritage…

Cities are embracing employee ownership (EO) as an economic development strategy that delivers both growth and equity. To further explore how, why and where, Employee Ownership News has started a new series focused on urban ecosystems. Take a look at our first two stories to see how: · Durham, NC, is seeking to maintain the legacy of African-American…

An Organizational Culture that Drives Success by John Case This story was originally published at Employee-Owned America, February 1, 2019, and is reposted here with permission. What’s interesting about TDIndustries, a big mechanical construction and facilities-services firm, isn’t just its business results, though heaven knows those results are impressive enough. Founded 73 years ago in Dallas, TD…

Mosaic Capital Partners Leads Conversion to Employee Ownership by Karen Kahn Best Friends Pet Hotel is a growing pet boarding, day care, grooming and training business, with 30 locations throughout the country. Every day, pet owners trust the devoted staff of Best Friends to care for their furry family members. It’s recent transition to employee ownership…

Local anti-poverty organization, Catalyst Miami, partners with JP Morgan Chase This story, part of our series on cities growing employee ownership, is based an op ed that appeared in the Miami Herald. Miami hopes to stem the tide of gentrification with employee-owned businesses. In 2016, a report from Florida International University recommended employee-owned cooperatives as one of several…

Companies See Bottom-Line Benefits From Worker Ownership by B the Change Technicians for Sustainability became an employee-owner cooperative in 2017. (Photo courtesy TFS) Thinking long-term. Acting like a team player. Caring for the customers. Showing ownership mentality. While any business would be lucky to have employees with those qualities, they’re a priority when Technicians for Sustainability (TFS) looks…

As Black Business Owners Approach Retirement, Succession Planning Lags This story is based on reporting from Next City. Fifty by Fifty is beginning 2019 with a new series exploring city strategies for growing employee ownership. In our first article, we look at how Durham, NC, a city with a strong legacy of African-American entrepreneurial activity, is promoting…

by Fifty By Fifty As we embark on the new year, there is a lot of talk about a “Green New Deal.” At Fifty by Fifty, we are all for policies that bring our economy into alignment with the needs of our planet. We’ve spent much of the last year exploring the relationship of employee ownership…

Kimberly Jones Is Preserving a Legacy and Building a Future for Butler/Till by Sarah Stranahan Butler/Till leadership team (L-R) Melissa Palmer, Peter Infante, and Kimberly Jones Fifty by Fifty spoke with Kimberly Jones to learn what it is like to step into leadership at an employee-owned B corporation. Jones became the president of Butler/Till, an advertising…

An Interview with Carina Millstone “We cannot have an ecologically sustainable economy when we have the publicly traded corporation as an economic actor,” says Carina Millstone, author of Frugal Value: Designing Business for a Crowded Planet, in a recent Next System Podcast. Millstone is deeply concerned with how we build a sustainable economy, one that “creates the…

John Lewis Partnership’s employee ownership structure is simple. . . . John Lewis employees are not bought out at retirement. Rather, they enjoy profit-sharing during the years that they work at the company.

ASBC sees employee ownership as key to building a sustainable economy by Sarah Stranahan The American Sustainable Business Council (ASBC) is a network of businesses and business associations that have committed themselves to the triple bottom line of people, planet, and profit. In recent years, advancing employee ownership has been a key component of ASBC’s agenda: to…

Conversions of conventional firms represent 25 percent of new coops by Karen Kahn In their annual report, “Worker Cooperatives: State of the Sector,” the Democracy at Work Institute (DAWI) and the U.S. Federation of Cooperatives paint a picture of the cooperative sector and how it is changing over time. Among the key findings, the sector continues to grow at a…

Reports, meetings, webinars — employee ownership is a topic of growing interest by Karen Kahn National Center for Employee Ownership (NCEO) Issues Retirement Security Report: “S Corporation ESOPs and Retirement Security,” a new NCEO research report, compares the retirement savings of employees in ESOP companies to average retirement savings among all U.S. workers. The survey of members of the Employee-Owned S…

Scotland for EO Sets “Audacious” Goal for Scaling Up Employee Ownership Scotland for EO launched their campaign last summer, referencing the inspiration of the Fifty by Fifty initiative. Last summer, First Minister of Scotland Nicola Sturgeon launched Scotland for EO, a public-private partnership to lead efforts to expand the number of employee-owned companies across Scotland. The…

New Belgium Brewery’s Sustainability Values Grounded in Worker Friendly Culture By Sarah Stranahan New Belgium’s brewery, in Asheville, North Carolina, is built on a former brownfield. The New Belgium Brewing Company began when a couple of Belgium beer enthusiasts, Jeff Lebesch and Kim Jordan, made beer in their Colorado basement. Their amber ale, Fat Tire, was so…

Cooperative Fund of New England Is Meeting the Challenge Low-water landscape, A Yard and A Half Landscaping by Micha Josephy Cooperative Fund of New England (CFNE) is a community development financial institution (CDFI), founded in 1975 to provide financing and development support to New England’s cooperatives. CFNE aggregates loan capital largely from individual and family trust…

New Fund to preserve jobs by acquiring companies and converting them to employee ownership “ Our theory is that the reason employee ownership has been slow to grow is a lack of agency — no one is incentivized to promote employee ownership conversions in a way that can compete with the strength of the traditional mergers and…

New research from Fifty by Fifty focuses on employee ownership and environmental sustainability.

With mid-term elections around the corner, Fifty by Fifty is tracking the latest policy developments in the employee ownership arena. SBA draft regulations open for comment The Small Business Administration has issued proposed regulations to clearly define the loan process for the 7 (a) Preferred Lender Program, following the passage of the Main Street Employee Ownership…

Are mission-controlled, employee-owned companies better environmental stewards than conventional finance-controlled corporations? Is transitioning to employee ownership a more likely path to keeping a firm’s ecological mission alive, compared to selling a firm to a large competitor? The answer to these questions is critical to enterprise design for the 21st century and beyond. If we understand the relationship between enterprise design and a sustainable, equitable economy, we can be more deliberate in the choices we make.

North River Boats ESOP Conversion Aided by Mission-Oriented Lender The Cascade, built by North River Boats The following article is based on Allison Sackett’s original blog posted at Beneficial State Foundation. Banking is often synonymous with extracting wealth from communities; but not all banks use this model. On the West Coast, Beneficial State Bank, founded by Kat Taylor and…

New Report Analyzes Market for Co-op Conversions by Alison Powers In September, Capital Impact Partners and the ICA Group, with support from Citi Community Development, released a groundbreaking report, “Co-op Conversions at Scale: A Market Assessment for Expanding Worker Co-op Conversions in Key Regions & Sectors.” The report points to an enormous opportunity to convert…

By Fran Korten Business owners looking to sell their companies to their employees just got a helping hand from the federal government. It’s the first such measure that’s passed Congress in more than 20 years. Tucked into the omnibus National Defense Authorization Act signed by President Trump in August 2018 was language directing the U.S.…

A Multistakeholder Ownership Design Protects Company Values By Sarah Stranahan Berrett-Koehler Publishers (BK), an Oakland, California -based independent publisher, created a Constitution in 2016 that begins with the words, “We are embarked together on a journey to do the seemingly impossible — to create a world that works for all. No road map exists for this journey, so we are…

SUNY Center preparing to support employee ownership transitionsF SUNY SBDC recently assisted the Rose Garden Early Childhood Center in its transition to becoming a worker cooperative. The nation’s roughly 1,000 Small Business Development Centershave a new mandate. The newly passed Main Street Employee Ownership Act (MSEOA) directs these technical assistance centers, which are hosted by universities and state…

New Small Business Administration Mandate Garners Media Attention Senator Gillibrand led effort to include support for employee ownership in the Defense Authorization Act by Erin Kesler Signed into law last month, the John McCain National Defense Authorization Act contained a provision to expand employee ownership to more Americans. Drawn from Senator Kirsten Gillibrand’s (D-NY) Main Street Employee…

Unique Governance Structures Designed to Protect Employee Ownership by Sarah Stranahan Kevin and Nicole Koch, founders of Technicians for Sustainability (TFS), a solar design–build firm based in Tucson, Arizona, built their company from scratch. After more than a decade of running the business, the couple made an unconventional decision, converting TFS to a worker cooperative…

How the problems of stock market ownership led this firm to employee ownership by Marjorie Kelly EA Engineering, an environmental consulting firm, found its values upended when the company went public. To return to its roots, the original founder bought the company back and then transitioned to an employee stock ownership plan (ESOP) along with…

A business that puts sustainability and human rights at its core Eileen Fisher fabrics are dyed without hazardous chemicals. by Sarah Stranahan Eileen Fisher, Inc., designs women’s clothing. The company, which is 40 percent employee owned and a B Corp, is a leader in its human rights and sustainability practices. We wanted to understand how Eileen…

ESOP plus B Corporation by Sarah Stranahan Fifty by Fifty recently spoke with Suzanne McDowell, one of a three-person co-CEO team currently leading King Arthur Flour, as part of our research into the relationship between employee ownership and environmental sustainability. We knew King Arthur Flour, under the leadership of then-CEO Steve Voigt, had become a founding B…

As retirement neared, Butler and Till chose to protect their company culture with an ESOP by Sarah Stranahan When Butler/Till’s original founders Sue Butler and Tracy Till began to look at retirement, they were concerned about protecting their company culture. They had thought they would look for a compatible buyer but instead chose to transfer…

Pioneering a New Business Structure to Preserve Mission by Natalie Reitman-White In some situations, employee ownership via an ESOP may not be suited to advancing a sustainability mission, due to the demand on profits that comes from a perpetual duty to buy back shares from employees. Organically Grown Company faced this situation with a wave…

How Employee Ownership Has Protected a Founder’s Vision by Marjorie Kelly What is a company? The dominant view today, the Wall Street view, is of an object owned by shareholders, which has a primary purpose of producing a smooth flow of earnings, like so many ball bearings off an assembly line. The alternative the planet…

National survey shows small but steady growth of U.S. worker cooperatives by Karen Kahn A new report from the Democracy at Work Institute (DAWI) and the U.S. Federation of Worker Cooperatives estimates that 357 worker cooperatives operated in the United States in 2016. These businesses employed 6,833 people and generated $428 million in gross revenues in 2016.[i] As the numbers suggest,…

New Economy Coalition Conference Embraces Employee Ownership by Sarah Stranahan The importance of taking employee ownership to scale was front and center at the June CommonBound conference in St. Louis, Missouri. More than 700 people attended this biannual event of the New Economy Coalition, including activists, thinkers and leaders from across the world, working for a more…

by Karen Kahn Employee ownership is getting increased attention from the Aspen Institute, a Washington-based nonpartisan think tank seeking to build leadership and find solutions to the many challenges that face our nation. On May 10, as part of the Working in America series, the Employment Opportunities Program and Financial Security Program sponsored “Having a Stake,”…

Achieving Scale while Maintaining Local Impact Amicus Solar has 48 member-owners with office locations in 33 states nationwide including Puerto Rico and Canada by Sarah Stranahan Amicus Solar is one of more than 250 purchasing cooperatives in the US, including such well-known brands as Ace Hardware and Best Western Motels. By forming a large national cooperative,…

New Contract to Operate Cleveland Clinic Laundry Drives Expansion by Jessica Rose On May 10, I stood with city dignitaries, hospital executives, and over 100 shop-floor employees to witness an historic ribbon-cutting ceremony, as Cleveland’s Evergreen Cooperative Laundry (ECL) announced it was taking over operation of the Cleveland Clinic’s massive industrial laundry facility. The mood…

Benefits to Incorporating a Worker Cooperative in Colorado by Jason Wiener and Linda Phillips Also, many more mountains than Delaware. Perhaps you are starting a cooperative business or maybe you are transitioning an existing business to a worker-owned cooperative. Though the process is only a little more complicated than a standard incorporation, a separate set of…

Image: Solar installers from PV Squared, a worker cooperative and certified B-Corp Are mission-controlled, employee-owned companies better environmental stewards than conventional corporations? Is transitioning to employee ownership a more likely path to keeping a firms’ ecological mission alive, compared to selling a firm to a large competitor? The answer to these questions is critical to…

A Mission-Led Employee-Owned Firm By Sarah Stranahan The best of the best is what you might say about South Mountain Company, an employee-owned, environmentally oriented design-build firm on Martha’s Vineyard, off the coast of Massachusetts. It’s a B Corp, a new type of company that uses the power of business to solve social and environmental problems.…

The Environmental Performance Record of UK’s John Lewis Partnership By Sarah Stranahan Photo © Peter Turner (cc-by-sa/2.0) The new economy movement often speaks of creating an economy that works for people and the planet. But are those two goals always aligned? Given limited resources and competing needs, how do businesses manage trade-offs between what’s best for people — employees,…

Brokerage Platform Created by NCEO Allows Investors to Focus on Businesses with Shared Ownership and Inclusive Workplace CulturesT What do Southwest Airlines, Alphabet, and Etsy have in common? All are companies that have some degree of employee shared ownership and high-engagement workplace cultures. These are qualities that the National Center for Employee Ownership (NCEO) uses to determine…

by Steve Dubb As we noted in NPQ [Nonprofit Quarterly] last fall, nearly half of US small business owners are baby boomers, aged 53 to 71. Collectively, they own 2.34 million businesses, employ 24.7 million people, and have combined sales of $5.14 trillion. It is estimated that 80 percent of these businesses lack a plan for what they are going…

The loss of local businesses is not inevitable. By Melissa Hoover Employees at Arizmendi Bakery, a worker-owned cooperative in the Bay Area (Photo by Arizmendi Bakery) Linda and Gregory Coles founded their preschool, A Child’s Place, in their Queens, NY basement in 1983. Over the years it grew steadily and developed a deeply loyal community. Now…

Employees Purchasing Their Division From a Major Corporation By Sarah Stranahan We usually think of ESOP conversions as a way for founders to sell private businesses to their employees, because that is the most common scenario for creating ESOPs. But ESOPs can also be used for other types of business succession, like purchasing a division…

Shoring up against the silver tsunami small business crisis By Alison Lingane As employee ownership (EO) advocates search for effective ways to take EO to new heights, Project Equity in the Bay Area has pioneered a vital new method: begin in a city or region with an inventory analysis of businesses at risk of closure…

Some companies have learned to create good jobs for employees at every level of the organization, blue collar and white collar alike. By John Case Nearly every politician these days wants to create more jobs. And not just any jobs — good jobs. But what is a good job, and how does a company go about creating one?…

Performance Validation’s Journey By Richard Van Doel, Ph.D, President, Performance Validation On January, 2, 2018, Performance Validation (PV), a leading bio-technical, pharmaceutical and medical device industry contractor, became Indiana’s newest Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP) company. As the president of this company, I’d like to share how our experience in educating employees about employee ownership — even before…

by Majorie Kelly The Sacred Texts. The Principle of Worldview. In the worldview of corporate financial statements, the aim is to pay stockholders as much as possible, and employees as little as possible. More and more people have the sense today that the economic system is rigged. In fact, according to a Marketplace and Edison poll,…

An editorial by Governing’s publisher Mark Funkhouser highlights the potential of employee ownership to create new, stable jobs without the use of state tax incentives or corporate giveaways. “A few jurisdictions are beginning to explore this alternative. Legislation was introduced in Wisconsin that, among other things, would provide a capital gains tax exemption for employee ownership; loans…

Strategies for Getting to 50 Million Employee Owners by 2050 By Marjorie Kelly As we wrap the second year of the Fifty by Fifty project — aimed at getting to 50 million worker owners by 2050 — we’re more convinced than ever that the time is right for strategic interventions to catalyze the employee ownership field to a much larger…

What comes first, public policies, institutions, or markets changes? By Sarah Stranahan Those of us seeking to advance employee ownership face a bewildering array of legislative initiatives and competing advocacy priorities. At last count, there were at least six Senate bills dealing with employee ownership. They range from Senate Bill 1082, which would create an…

By Anthony Mathews At the Beyster Institute at the University of California-San Diego, which is dedicated to studying and promoting employee ownership, I was part of an initiative about ten years ago to try to organize a work group with the humble goal of curing poverty in the U. S. We started from the assumption…

Introducing Jason Wiener, P.C., a legal and consulting business for mission-driven companies. By Jason Wiener If the 18th century can be defined as the age of industrialization and competitive advantage of the nation state, the 19th century by the power of the corporation, and the 20th by corporate financialization, then, I believe, the 21st century…

And she has a plan to do it. This interview by Fran Korten originally appeared in Yes! Magazine For decades Marjorie Kelly has looked for ways that businesses can better contribute to the good of society. In 1987, after getting a master’s degree in journalism, she founded Business Ethics magazine to showcase socially responsible corporations. But after 20 years…

by Erin M. Kesler Late last week, on October 19, a bipartisan group of senators introduced a resolution to the Judiciary Committee designating October “National Employee Ownership Month.” Sponsored by Senator Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), the resolution was signed onto by senators as diverse as Sherrod Brown (D-OH), Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH), Angus King (I-ME), Todd Young (R-KS), and Pat Roberts…

Ten Lessons from a visit to the Basque Cooperative Confederation By Jill Bamburg The town of Mondragón-Arrasate. (Richard Hobbs) I recently completed a study tour to Mondragon, a small town in the Basque region of Spain, which is the home of the world’s largest and most advanced cooperative economy. In the United States, the cooperative sector,…

Employee-owners are more confident about their financial security. by Erin M. Kesler At a time of growing anxiety around economic issues for many workers, recent news indicates that employee owners are experiencing significantly less stress. According to a recent Forbes piece, employee owners have far fewer worries about paying their monthly bills than workers at other firms.…

Spreading the word about Employee Ownership by Erin M. Kesler Set to launch on September 5, 2017, Certified EO is a membership organization that seeks to transform the way American businesses see employee ownership. Certification is a proven tool for spreading market innovation. For example, fair trade labels help discerning consumers choose products that meet…

The Democracy Collaborative’s Research Director Thomas Hanna and Next System Project Deputy Director Dana Brown sat down with Dr. Joseph Blasi — preeminent expert on employee ownership, Distinguished Professor at Rutgers’ School of Management and Labor Relations, and regular contributor to work around Fifty by Fifty — for a chat about the importance of employee ownership and its role in a larger…

A new design: worker cooperative governance with ESOP tax benefits By Martin Staubus Businesses interested in transitioning into employee ownership are often presented with a structural dilemma: convert into an ESOP or a cooperative? Go for the democratic worker control and participation of a cooperative, or the tax benefits of an ESOP? I recently helped…

by Thomas Dudley For those interested in employee ownership, it is critical to understand if employee ownership can achieve the scale required to truly reduce wealth inequality and create strong local economies. In a previous post, we saw that today there are thousands of employee-owned business operating in every industry and employing up to 2 million Americans. But while…

Spreading the world on employee ownership by Majorie Kelly Okay, true confessions: I used to be a weekly columnist for a daily paper. That was on top of my work at that time as publisher of Business Ethics magazine. I’m a journalist at heart, and the daily paper is still the beating heart of journalism, in my…

A Creative Tool For Financing a Worker Cooperative by Erin M. Kesler Real Pickles sold its first jar of organic dills in 2001, when founders Dan Rosenberg and his wife, Addie Rose Holland, decided to turn their pickle-making hobby into a business. By 2015, the business had grown to over than $1 million in revenue.…

By Marjorie Kelly, Executive Vice President and Senior Fellow, The Democracy Collaborative When it comes to identifying low-hanging fruit for companies most ready to convert to employee ownership, the “contagion effect” can be a key strategy. One industry where this phenomenon is well known is craft beer, where the trend is poised to get a boost from…

by Jessica Rose Jessica Bonanno, Director of Employee Ownership Programs, The Democracy Collaborative and Marjorie Kelly, Executive Vice President and Senior Fellow, The Democracy Collaborative The moment is right for employee business ownership to go to scale. The models are tested and proven, the increasing struggles of American families makes the need apparent, and the…

by Thomas Dudley Employee ownership (EO) is gaining traction as a way to address a number of social questions including rising wealth inequality, and the best way to create strong local economies As a sign of employee ownership’s increasing importance look no further than Colorado, where Congressman Jared Polis kicked-off his gubernatorial campaign at Save-A-Lot, an employee-owned grocery store. If we…

In this Fifty by Fifty research brief, Mary Ann Beyster, president and trustee of the Foundation for Enterprise Development (FED), explores the existing landscape of employee ownership opportunities for impact investors, and highlights emerging models and strategies for inclusive investment in ESOPs and worker cooperatives.

by Erin M. Kesler With income inequality in the United States at record high levels, employee ownership is increasingly being lauded as a potential solution to spreading wealth more broadly. Most recently, research from the National Center for Employee Ownership released in May shows that employee owners have a household net worth that is 92 percent higher than non-employee owners.…

Jessica Bonanno, Director of Employee Ownership Programs at The Democracy Collaborative The best-kept business model secret of our age is about to get the spotlight it has long deserved. It’s employee ownership — a proven, common-sense pathway to reduce inequality, anchor jobs at home, and rebuild a strong and stable economy, using a vehicle that’s as American…

On June 13th and 14th of 2016, we hosted a gathering in Washington, D.C. of key leaders in the national ecosystems of support and advocacy around employee ownership. This report captures the insights and lessons from this strategic convening.