We are also experimenting with a paywall for the first time. Upgrading your subscription will get you access to prior deals—so far, through 2026. We will add more months and/or more detail as we learn from you what is useful.

If you see a deal missing, let us know!

Ownership Economy Deals

August 2026

• DLR Group (NE), an ESOP, acquired McFarlane Architects (CA)

• Horner & Shifrin (IL), an ESOP, acquired traffic engineering firm O’Neil & Company (UT)

• KKR acquired healthcare manufacturer Integer (TX) → broad-based incentive plan

July 2026

• Boat manufacturer Grady-White (NC) → purpose trust ownership

• Veterinarian Windsor Animal Clinic (CT) → direct employee ownership

• Chemical manufacturer ETNA Products (OH) → ESOP

• Restaurant Pidgin Cooperative (WA) → worker cooperative

• Construction company Richard (IL) → ESOP

• Grocery chain Decker’s Market → ESOP

• Armstrong Garden Centers (CA), an ESOP, acquired Pike Nurseries (GA)

• Gemini Industries (OK), an ESOP, acquired Industrial Coating Solutions (WA)

• Candy store b.a.Sweetie (OH) → ESOP

• EPS Group (AZ, CO) → ESOP

• Organic Remedies (PA) → ESOP

• Taylor Automotive Family (OH) → ESOP

• Miller-Valentine Group (OH) → ESOP

• Rayser Holdings (IA), an ESOP, acquired Memorials by Michael (IA)

• North Arrow ABA (MI) → ESOP

• ROST (MO) → employee ownership trust

• Healthcare consultancy Costello Medical (🇬🇧) → employee ownership trust

• Design firm Dalziel & Pow (🇬🇧) → employee ownership trust

• Psychotherapy firm MCM Collaborative (NY) → worker cooperative

• Cleaning company Churchill (🇬🇧) , an employee ownership trust, acquired Principle Cleaning Services

Read more

Last week, Dr. Hand chatted with a whip-smart MBA grad looking to get into employee ownership. That conversation inspired us to compile an Ownership Jobs Board.

Similar to our Events page, we’ll keep this updated with the jobs you send us; keep ‘em coming.

If you missed last week’s edition: Please help us recruit your friends and colleagues to subscribe! Doing so will also raise funds to support the mission of EOX, the national network of state-level centers supporting employee ownership.

Most importantly: Colin Birkhead, Kelso Fellow and Asst. Prof. of Management at Willamette University, is taking the newsletter reins this week. Watch out, world…

Subscribe now

🥃 Top Shelf News

• KKR is set to acquire Texas-based healthcare manufacturer Integer for $5.7 billion and plans to establish a “broad-based employee ownership and engagement program” after the deal is complete

• A new Delaware Chancery Court ruling gives Public Benefit Corporation boards real legal protection to prioritize mission over max payout during a sale

• For our left-leaning readers in the US: Project 2029 seeks policy ideas for 2028 presidential candidates. It sure would be good to have the ownership economy in that mix

• Teasing a subsequent podcast episode, of asks about the downside of ESOPs when pay, healthcare, and retirement savings are tied to a single company:

👉 In This Issue

• Events
  Upcoming + Opportunities

• Employee Ownership
  ESOPs + EOTs + Worker Cooperatives

• The Ownership Economy
  Shared Governance + Community Ownership + Ownership by Design

• Academic News

  New Papers

📅 Events + Opportunities

To see a comprehensive list of events, go to our main Events page.

This Week

• Aug 8: Trebor Scholz’s Community Section of his Fall 2026 course, AI Without Bosses, starts

• Aug 11: The ESOP Association’s interview with Nick Viner on the ESOP valuation process /// Conscious Capitalism’s Profits and Purpose Hiding in Plain Sight panel in Atlanta

• 🆕 Aug 12: EOT Advisors’ webinar to help business owners learn about employee ownership trusts

Opportunities

For more, visit our new Ownership Jobs Board.

• The NCEO is hiring an Employee Ownership Transition Navigator and an Education Assistant

• Paul M. Angell Family Foundation is hiring a Social Impact Program Officer focused on economic power

Employee Ownership

• HBS BiGS published an interview with NCEO’s Matt Licina on the policy opportunities to grow employee ownership. In addition to updated policy, we also need more…

  • Private and public capital

  • Support infrastructure, like advisors and consultants

• reflected on four years at Small Capital and argued that the EO movement is…

  • Too focused big on the fish ← Small businesses can handle EO transition better

  • Too slow ← Due to scarcity of EO investors, banks, and consultants, and other support infrastructure

  • Undercapitalized ← EO deals often don’t fit in a neat little box

• EO Equals has a few spots left for its Summit in early September

• The Recursive examines the main hurdles to employee ownership in European tech circles

• The Aspen Institute Economic Opportunities Program posted its Monthly Digest

• Ownership Works is rallying votes for a SXSW panel on workplace financial wellness programs, EO, and employee wealth

📈 Employee Stock Ownership Plans

• San Diego-based McFarlane Architects joined 100% employee-owned DLR Group; O’Neil & Company, a Salt Lake City-based traffic engineering firm, was acquired by Horner & Scihfrin (ht Benjamin Spadt)

• Freightwaves writes about how Nussbaum Transportation is using employee ownership to drive long-term loyalty and operational growth

• Lazear Capital views ESOPs as a win-win for companies and investors

• Prudential’s 2025 Impact Report includes a description of its commitment to employee ownership (see p.13)

• 🎙️ ESOP Radio takes a look back at the predictions they made back in January about the direction ESOPs were going

  • Construction ESOP Collective talks with Bob Whalen about the tremendous growth of HB Global

Employee Ownership Trusts

• Beth Nedrow outlines the reasons owners should explore employee ownership trusts, including preserving a company’s soul

• Common Trust updated its EOT FAQ page to help further understanding of employee ownership trusts

• 🇨🇦 The Tallgrass Fund of Manitoba debunks 7 myths of (Canadian) employee ownership trusts

• 🎙️ For Journey to Regeneration, Miren Oca recounts her story of creating a certified B Corp and later an employee ownership trust

🤝 Worker Cooperatives

• Only a few more remain to submit applications for the Cooperative Fund of the Northeast Co-op Navigator Fellowship 2.0 (due Aug. 11th)

• Applications are also open for The Pinecone Practice: Training for Worker Cooperative Conversion Practitioners

• Mondragón toured the US seeking new allies for a global social economy coalition

• Alice Toomer-McAlpine of Coop News takes a deep dive into the music marketplace Subvert

• NCBA CLUSA posted their member spotlight of 19 The Agency, a branding company in Pennsylvania

• ICYMI: RE Magazine highlights how electrical co-ops are navigating an inevitable wave of retirements // The Cooperative Education Fund looks to support educational events in the US promoting cooperatives

• 🎙️ econ.coop launched the first episode of Cooperation Now, “Cooperatives and the Common Good”

• 🎥 The ICA Group’s new documentary explores how Boston communities use worker co-ops and collective action to build economic democracy

The Ownership Economy

• Jenny Kassan breaks down the ‘Incorruptible Charter’ from Eric Ries’ book, Incorruptible

• The Senate Banking Committee looked at new legislative paths to improving access to capital for Main Street investors and growing businesses

• outlines why reforming corporate governance structures is needed to pre-distribute wealth and influence

• Central NY community coalition calls for a Community Benefits Agreement to provide safeguards for a chip plant

• Fig City News highlights the growth of the Charles River Food Co-op, which recently surpassed 1,000 member-owners and received national recognition

• An economic historian (read: random Twitter user) explores changes in the incentivization of production 😉 (ht Ben M.)

🕴️Shared Governance

• In an interesting example of transparent governance, ’s Subvert is publicly electing its board members.

• Ad-Hoc-News highlights recent German court decisions protecting employee representation and defending workplace democracy

• University Times covers faculty concerns regarding transparency and shared governance integrity following a controversy over a university-appointed working group

🏘️ Community Ownership

• The Kensington Corridor Trust was awarded a grant worth $1.5 million to help retrofit new housing units

• Nonprofit Finance Fund makes the case that community ownership is a proven path to long-term local wealth

• Co-operatives UK, alongside Locality and Plunkett UK, announced a new dedicated investment fund specifically for community share projects

💭 Ownership by Design

Ed. note: We’re testing out a new section here that covers steward ownership, purpose trusts, benefit corporations, and other ways that companies commit themselves to a purpose.

• Ryan Honeyman discusses whether corporate accountability, transparency, and B Corp certification can truly reform exploitative supply chains, including in Tony’s Chocolonely’s

• PURPOSE highlights how steward ownership principles can protect cultural institutions—and the FIFA World Cup in particular—from commodification

• Steward Market published a new issue of Notes from the Field, its monthly newsletter. Jason Wiener also joined Steward Market as a Founding Partner

• Oct 7 is Steward Ownership Academic Day; applications for contributions are welcome (ht Lizz B.)

📚 Academic News

• Dr. Angelina Grigoryeva received the Employee Participation and Financial Ownership Scholarly Research Award for her research on wealth inequality, gender, and employee ownership. Congratulations Angelina!

• Ewan McGaughey presents a new, history-informed framework aimed at shifting corporate voting influence more toward workers and users

• Luna Charlotte Dadamio and Luzia Blaes show that authority structures in companies have direct political implications for democratic societies

• Ariana R. Levinson explores how worker cooperatives in the U.S. and Italy promote economic inclusion for marginalized groups

August 2026

• Program Officer, Social Impact | Paul M. Angell Family Foundation

• Employee Ownership Transition Navigator | NCEO

• Education Assistant | NCEO

July 2026

• Controller | Apis and Heritage

• Alternative Ownership Analyst & Project Manager | Stronghold Ownership and Purpose Owned

• Transaction Advisory Manager | Common Trust

• Co-Steward and Managing Partner | PURPOSE’s SO Capital

• Growth & Product Marketing Manager | Project Equity

• Marketing Director | NCEO

• Small Business Solutions and Transitions Manager | Brattleboro Development Credit Corporation

• Advisory Board Member | Empowered Ventures

June 2026

• In-House Graphic Designer | Project Equity

• Capital Deployment Manager (part-time) | Project Equity

• Cooperative Development Field Director | The Democracy at Work Institute

May 2026

• Executive Director | Michigan Center for Employee Ownership

• Employee Ownership M&A Analyst | 40 Million Owners

• Community Partnerships Coordinator | Missouri Center for Employee Ownership

• Intern | US Division of Employee Ownership

• Board Member | US Federation of Worker Cooperatives

• Development Director | The Center for Community Wealth

• Managing Director, Europe | Ownership Works

• Loan & Outreach Officer | Cooperative Fund of the Northeast

• Cooperative Business Launch Lead | Village of Leaders Thriving in Solidarity

• Executive Director | Cooperative Development Institute

• Senior Manager for Research and Insights | Skoll Centre at Oxford

For the next 100 days, every new subscriber to The Stakehold will trigger a dollar donation to EOX, the network of state-level employee ownership centers.

You can help by texting five friends something like:

Have you subscribed to The Stakehold’s free weekly newsletter on employee ownership yet? I think you’d like it, and subscribing now helps raise money for EOX, too: https://www.eoxnetwork.org/stakehold

Hi - Have you checked out The Stakehold? They put out a free weekly newsletter on employee ownership that I really enjoy. They are having a subscriber drive and they’ve asked their favorite readers (me) to sign up other beautiful people (you). Check it out! https://www.eoxnetwork.org/stakehold

A little background: From my very first days in the field, and EOX served as my guide and starter kit. Steve flew to Dallas for our very first panel in 2023, then took a major professional risk by asking me to join the Texas Center for Employee Ownership board in 2024.

Today, thanks to the generosity of Daniel Goldstein and Go ESOP, EOX is supporting us again. For the next 100 days, Go ESOP will donate a dollar to EOX for every new Stakehold subscriber.

How you can help: Copypaste and send the text messages above! And:

• Post on Linkedin about why you love the Stakehold, linking to the EOX campaign page: https://www.eoxnetwork.org/stakehold

• Email your colleagues who care/are curious about employee ownership or the ownership economy, inviting them to subscribe (email me for draft email copy)

• Share the campaign in your org’s newsletter or podcast

Thank you to Go ESOP, our readers, and EOX!

Subscribe now

🥃 Top Shelf News

• 🇺🇸 From the Hill: The Senate HELP Committee approved $78M (!!!) in mandatory spending for the DOL’s Employee Ownership Initiative, expanding the grant program through 2035. For more, see The ESOP Association’s press release

  • The Committee also advanced Keith Sonderling’s nomination for Secretary of Labor, who has pledged clearer ESOP guidance

  • And last week a new House bill emerged that would remove limits on contributions and allocations that restrict ESOP growth

• The New York Times featured high-end boat manufacturer Grady-White’s Patagonia-inspired, $400 million transition to a purpose trust (paywalled)

• Colorado artists can now form a new type of corporation, an A Corp, designed to lock in artists’ ownership of their work (ht )

👉 In This Issue

• Events
  Upcoming + Jobs + Opportunities + Recaps

• Employee Ownership
  ESOPs + Worker Cooperatives + Employee Ownership Trusts

• The Ownership Economy
  + Community Ownership

• Academic News
  New Research

📅 Events + Reflections & Recaps

To see a comprehensive list of events, check out our Events page.

This Week

• July 31: Better Portland hosts to discuss local business succession /// Repaired Nations Co-op hosts its annual Black Solidarity Cooperative Conference in Oakland

• Aug 4: The International Symposium on Employee Ownership in Oxford /// The ESOP Association kicks off its EO Month Virtual Mini Series /// Ada Developers Academy’s fireside chat, The Builder’s Way: Building for People, Not Exits in Seattle

• Aug 5: Phase2 hosts the TX/OK Chapter of TEA for an ESOP info session in Oklahoma City /// SGS Economics & Planning’s online Q&A about Community Wealth Building in Australia /// The Texas Center for Employee Ownership’s free virtual training on employee ownership for CPAs and advisors /// US Federation of Worker Co-ops’ Worker Co-op Start-up Webinar

• Aug 6: NCEO’s webinar on ESOP diversification

Jobs

• Apis and Heritage is hiring a Controller to oversee financial operations

• Stronghold Ownership and Purpose Owned are looking for an Alternative Ownership Analyst & Project Manager

• Common Trust is looking for a Transaction Advisory Manager to work with small to midsize businesses

• PURPOSE is looking for a Co-Steward and Managing Partner to co-found its SO Capital team

Opportunities + Recaps

• Project Equity has opened registration for the last few spots at their EO Equals Summit in Chicago

• Minnesota Center for Employee Ownership is holding a new cohort for its MNCEO Ambassador Program; apply here

• Eric Schmid recaps the Missouri Center for Employee Ownership and WEPOWER’s joint initiative growing EO in St. Louis (ht MOCEO)

• The ICA unpacked ILO Convention 193, the first international labor standard covering platform economy workers

Employee Ownership

• Peter Lucas urges advisors to be early adopters of employee ownership if they want market share

• Loren Feldman argues that just having ownership doesn’t mean employees start thinking like owners

• A Connecticut veterinarian chose (direct) employee ownership over private equity when retiring, keeping his practice in the hands of staff

• Tom Powdrill shows that postwar conservatives traditionally supported worker ownership as a safeguard against concentrated power

📈 Employee Stock Ownership Plans

• Ohio-based ETNA Products Inc. is now employee-owned. Congrats!

• NCEO released its (paywalled) 2026 ESOP Recruitment and Retention Survey of 433 ESOP companies on how ownership is used to attract and keep talent; a quick summary is available here

• A federal appeals court ruled that ESOP fiduciaries are required to independently evaluate advisors (ht INCEO)

• The ESOP Association sent out their monthly report for July

• Chuck Mazzanti debunks the myth in construction that heavy surety bonding rules out an ESOP conversion

• Lafayette Square released a new report on the role of ESOPs in rural business succession /// Pairs well with chapters (including ours!) from the 2024 book Retaining and Transitioning Businesses in Communities

• 🎙️ Journey to an ESOP and Beyond discusses the differences between S corp and C corp ESOPs /// 🎙️ ESOP Radio looks at CCI Systems, examining what 40+ years does to an ESOP:

🤝 Worker Cooperatives

• Seattle-based restaurant Pidgin Cooperative has now become a worker co-op. Congrats! (ht USFWC)

• Spectrum News NY1 interviews Defector, a worker-owned media company (ht )

• The North Carolina Center for Employee Ownership posted a sheet to help owners understand worker co-ops

• Golda Velez launched Workers.vc, an accelerator where startup ownership is earned through contribution rather than capital (ht Golda Velez)

Employee Ownership Trusts

• NCEO wants to pack the room at its employee ownership trusts workshop in Phoenix in August. Register here!

• 🇮🇪 In significant milestone, employee ownership trusts have now been recognized as a formal policy consideration in Ireland

• Jason Wiener published a helpfully transparent case study on the details of Music Box Supper Club’s transition to an employee ownership trust in March (ht Issie Corvi)

The Ownership Economy

• PURPOSE published a new page with resources on financing steward ownership

• The Working Class Insights Forum in September includes a session titled The Ownership Economy: Building Wealth for Workers & Families

• Predistribution Initiative published a briefing on economic inequality as a macro-financial risk to markets and diversified portfolios

• Steward Market announces its first banking partnership, with Beneficial State Bank

• argues that the real economic gap in America is between asset owners and wage earners

• The International Cooperative and Mutual Insurance Federation says mutual and cooperative insurers make up over 25% of the global insurance market

• 🎙️ The Daily discusses how Trump Accounts could close the wealth gap /// Healed and Chilled featured Rochdale Capital CEO John Holdsclaw on the ownership economy and his approach to maintaining community engagement

🏘️ Community Ownership

• Our friends at The Main Street Journal are asking for support from to keep doing the work; sign up here

• Katcher launched Built to Last, a newsletter on community ownership and the work of the Thriving Communities Fund

• Del Valle residents are building a community-owned food co-op to bring fresh groceries to a Southeast Austin food desert

• Laguna Beach Community Land Trust acquired 50 artist studios for $9.5M, preserving the creative community in the city

• Myrtle Beach passed a $480K land purchase for 16 permanently affordable condos through its new community land trust

• Oregon’s Gathering Together Farm searches for mission-aligned successors after 40 years of organic farming (ht Peter Dorman) /// Shelterforce explains how community land trusts could be the solution for farms like this one

📚 Academic News

• Columbia Business School published a case study by Antony Bugg-Levine on Apis & Heritage’s worker ownership investment model

• Aaron Chipp-Miller published his UC San Diego dissertation arguing that the case for workplace democracy follows directly from the principles that justify political democracy. Congrats!

Almost there: In a recent episode of The Daily podcast this week, labor reporter offers two potential responses to housing unaffordability:

1. Stop deporting construction workers, and

2. Launch training programs to replace construction workers lost in the 1980s thanks to the intentional weakening of construction unions

What’s missing: There are at least two other things policymakers could do—one embedded in the reporting and another we wish labor reporters would cover more (I bet you can guess what it is!):

3. Rebuild worker power lost in the 1970s from efforts by to weaken unions by, well, strengthening unions (and, we might add, by including immigrants this time), and

4. Make construction work more appealing by sharing financial upside through employee ownership. Dallas-based Austin Commercial, for example, is one of at least thirteen construction companies among the country’s 100 largest ESOP-owned firms

Thanks for sharing the episode!

Subscribe now

🥃 Top Shelf News

• Andy Burnham became Prime Minister of the UK, and will govern with a coalition of both Labour Party and Co-operative Party MPs

• and Erinch Sahan opened pre-orders for their much-anticipated book, Brave New Capital

  • On July 29, Oxford’s Said Business School hosts the authors

• The ESOP Association launched a new Facilitator Certification Program

• The 21st Century Road to Housing Act, “the largest piece of housing legislation in decades,” is a victory for housing cooperatives, says NCBA CLUSA

👉 In This Issue

• Events
  Upcoming + Recaps + Opportunities

• Employee Ownership
  ESOPs + EOTs + Worker Cooperatives

• The Ownership Economy
  Corporate Governance + Digital Ownership + Community-Owned Real Estate + Member-Owned Finance

• Academic News

  New Papers

📅 Events + Recaps + Opportunities

To see a comprehensive list of events, go to our main Events page.

This Week

• 🆕 July 25: LA Co-op Lab’s Legal Cafe with 30-minute co-op consultations

• July 28-29: The Minnesota Cooperative Summit in Duluth, MN

• July 29: The Aspen Institute hosts Steve Dawson and Jerry Rubin on their new book, Help Wanted: How To Find and Keep Talent in a Forever-Tight Labor Market

• July 31: Better Portland hosts Hannah Sandmeyer to discuss local business succession

Recaps + Opportunities

• Project Equity is hiring a Growth & Product Marketing Manager

• NCBA CLUSA is looking for short film submissions for its IMPACT Film Fest

• The GitLab Foundation opened applications for round 2 of its Powering Economic Opportunity Fund; applications close Aug 12

• The Rutgers Institute is accepting nominations for its Economic Democracy Book Prize

• NCEO shares insights from their June Community Conversation

Employee Ownership

• TIME published a list of the “Best Private Companies of 2026,” many of which are employee owned

• The Institute for Economic Democracy joined the Diesis Network to help grow employee ownership in Europe

• Project Equity welcomed Kayla Hellal as their new Marketing Senior Manager. Congrats!

• Northern Trust granted up to 10 shares of company stock to all eligible employees globally under its new “Invested as One” initiative

• EO-pinions (get it?):

  • Mark Cuban points out that stock options at SpaceX minted 4,000 millionaires last month; he thinks more companies should do the same. Potential ally agrees!

  • Unlock Ownership cofounder Katie Boland makes the case for selling to employees over private equity

  • ICYMI: Emily Thomas of Morgan Stanley discusses the rise of employee ownership as an exit strategy

📈 Employee Stock Ownership Plans

• DBI, an office furniture store in Lansing, MI, has become the second business to take advantage of the state’s new employee ownership pilot program

• NCEO launched a task force to examine how repurchase obligations should affect ESOP valuation, and announced its September Communications Committee Crash Course

• Jason Muhme recently stepped into the role of Head of ESOP Finance at Northwest Bank. Congrats!

• ICYMI: In what we suspect is a smart use of Claude Code, Aaron Dean built an almanac of US companies with an employee stock ownership plan (h/t TXCEO)

Employee Ownership Trusts

• Douglas Singer and Katie Lyon share lessons any company can learn from employee ownership trusts, including how to share information and trust employees to act on it

• 🇨🇦 ICYMI: In British Columbia, Canada, Terra Remote Sensing transitioned to EOT

🤝 Worker Cooperatives

• NCRC’s Kaitlyn Ridel profiles how the Cooperative Fund of the Northeast is fighting the silver tsunami

• Baltimore’s Baby’s on Fire cafe closed after workers unionized — now staff are fighting to reopen it as a worker cooperative

• Sarah Kaplan of Pathlight Law launched a tool to help co-ops raise capital

• 🎙️ Everything Co-op talks with Katrina Kazda about the changes in home care

The Ownership Economy

• Lina Khan is the new head of the New York’s Economic Development Corporation; Jason Wiener is excited about what that means for cooperatives of all kinds

• In Europe, Politico covered the efforts to include employee and steward ownership in proposed EU corporate regulation

• The Economy of Francesco Academy compiled a collection of the work done by its fellows in 2026

  • In other news about Catholics, JD Vance endorses the ownership economy, hoping it will combat economic uncertainty of—and appeal of socialism to—young people

  • Thanks to Beth Nedrow for quoting and for restacking us!

AI and Digital Ownership

• Delilah Rothenberg argues that AI’s benefits will mainly go to existing capital owners unless predistributive ownership is established early on

• Illustrating that case, perhaps: and urge the SEC to demand full governance disclosure before OpenAI’s IPO (paywalled)

• Data cooperatives could be one answer to these governance issues, writes Rina Chandran in Rest of World

• Elyor Zitalni also thinks employee ownership will differentiate otherwise commoditized AI firms

🕴️Shared Governance

• In ImpactAlpha, Danielle Reed argues that including stakeholders in governance can help foundations maintain mission focus (paywalled)

• Julie Menter introduces freedom of choice as a framework for thinking about strategic decision-making in mission-driven firms

  • Transform Finance also published an article outlining the importance of governance in business longevity

• But Randall Smith writes for the WSJ on the slump in Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) investing (paywalled)

  • … and Ben & Jerry’s Foundation is at risk of shutting down amidst a souring relationship with its parent company

🏘️ Community-Owned Real Estate

• Africatown Community Land Trust secured first right of refusal for Seattle’s historic Liberty Bank Building

• The city of Superior, Wisconsin purchased the first home to be be placed in its community land trust

• Rupal Patel argued that private equity didn’t beat community ownership fairly

• explores explores whether paying neighbors could unlock housing approvals in resistant neighborhoods

🏦 Member-Owned Finance

• James Sherwin-Smith pledged to keep fighting for stronger member democracy at Nationwide

• A new cooperative bank opened in Cyprus, with an initial offer of 42 million shares

📚 Academic News

• Andrea Kim and Kyongji Han find employee ownership boosts performance most among agreeable and extraverted workers at lower hierarchical levels

• Timo Jütten claims the demand for workplace is based more on workers’ experiences of powerlessness than its benefits for political democracy

• Aaron Chipp-Miller demonstrates that relational egalitarianism supports the case for workplace democracy as convincingly as it does for political democracy

J.D. Vance has entered the chat.2 In an interview with Joe Rogan last week, Vance said

On artificial intelligence, we should “give normal people some power in this system” and “ensure that there’s some broader prosperity from that wealth creation.”

and

Channeling the late Charlie Kirk, stopping Gen Z socialism requires we “give young people a stake…give them ownership…give them a sense of the American dream and of possibility in the future…give workers a real say at the bargaining table.”

And then here’s Joe Rogan, sitting in Austin, just a two-step away from the full argument for employee ownership:

“the problem…is that corporations have a responsibility to their shareholders and they always want to make the most money possible and they have to make more money next quarter than they made this quarter. And one of the ways they do that is by paying people less.”

Watch the segment for yourself below, read on for pull quotes + commentary, and visit r/AskConservatives for further kicks.3

On broad-based ownership as a vaccine against socialism

Vance does not feign nuance when talking about socialism, but he does offer that

…there is this revulsion to socialism that’s totally justified without enough thinking about “how did we get here in the first place?”

So how did we here in the first place?

“Man, we ran the experiment. We ran the experiment of offshoring all of our industrial jobs, of becoming a services and finance economy, and allowing Wall Street to come in and buy every asset of modern life and turn it into an investable, you know, line-goes-up asset. And what has that done? It’s created a generation of kids who kind of are attracted to socialism.

Vance is quick to skip over the step in the middle, the one between “ran the experiment” and “created a generation of socialists,” which is “and that laissez-faire economic experiment made life worse for a lot of people.”

On worker power

“So if the system is f*cked,” Rogan asks, “how do we unf*ck it?” Included in Vance’s pro-union answer:

We should give workers a real say at the bargaining table…if you go back to like why did the United States and Britain weather the industrial revolution better than literally every other western country? [In part,] I think you could make a good argument. Strong religious institutions. Right now, we have very weak religious institutions. Number two, I think you could say strong worker participation institutions and not just private sector labor unions.

[’s] idea is that 20th century labor law presupposes a sort of zero sum conflict between the company and the union and that where you’ve seen unions actually thrive in certain places in Europe, it’s a little bit more cooperative and the unions actually have a little bit more power themselves where they can negotiate with the corporation with a little bit more breadth and a little bit more freedom.

What other prominent Republican politicians openly describe themselves as pro-union, much less in favor of unions having more latitude beyond negotiating for higher wages? This is a major narrative shift on Vance’s part, aimed at a formerly stalwart Democratic power base.

On the danger of concentrated corporate power

Echoing anti-monopolist think thanker Matt Stoller, Vance goes straight for the throat of big business:

So if you go back again to what worked and what was broken about the industrial revolution, hyper monopolist style companies that had way too much power…if a single corporation has monopolized an entire space, then you don’t have a real democracy unless you reign in the power of that company. And I think that is another big risk with AI. It’s that we have a hyper monopolist who dominates the space and then influences the government, influences the nonprofit sector, and then real people are effectively cut out of the bargain.

I’m not going to pretend sitting here that I have all the solutions. I think about this more than almost anything else right now. But the solution has to be giving normal people actual authority over their own lives…one of the big mistakes we made in the early 2000s is we should have gone after the big tech companies with antitrust. There is like a trustbusting mechanism that exists in the US government. We just didn’t use it. We’re going to have to be willing to use it in the 21st century.

Teddy Roosevelt was a Republican, but the political inheritors of his trust-busting cause for most of the 20th century were Democrats, not the free-market Reaganite Republicans. This is another major, populist narrative shift.4

On AI and distributism

Vance starts the segment with a reference to the Catholic social doctrine of distributism (i.e. the ownership economy).

…there’s a Christian idea of political economy that’s actually been lost in American politics, where it’s like we think of it as libertarianism, the hardcore free market, versus socialism or communism. And there actually is a third way that has existed in pretty much all Christian economic thinking going back 2,000 years ago.

Distributism has been around 140 years or so, and is typically traced back to Pope Leo XIII’s 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum,5 which Vance references later when discussing AI:

…Now, there’s this fascinating encyclical written by Pope Leo XIII. I’ll send it to you. It’s one of the best things that I think has ever been written by a Christian leader where it’s written in the late 19th century. And the basic argument of it is that in the age of industrial churn, there has to be a middle way between six-year-olds working on the factory floor and socialism.

Part of the solution is to give workers a sort of say in what’s going on. Give normal people some power in this system. And I think that’s the thing we have to figure out with AI… Control over what their kids are seeing, control over, you know, the economic forces that are being unleashed by AI, some certainty that they’re not going to wake up in a world where they can’t buy a home, but some other guy owns 35 mansions, right?

That to me is the fundamental challenge of AI. It’s that it’s going to unleash a lot of wealth creation, but if that wealth creation all goes to some segment of people, you’re going to have communism. Like that is the choice before us. A lot of wealth being created—that’s good by the way. I like wealth being created. But if you don’t ensure that there’s some broader prosperity from that wealth creation, like we have run this experiment before and it leads to communism, right?

We’ve had a few things to say (here, here) about who should have a stake and a say in the companies developing generative AI. Vance is staking out a pretty powerful economic message for 2028. Democrats had better catch up quick.

• Hacker News user IESAI_ski announced the creation of workerowned.info, a search tool for shopping online from worker-owned companies

• For TIME, Lynn Forester de Rothschild from the Council for Inclusive Capitalism argues that AI should lead to an ownership economy (h/t )

  • Similarly, thinks we should tax AI use to fund the social disruption caused by job loss

  • And of course we have thoughts

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👉 In This Issue

• Events
  Upcoming + Opportunities

• Employee Ownership
  ESOPs + Worker Cooperatives

• The Ownership Economy
  Community Ownership + Steward Ownership + Purpose-Driven Ownership

• Academic News
  Call for Papers + New Research

📅 Events + Reflections & Recaps

To see a comprehensive list of events, check out our Events page.

This Week

• July 16: Startup Colorado hosts an info session with the head of the Rocky Mountain Employee Ownership Center, Minsun Ji

  • Also, researchers from the University of Minnesota present their findings on business succession and transitions

• July 21: Rachel Eva Merfalen and Tom Strong’s Employee Ownership and the Skills of the Future webinar

• July 22: EO Canada hosts a webinar on exit options for selling owners

• July 23: Exit Planning Institute’s webinar on ESOP financing

Opportunities

• PURPOSE is looking for a Co-Steward and Managing Partner to co-found its SO Capital team

• The Cooperative Development Institute is hiring an Executive Director

Employee Ownership

• Project Equity wants to make 30% of Washington businesses employee-owned by 2036

• Registration is open for the Ohio Center for Employee Ownership 2026 National Employee-Owner Summit

• The Texas Center for Employee Ownership was awarded a grant by the Austin Community Fund to support its ongoing initiatives

• of the Baker Project compares ESOPs with direct employee ownership

• In ImpactAlpha, surveys the expansion of expansion of capital infrastructure for alternative ownership (paywalled)

• of Regenerative Insights interviews Miren Oca, CEO of Ocaquatics, an employee ownership trust

• Ownership Works affiliate Lightyear Capital included an Employee Purpose Plan with their recent investment in Prosperity Partners

📈 Employee Stock Ownership Plans

• Richard, a construction company (IL), and Decker’s Market, a grocery chain (WY), are now employee-owned. Congrats!

• ESOP M&A: Armstrong Garden Centers (CA) acquired Pike Nurseries (GA); and Gemini Industries (OK) acquired Industrial Coating Solutions (WA)

  • Success interviews Shannon Litton, CEO of 3LS, on how to maintain culture while building through acquisition

• Expanding ESOPs selected Bob Whalen as its CEO spotlight

• The Star Tribune maps Minnesota’s largest employee ownership plans

• In HR Executive, Ulteig CHRO Sara Chapman cautions that an ESOP is a foundation, not a substitute, for a people-centric culture

🤝 Worker Cooperatives

• Michelle Schry represented US co-ops at a United Nations sustainability event

• Cooperative Works explains what changes in federal funding for non-profits means for co-ops

• Registration is open for the 10th Annual National Home Care Cooperative Conference in Tacoma

  • Elias Crim also introduced Elevate Cooperative, uniting 14 home care worker co-ops across 11 states (h/t TXCEO)

• 🇨🇺 Cuba approved new laws designed in part to strengthen its agricultural cooperatives

• ICYMI: Solidfund is an international group that distributes capital to co-ops in need of capital

• 🎙️ Cooperation Now launched its podcast this week with Episode 0: Introducing the Routledge Handbook

• 🎙️ For The Purposeful Strategist, Belden Menkus interviews ICA Director Jeroen Douglas

The Ownership Economy

• and Erinch Sahan open pre-orders next week for their new book, Brave New Capital

• Santhosh Ramdoss reframes the American Dream as an ownership dream

• Tom Powdrill drew on Spain’s new Democracy at Work report to argue that ownership and worker voice are distinct forms of economic citizenship

Community Ownership

• 🇬🇧 Power to Change published a report outlining the economic benefits of community ownership

• OPAL Community Land Trust showed how its permanent land ownership structure shields affordable homes from federal financing disruptions

• Rupal Patel uses the New York Knicks‘ championship win to make the case for community ownership and culture

  • Also in New York, Mayor Mamdani re-purposed an underused parking lot into a public community hub via a community land trust

Steward Ownership

• Steward Ownership created a tool to help entrepreneurs considering steward ownership for their businesses

• The Humboldt Institute for Internet and Society announced The Future of Ownership, its research project on steward ownership

Purpose-Driven Ownership

• Read Hannah Sandmeyer’s purpose-built business lens on The Onion’s acquisition of conspiracy news outlet Infowars

• ’s Superpowers for Good released its inaugural PurposeBuilt100 list of the fastest-growing purpose-driven companies in the US

📚 Academic Calls + News

• The call for papers is open for the Steward Ownership Festival Amsterdam

• Enrica Chiappero-Martinetti argues for bending capabilities research toward more human-centred organizational design

• Giulia Belotti argues for alternative ownership of carbon dioxide removal technologies

• Chieh Lin and company find that broad-based employee ownership “is associated with lower abnormal accruals, more persistent earnings, and a reduced likelihood of financial restatements and securities class action lawsuits.”

  • Pairs well with ’s 2024 paper on earnings management

• A new chapter from Matthew Thompson connects community wealth building and the foundational economy

• Laura Ariadne Martin reviews Bernardo Ferro’s Hegel Beyond Liberalism, which reclaims Hegel’s vision of freedom

Thanks for reading The Stakehold! This post is public, so feel free to share it!

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This week is a lot. Let’s get right back to it!

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🥃 Top Shelf News

• In The Atlantic, asks why everyone (including us) is talking about universal basic capital as a way to curb economic inequality amid the rise of AI

  • Employee ownership advocates will recognize this as an update of Louis Kelso’s General Stock Ownership Plan (GSOP)

• 🍭 b.a.Sweetie, North America’s largest candy store, is now employee-owned. Congrats!

  • 🐝 Local buzz: A half dozen of Dr. Hand’s neighbors in Oak Cliff, Texas, are employee owners of Pariveda, a Dallas software company founded by that became majority employee-owned this week (h/t Jeff M.)

• New Jersey passed what Corey Rosen calls a major bill providing grants to businesses to cover the costs of exploring employee ownership

  • Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer also celebrated a pilot program that has led to seven businesses committed to transition to employee ownership

• The Purpose Trust Ownership Network (PTON) is expanding it Board of Directors; apply today

👉 In This Issue

• Events
  Upcoming + Recaps + Opportunities + Deadlines

• Employee Ownership
  ESOPs + EOTs + Worker Cooperatives

• The Ownership Economy
  Community-Owned Real Estate + Member-Owned Finance

• Academic News

  New Papers

📅 Events + Recaps + Opportunities + Deadlines

To see a comprehensive list of events, go to our main Events page.

This Week

• July 10: The Center for Community Wealth’s webinar Employee Ownership Skills: Open Book Management

• 🆕 July 14: NCEO’s succession planning webinar, Who Comes Next and How

• July 15: Shelterforce’s webinar “What does a good housing “impact investment” look like?”

• July 16: Startup Colorado’s info session with the head of the Rocky Mountain Employee Ownership Center

  • 🆕 Also, researchers from the University of Minnesota present their findings on business succession

Recaps

• Ebony Gustave recaps her learnings from a tour of New York City’s co-op scene

• Lolita Nunn reflects on her takeaways from the Aspen Institute Employee Ideas Forum

• The US Federation of Worker Co-ops published the notes from the first-ever South Central U.S. Cooperative Support Ecosystem Convening

• The Walker Group published a recording of their recent webinar, Beyond the Traditional Sale

Opportunities

• The US Federation of Worker Co-ops is urging people to make their local policymakers aware of the new WORK Act

• NCEO is hiring a remote Marketing Director

• Brattleboro Development Credit Corporation is hiring an in-person Small Business Solutions and Transitions Manager

Deadlines

• July 14: Prices increase for NCEO’s annual Forum

• July 17: Registration due for the ESOP Employee Accelerator in Houston

• July 19: Applications due for Ownership Capital Labs’ Employee Ownership Fund Accelerator

• July 30: Applications due for start.coop’s Media Accelerator Program

• July 31: Deadline to contribute to the Cooperative Identity Advisory Groups’ draft of its Revised Cooperative Identity Statement

Employee Ownership

• 🇬🇧 At the close of Pride Month, eoa argued that employee-owned businesses are more likely to be diverse and inclusive workplaces

• Corey Rosen shares a new survey showing that 70% of consumers would prefer to support employee-owned businesses

• HBS posted a recording of the opening panel from its TOP25 Worker Ownership Conference

• ABAB News writes about the history and inner workings of the employee-owned private equity firm Neuberger Berman

• The Tandem Center for Shared Business Success published a book, Direct Employee Ownership: Building a Culture and Legacy of Shared Success

• Gerard McGeary makes the case for employee ownership in nine LinkedIn posts

📈 Employee Stock Ownership Plans

• Industry heavyweight Ginny Vanderslice announced her retirement from Praxis, which she co-founded. Congrats Ginny!

• Congrats to the businesses that announced ESOP transitions this week: EPS Group (AZ, CO); Organic Remedies (PA); Taylor Automotive Family (OH); Miller-Valentine Group (OH, paywalled); Memorials by Michael (IA, via acquisition); and North Arrow ABA (MI, utilizing a new pilot grant program). Congrats all!

• A CEO explains how his ESOP beat private equity consolidation

• The Rutgers Institute launched a free online ESOP education program for business advisors

• For NCEO, Francesca Santos writes about how ESOPs recruit and retain employees, and highlights a study showing that ESOPs have lower employee turnover rates

• 🎙️ Journey to an ESOP and Beyond highlights the importance of financial fluency and clarity; ESOP Radio discusses the recent legislative strides

Employee Ownership Trusts

• ROST Inc. of Missouri transitioned to an employee ownership trust to preserve the ‘family-built’ culture of the company. Congrats!

• 🇬🇧 Across the pond, Costello Medical, a global healthcare consultancy firm, and Dalziel & Pow, a design firm, are now employee-owned.

• 🇨🇦 In the second installment of his Employee Ownership Around the World series, Robert Postlethwaite covers Canada

• 🎙️ The David McWilliams Podcast hosts Alan Coleman on employee ownership as a potential solution to the rise in Irish businesses being sold to foreign investors:

🤝 Worker Cooperatives

• In New York, psychotherapy firm MCM Collaborative became worker-owned (paywalled)

• The International Cooperative Alliance posted its July update and the Cooperative Development Foundation its quarterly roundup

• 🎙️ In Ethical Exits, tells the story of True Value Hardware’s acquisition by Do It Best, a cooperative

The Ownership Economy

• Transform Finance updated its database of funds investing in alternative ownership enterprises

• Mercè Bayén outlines the case for platform cooperativism while looking at venture capital funding

  • Other platform cooperativism news (we think?): MintStars created a 20% co-ownership pool for its adult content creators

🏘️ Community-Owned Real Estate

• Kensington Food Company, part of the Kensington Corridor Trust, opened its doors last week

• In Washington state, Upper Valley MEND cut the ribbon on two affordable homes

• The NCBA released a revised edition of its 2006 book on housing cooperatives, Home Base: The Playbook for Cooperative Development

• 🇰🇪 In a landmark ruling, a court in Kenya ruled in favor of a local indigenous land trust

• 🇬🇧 In the UK, residents of East London have been waiting eight years for a promised community housing will be completed; Streamline explains how community land trusts are aiding Liverpool’s housing crisis

• 🇪🇺 European Ownership proposes that steward ownership and broad-based employee ownership be included in the European Commission’s proposed 28th regime

Consumer Ownership

• updated the title of her reader-owned book and announced plans to convert her entire media platform to reader-ownership

• Libbey Hanson asks why it has taken residents of San Luis Obispo over a decade to open a cooperative grocery store

  • Also in California: Muskoka Good Food Group announces its closing

• But it’s not all sad news! Caledonia Food Co-op opened its doors in Vermont (paywalled)

(This week’s title was inspired by this song, courtesy of Ben Mayer)

📚 Academic News

• In JPEO, David Ellerman asks whether employee ownership can learn from experience

• Marc Thompson’s book Spark: Igniting Organizational Change through a Planetary Mindset includes a chapter on the role of purposing (?) in organizational change

• K.D. Yenisey views cross-border telework as a direct threat to workplace democracy

• 🇮🇩 Risman Setiawan makes the case for village cooperatives (PDF) in Indonesia

From Mark/Dr. Hand: It’s good to be back! Parental leave is quite a gift, America. We should really give this some thought for our second quarter century 🇺🇸

One gift I gave myself this month: Watching Company Retreat.

• The setup: An unsuspecting temp joins a company them throw a company retreat. But it’s all fake—the retreat, company, the workers, the whole thing. Imagine if Punked made Truman Show in the register of Ted Lasso.

• The plot: The CEO of Rockin’ Grandma’s Hot Sauce is about to retire. He has to decide whether to hand the company over to his bumbling son or sell it to private equity. The company retreat is his self-imposed decision deadline.

• The missed opportunity: Like many owners, Rockin’ Grandma’s CEO doesn’t seem to know there is a third option—or rather, a whole set of potential third options. Without giving away too much, I’ll just say that Rockin’ Grandma’s fake employees are pretty great, and the family-run company inspires instant loyalty from the show’s lovable rube of a hero.

The ask: Who do we know at Amazon Studios that could work employee ownership into its next hijinks?

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🥃 Top Shelf News

• Ken Baker donated $1 million to a new partnership between the Pennsylvania Center for Employee Ownership a new partnership with the Rutgers Institute

• Baltimore’s next budget could include $250k for worker cooperative conversions

• Andy Burnham, the likely next UK Prime Minister, advocates for cooperatives

• Keith Sonderling has been nominated for Secretary of Labor

• ICYMI: Dr. Hand posted a meta-newsletter this week

👉 In This Issue

• Events
  Coming up + Recaps + Opportunities

• Employee Ownership
  ESOPs + employee ownership trusts + worker cooperatives

• The Ownership Economy
  Community-owned real estate + consumer co-ops

• Academic News
  New papers

📅 Events + Reflections & Recaps

To see a comprehensive list of events, go to our Events page.

This Week

• July 4: United Nations International Day of Cooperatives

• July 8-10: IAFEP Conference at the University of Mondragon in Spain

• July 9: Project Equity’s webinar on succession planning in Chicago’s North Side

Recaps + Opportunities

• The Vermont Employee Ownership Center recaps its Employee Ownership Conference

• Empowered Ventures, an employee-owned holding company, is seeking external members for a new Advisory Board

• is almost done with her next book, Brave New Capital, and asked for our help with a few finishing touches

Employee Ownership

• For Impact Entrepreneur, Sandra Stewart writes that employee ownership is having a moment among impact investors

• For EO Equals, J.P. Morgan executive Regina Carls speaks to the rise of interest in employee ownership

• ICYMI: North Carolina Employee Ownership Center has a resource to help business owners determine what form of EO is right for them

📈 Employee stock ownership plans

• 🚸 asks whether Imagine Early Learning Centers’ employee ownership could be the answer to worker retention for childcare providers \

• The National Center for Employee Ownership published the agenda for its Forum in August

  • NCEO also blogged about what leaders of established ESOPs need to consider next

  • And they published (paywalled) results for their most recent ESOP Recruitment and Retention Survey

• Rick Haglund reports that ESOPs are gaining momentum in northern Michigan

• CEO Wayne Berson reflects on the decision to transition to ESOP ownership (paywalled)

• 🎙️ ESOP Radio discusses what employees (should) do with the wealth gained from ESOP ownership

• 🎙️ Journey to an ESOP asks when to bring up an ESOP when talking to business owners

🤝 Employee ownership trusts + worker cooperatives

• The NCBA opened early-bird registration for its 2026 Cooperative IMPACT Conference

• 🇬🇧 Churchill acquired Principle Cleaning Services, forming one of the largest employee ownership trusts in the UK

• ICYMI: US Federation of Worker Co-ops holds a monthly webinar on the first Wednesday; tune in to the next one on August 5th

The Ownership Economy

• opened pre-orders for her two most recent books: Of Course: A New Common Sense and The Power Memo

• Fran Seegull of ImpactAlpha writes about how democracy is interlinked with improved economic prosperity (paywalled)

• Gallup News finds that 78% of Americans believe the American Dream is still worth striving for, but 46% feel everyone has the possibility of achieving it

• ICYMI: In its February newsletter, announced Tom Powdrill as Project Lead on their new project, Broadening Corporate Governance Participation

• ICYMI: launched an Industry Spotlight on private equity (h/t Claire Everhart)

🏘️ Community-owned real estate + consumer co-ops

• NIMB outlines the state of Co-ops in Puerto Rico, citing a rise in housing co-ops (h/t ICA Group)

• Anne Gentry nostalgically considers the past of grocers and sees potential in food co-ops

• Alisal Country Estates is bought by its residents for $12M, hoping to preserve affordable housing for workers in the community (h/t David Gray)

📚 Academic News

• The academic Steward Ownership Network (StONe) has now officially launched in Europe

• Iñingo Gonzales-Ricoy examines the efficiency of labor-managed firms

• Isabelle Ferreras proposes mandatory worker board representation and a Corporate Democratic Development Index (check out our thoughts on that, too!)

• Yu et al. find that employee ownership curbs environmental misconduct in Chinese firms, but only up to a point

• Mandal and Yadav synthesized how employee voice, representation, and participation function in modern firms

• Jonathan Michie and Joseph Blasi asked what it would take to move employee ownership beyond its plateau of 250-300 new plans a year

• Jung et al. found that employee ownership pushes firms toward transparency

• Lara Monticelli reflects on Marcelo Vieta’s book Commoning Labour and Democracy at Work

Thanks for reading The Stakehold! This post is public, so feel free to share it.

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This list is mostly on employee ownership; it was also compiled mostly on the fly, mostly while watching plucky little Ecuador national team shock the Germans in the World Cup. 🇪🇨 ¡Vamos La Tri! 🇪🇨

• Help us build out and update this list with your organization’s newsletter. If you have a URL we can link to, we’ll include it. (Last update: 6 August 2026.)

On employee ownership, generally:

• The Employee Ownership Expansion Network (EOX) monthly Ownership Everywhere newsletter covers updates from all 20+ state-level centers for employee ownership.

  • Most of these states have their own newsletters; Ohio Employee Ownership Center’s Owners at Work magazine ran a print version for 30 years before becoming the Owners at Work podcast.

• The Rutgers Institute publishes an occasional newsletter, which you can sign up for here; they also publish some articles to a newsfeed.

• Social Capital Partners’ newsletter will keep you updated on all things employee ownership in Canada.

• Project Equity’s newsletter includes org updates and resources for transitioning to employee ownership.

• Jason Wiener PC’s monthly newsletter offers a lawyerly perspective on ownership transitions.

• Employee Ownership Canada’s The Ownership Update features major updates and expert insights in the Canadian scene.

• has a running series highlighting historical figures most of us don’t know were supporters of worker ownership.

• Ownership Works’ new Ownership Exchange LinkedIn newsletter shares updates from its private equity affiliates.

On employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs):

• The ESOP Association’s monthly ESOP Report is a good source of policy updates and news from The ESOP Association’s regional chapters.

• The Employee Owned S-Corps of America (ESCA) newsletter includes the org’s announcements, volunteer opportunities, and policy updates.

• The National Center for Employee Ownership (NCEO) regularly updates its useful blog, and for its members, NCEO has a general monthly newsletter as well as The Download, a newsletter on ESOP communications.

• Empowered Ventures’ EV Monthly shares updates with its companies and news on employee ownership.

• The ESOP Centre publishes the newspad, a monthly digest on all things ESOP in the UK

On cooperatives generally (and worker cooperatives specifically):

• The National Cooperative Business Association’s Co-Op Weekly does what it says on the tin, and includes news on worker cooperatives and other types of cooperative business.

• The International Cooperative Alliance’s Cooperative Insider shares news and events on cooperatives and the alliance’s members.

• Democracy at Work Institute’s newsletter covers its news and programs and updates on worker cooperatives.

• Grassroots Economic Organizing’s GEO Newsletter, in operation since 1991 (!), covers economic democracy and the solidarity economy, with a focus on worker cooperatives.

• The Cooperative Development Foundation’s News Roundup compiles Top Shelf events/news from the last quarter. To sign up, see the bottom of its home page.

On purpose trust ownership:

• The Purpose Trust Ownership (PTON) newsletter email list offers updates on the organization, purpose trusts, and employee ownership trusts.

• ’s Substack shares announcements on the organization’s work creating mixed-income neighborhood trusts (MINTs).

On ownership investing and non-extractive finance:

• Transform Finance’s mailing list includes updates on its work on community-owned real estate, alternative ownership models, participatory investment, and more.

• Ownership Capital Lab’s newsletter reports on its efforts to expand investment in employee ownership.

• The Predistribution Initiative’s recently launched newsletter, launched earlier this year, shares updates on its work building alternatives to extractive finance.

On other stuff, but which also include employee ownership:

• The Aspen Institute Economic Opportunities Program (which co-hosts the annual Employee Ownership Ideas Forum in DC with the Rutgers Institute) posts a Monthly Digest that includes news on employee ownership as one way to improve job quality.

• ’s The Elysian includes occasional updates on her crowd-funded book, We Should Own the Future.

• , a Substack newsletter, writes about the Catholic Worker Movement, which is friendly to worker and employee ownership.

  • The Francesco Collaborative’s blog is similarly rooted in Catholic social teaching.

• ’s Main Street Journal is a Substack newsletter on local economies, and pretty simpatico with employee ownership.

What are we missing?

• Let us know so we can get new folks the information they need.

This will be the last post of my guest editorship before handing it over to Mark Hand, who will take the helm next week. It has been a blast and an honor to engage with you all over the last few weeks. While I’m gone for now, there’s a good chance I will be back sooner than later! - Mike

Happy Saturday, everyone! I spend a lot of time thinking about how to build ownership cultures that foster an “ownership mindset”. I often start with Joseph Blasi and Doug Kruse’s conclusion:

“Employee ownership does not magically and automatically improve employee attitudes and behavior when it is implemented”

As Melissa Hoover reminded us at the 2026 EO Ideas Forum, it must be paired with scalable workplace processes and structures. Frameworks explaining what else is required exist, and new research finds that management practices can yield substantial productivity gains in EO companies.

I had this in mind while reading a recent interview with Ethan Rouen, co-chair of Harvard’s The Ownership Project, about research he co-authored with Leigh Wiess of KKR on three management practices that “pay off”.

Financial literacy and transparency made the short list, as did taking worker well-being metrics as seriously as financial metrics. The surprise for me was the third: build an empathy mindset. They found that organizations with more empathetic CEOs achieved 2.4 times higher retention and 1.9 times higher engagement. And a growing body of research finds that workplace empathy is linked to improved business performance.

When we talk about building an ownership culture and mindset, non-managerial workers are often the focus. But Rouen and Wiess’s research reminds us that culture building is a two-way street, and leadership has a mindset to develop, too.

🥃 Top Shelf News

• NPR Affiliate WKSU hosts Ohio EO advocates and local employee-owner on its hour-long “Sound of Ideas” program

• Forbes lays out the 250-year history of employee ownership in the US

• The Ohio Employee Ownership Center is highlighted in a long-form multimedia article produced by Kent State Media

• Canadian budget bill becomes law, enshrining capital gains exemption for business owners selling to EOTs and worker co-ops

👉 In This Issue

• Events + Reflections & Opportunities

• Employee Ownership, ESOPs, EOTs, & Worker Co-ops

• The Ownership Economy, Community-owned real estate, & Member-owned finance

• Academic News

📅 Events + Reflections & Opportunities

To see a comprehensive list of events, go to our main Events page.

This Week

• June 28-30: the Rutgers Institute’s Future of Equity Symposium in Palo Alto, CA (see RSVP, proposal submission form, and 2025 program)

  • ESOP Association’s CFO Summit in Sonoma, CA

• June 29-July 1: Cooperatives Europe’s Youth Voices, Cooperative Choices conference in Budapest

Reflections

• Minnesota Center for Employee Ownership recaps its Built to Last: Business Legacy & Ownership Summit

• NCEO looks back on its New Manager Workshop in Denver, CO

• EOX reflects on the Greater Washington Employee Ownership Summit, presented in partnership with Project Equity

• NCEO reviews last week’s “Is an ESOP right for you?” event in Columbus

Opportunities

• Project Equity is looking to hire an In-House Graphic Designer

  • And a Part-time Capital Deployment Manager

• The Democracy at Work Institute is looking for a Cooperative Development Field Director

• The 2026 New York Cooperative Summit, taking place in October, has a call for workshop proposals

Employee Ownership

• ICYMI: Mark Cuban voices his opinion that every worker should get company stock

• 🎙️ Wisconsin Center for Employee Ownership launched the first episode of its podcast, featuring Steve Storkan

• Employee Ownership Expansion Network published the June edition of their newsletter

• The CBO scored the Senate Bill S.1728, which would create a federal Advisory Council on Employee Ownership to advise the DOL

📈 Employee Stock Ownership Plans

• SWCA Environmental Consultants’ sustainability report credits its employee-owner staff for driving the firm’s long-term environmental commitments

• Primary Care Centers of Eastern Kentucky moves to an ESOP ownership model

• Washington-based Fogle Pump and Supply becomes 49% employee-owned via an ESOP

• Michael Sinacore is chosen to help lead Expanding ESOPs’ efforts to pass legislation

• The CA/NV Chapter of The ESOP Association is now accepting nominations for its awards; deadline set for July 31st

Employee Ownership Trusts

• Software consultancy firm thoughtbot transitioned to an EOT structure

• The BBC explains why more owners are selling to their employees and highlights Softstar Shoes, an employee-owned trust in Oregon

• UK-based organic food retailer Grape Tree issued a £100,000 staff bonus to workers

• Common Trust writes about P. Terry’s transition to an EOT and what it helped preserve

🤝 Worker Cooperatives

• Elias Crim introduced Elevate Cooperative, the ICA Group’s new network uniting 13 home care worker co-ops, startups, and co-op developers across 11 states

• Doug O’Brien writes about the role of co-ops in the US over the last 250 years

• United Steelworkers highlights how unionized co-ops build workplace democracy

• In CounterPunch, Laura Flanders covers the challenges of the NYC economy and reflects on worker cooperatives as a solution

The Ownership Economy

• 🎙️ The Center for Community Wealth released the first episode of its podcast, The Wealth We Build

• Arla Foods and DMK Group merged to form Europe’s largest dairy cooperative, with over 11,000 farmers 28,000 colleagues and 20 billion euros in revenue

• Courtney Rozen writes on how Trump is exploring mecahisms for the US government and public to gain a stake in major AI firms (paywalled)

🏘️ Community-owned Real Estate

• Ground Works Consulting writes on how to ensure community ownership policies endure

• Roseland Community Land Trust applied to build 17 affordable homes in Cornwall

• El Paso’s City Council will consider a Community Benefits Agreement tied to Meta’s new data center

Consumer Ownership

• East End Food Co-op’s board rejected a member-proposed boycott of Israeli-sourced products

• Monadnock Food Co-op announced plans for a second store, opening in 2028

📚 Academic News

• Steven Klein highlighted labor unions as distinct vehicles for economic democracy in a leading political science journal

• William Foley’s MA thesis explored job quality in worker cooperatives and the effects of ownership, participation, and control

• Building on the work of Isabelle Ferreras, Alexandre Chardavoine proposed “Direct Economic Bicameralism” for formalizing workplace democracy inside firms

• Sara Jex of MIT examined how community wealth-building strategies can guide the redevelopment of brownfield sites in industrial legacy cities

• David Ellerman compared the EOT model to other EO models, highlighting some of its limitations. Pairs well with Dr. Hand’s recent paper on a similar topic.

Hello and Happy Friday! You may have missed it, but the editorial board of The Economist published an article earlier this month titled “How to fight back against Gen-Z socialism".

While conceding that the grievances animating Gen-Z all “stem from real issues,” the article argues that current proposals threaten prosperity and functioning markets.

Nothing noteworthy, yet.

But a single line, tucked away at the end of the article, piqued my interest. Commenting on what an appropriate political response would be, The Economist writes, free market liberals:

“…must be more positive and imaginative in their own prescriptions, using a mixture of taxes, distributed capital ownership, and support for workers to make sure that the upsides of labor-market disruption are widely shared.”

That phrase “distributed capital ownership” is not defined in this article or, according to a few AI models we use, anywhere in any article published by the outlet in the last year.

I could think of a few ways to define it (with concrete examples), but I thought asking you all for your thoughts would be more interesting. Even better - perhaps an intrepid Stakeholder would be up for writing a letter to the editor asking for a definition and providing examples.

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🥃 Top Shelf News

• Labor leaders warn that German codetermination is under assault, pressured by AI-driven restructuring, EU reforms, and management tactics meant to bypass worker representation rules

• Yahoo Finance details Mark Cuban’s proposal: every worker should receive company stock in the same manner as CEOs

• ICYMI: NCEO paper finds that selling to an ESOP costs less than selling to another buyer

👉 In This Issue

• Events + Reflections & Recaps

• Employee Ownership, ESOPs, Employee Ownership Trusts & Worker Cooperatives

• The Ownership Economy, Consumer Co-ops, Community-Owned Real Estate

• Academic News, Higher Ed Governance

📅 Events + Reflections & Recaps

To see a comprehensive list of events, go to our main Events page.

This Next Week

• June 24: The National Cooperative Business Association’s webinar Stronger Together: Cooperative Models

  • 🆕 Session 3 of the Cooperative Fund of the Northeast’s Co-op Curious Mini Course

  • 🆕 Employee Ownership Canada hosts an Ask the Experts webinar covering EOTs

• June 25: Oxford’s one-day conference Reimagining the future of work - towards a right to shape AI

  • The ICA Group’s NYC Cooperative Community 2026, aimed at helping co-ops integrate deeper into the co-op world of NYC

Reflections & Recaps

• The Aspen Institute published video recordings of the 2026 Employee Ownership Ideas Forum

  • Read our Claude-created summary here

• Professor Júlia Martins Rodrigues of Colorado University reflects on her trip to Mondragon and the Basque region of Spain.

• The CA/NV Chapter of The ESOP Association reflects on the ESOP Employee Accelerator

Employee Ownership

• Decathlon, the world’s largest sports retailer, extends its employee ownership program; 54% of employees already hold shares.

• Ownership Capital Lab and Catalyze launched a free nine-month accelerator for emerging EO fund managers

• 🚀 SpaceX’s IPO raises the question of what workers with equity will do once shares go public; Rutgers’ Bill Castellano weighs in

• Employee Ownership Canada announced its three keynote speakers for its October conference in Vancouver

• Ownership Works welcomed Allyson Tucker and Scott Chan to its Board of Directors

📈 Employee Stock Ownership Plans

• The NCEO releases a new 98-page report detailing recruitment and retention strategies among ESOPs

• Bill Fotsch made the case that ESOP-driven rollups are quietly emerging as a real competitor to private equity

• NewAge Industries CEO Ken Baker announced his retirement after 42 years leading the 100% ESOP-owned manufacturer

• 🩺 Keena Healthcare Technology recently transitioned to employee ownership via a 100% ESOP. Congrats!

• The ESOP Association spotlighted Maine-based engineering firm Sebago Technics for its ownership culture and talent retention

🤝 Employee Ownership Trust & Worker Cooperatives

• KCI, a Toronto-based philanthropy and talent consultant, transitioned to an Employee Ownership Trust, benefiting from the new developments in Canadian EOT law

• Rachel Medina, CEO of LiveOak Living Community, discussed why the Texas-based company used an EOT to transition ownership

• KU Leuven launched its Cooperative entrepreneurship: organizing for sustainability course on Tuesday

The Ownership Economy

• Tej Gonza, co-founder of the Institute of Economic Democracy, announced he is stepping down from his CEO position and will serve as president, while Kosta Juri takes on the leadership position

• ICYMI: The Predistribution AI Lab launched a three-paper series on broadening equity ownership as the fix for AI’s K-shaped economy

• Rowland Brohawn traced how George Mason’s revolutionary-period writings inspired Louis Kelso’s case for broadly owned capital

Consumer Co-ops

• Blackberry Food Cooperative, a local grocery store in Cottage Grove, OR, opened under new ownership this week; the community

• Farm Supply Company and Grange Co-op are pursuing a merger to expand their regional agricultural cooperative network

• Northside Food Co-op lost a $6.8M endowment grant after IRS compliance issues surfaced, a cautionary tale for co-op governance

🏘️ Community-Owned Real Estate

• Rep. Becca Balint pitched Vermont’s community land trust model for national rollout, the first serious push to scale CLT infrastructure beyond local pilots

• Homestead Community Land Trust unveiled 30 permanently affordable condos in Seattle’s Phinney Ridge neighborhood

📚 Academic News

• Jessica Pollock, writing for Harvard’s Forum on Corporate Governance, argues that classifying broad employee equity grants as dilutive ignores important technical aspects and benefits of shared ownership, including value creation.

• Gorm Winther contends that cooperative enterprises are an active expression of concrete human needs, not a niche economic form

• Lenart Nici writes that competitive markets reproduce capitalist exploitation even in worker-managed companies

• Hiroyuki Fujimura introduced a special issue on employee participation in Japan

Higher Ed Governance

• Auburn University scrapped its faculty-led shared governance structure in response to state legislation going into effect this October

• Columbia University’s president, Claire Shipman, pledged greater transparency and renewed support for shared governance after a year of scrutiny over secrecy

Happy Saturday, everyone. I headed into this week thinking I’d talk about the World Cup, then two BIG Texas stories won out.

First, the Stakehold team just got bigger! Mark Hand welcomed his little bundle of joy —Mr. John Clayton Hand—into the world earlier this week. Big congrats to Mom, Dad, and the whole family!🎉🎉🎉

Then, only days later, the EO universe delivered another story that I suspect made Dr. Hand smile.

P. Terry’s, a beloved restaurant chain in Central Texas, transitioned to employee ownership using an employee ownership trust. With 1,800 employees across 38 locations, it is now one of the largest EOTs in the US. The chain also established a profit-sharing plan that will distribute 5% of the company’s operating income, with the goal of increasing it to 20%. All while retaining its commitment to an affordable menu—as of today, a scratch-made burger costs $3.10.

Commenting on the transition, co-founders Patrick and Kathy Terry said:

From the beginning, we believed that taking care of people and building a great business weren’t competing ideas… This transition is the most honest expression of that belief we’ve ever made. P. Terry’s always belonged to the people who show up every day. Now, it’s official.”

Here’s to the Hands, the Terrys, and everyone building a future worth sharing!

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🥃 Top Shelf News

• New Jersey’s Senate Economic Growth Committee advanced a bill to create an Employee Ownership Transition Program

  • Sen. Zwicker, sponsor of the bill, wrote an op-ed on why NJ needs more employee ownership

• The Predistribution Initiative launched its AI Lab with a three-paper series on broadening equity ownership as the fix for our AI-powered K-shaped economy

• Elias Crim published a new book, Social Cooperatives: How local communities can reclaim control of social care

👉 In This Issue

• Events + Reflections

• Employee Ownership, ESOPs, EOTs, & Worker co-ops

• The Ownership Economy, Community-owned real estate, & Member-owned finance

• Academic News

📅 Events + Reflections

To see a comprehensive list of events, go to our main Events page.

This Week

• June 15: OEOC and NCEO’s Is an ESOP right for you? in Columbus, OH begins

• June 16: NCEO’s New [ESOP] Manager Workshop in Denver, CO begins

  • ESCA’s Midwestern Regional Policy Seminar in Chicago begins

  • First day of the DiO 2026 Conference in Fontainebleau, France

  • Food Co-op Initiative and Start.coop host a workshop on rural food co-op feasibility and community organizing

  • Ownership Capital Lab hosts a virtual webinar: EO Fund Spotlight: Catalytic capital for employee ownership

• June 18: Common Trust hosts virtual Owners Session: Employee Ownership as an Operating Model

• June 19: UK EO Day in Birmingham

  • Including Scott Bader’s webinar, Combining stewardship and entrepreneurship, celebrating 75 years of employee ownership

Reflections

• EOX reflects on its presence at the 2026 Employee Ownership Ideas Forum

Employee Ownership

• 🎉 Darcy Valent joins Ownership Capital Lab as Development & Philanthropic Partnerships Lead and reflects on her work ahead. Congrats!

• UMass Amherst’s Building Solidarity Economies program won a 2026 Distinguished Community Engagement Award (h/t ICA Group)

• Mike Harris outlines the growth of employee ownership from 2019-23 and what it means for the California Central Coast

📈 Employee Stock Ownership Plans

• Newsweek’s 2026 Greatest Workplaces list includes ten ESOP companies

• Massachusetts-based Surety Bond Professionals becomes an ESOP

• Forvis Mazars outlines the five ESOP audit considerations for leaders

• ESCA highlights employee-owned businesses involved in the FIFA World Cup

• 🎙️ ESOP Radio hosts discuss encouraging EO developments coming out of Washington

🏛️Employee Ownership Trusts

• Common Trust published a short case study on how Clegg Auto’s transition led to business growth

  • 🎙️CEO Kevin Clegg also speaks about the transition on The Steward Chair

• 📱 Vermont-based social media company Front Porch Forum intends to sell the company to its employees using an EOT

🤝 Worker Cooperatives

• Resilience re-published an article from Josh Davis, arguing that for the cooperative movement to thrive, open debate is key (h/t ICA Group)

• Sean Geobey argued that the best cooperatives don’t get governance right at founding — they build structures flexible enough to respond to changes

• Cooperatives Europe published its annual report for 2025-26

• NCBA applications for its ‘Lightning Talks’ at IMPACT 26 are due on July 17th

• 🤖🎙️ We recently found what we believe to be a completely AI-generated podcast about co-ops. Weird.

The Ownership Economy

• 🎙️ Aaron Tanaka argues on the Luce Change Podcast that America’s political crisis is actually an ownership crisis at its root

• Well-known economist Mariana Mazzucato reflects on the origina of her new book, The Common Good Economy; US release date is September 11th

🏘️ Community-owned Real Estate

• East New York Community Land Trust purchased its first commercial property, marking a milestone for CLT-owned commercial real estate

• Ottawa Community Land Trust acquires its third property intended to protect affordable housing

• Green Bay’s community land trust could receive its first 11 donated homes (Paywalled)

Member-owned Finance

• Nationwide Building Society distributed £440 to 4.4 million of members this week, while its CEO pay nearly doubled to £4.67m, raising questions about its current member governance arrangements

📚 Academic News

• Ian Macfarlane writes on what social and economic factors support 100% ESOP adoption

• Kovačević et al. proposed a dual-model path to property-owning democracy, using Serbia’s succession crisis as a test case

• Omar Mehdi surveyed employee share ownership practices across the US, UK and France, finding that while the term is universal, the models vary considerably

• Kim and Morales found that worker cooperatives build collective resilience among immigrant domestic workers

• Shin and Park discover that employee ownership deters managers from withholding bad news, reducing stock price crash risk

• Véronique Dutraive argued that Dewey’s pragmatic democracy enriches Hayek’s market liberalism by embedding ethics and institutional learning into social coordination

Happy Saturday, folks! I had the pleasure of getting out of the office this week to attend the 2026 Employee Ownership Ideas Forum in Washington D.C. It was my first time attending but according to a few veteran attendees, this year was standout.

The Aspen Institute and Rutgers University, co-organizers of the event, posted full recordings of the two-day gathering. Here are a few quotes and ideas that stuck with me:

• ESOPs have long lost siblings. Steven Hill reminded us that Louis Kelso, the creator of ESOPs, had a vision of shared ownership that went beyond companies and workers; he called it “universal capitalism.” In addition to ESOPs, Kelso thought deeply about what he termed CSOPs (C=consumer) and GSOPs (G=general).

• The EO field is not organized to meet the moment; Loren Rodgers has a plan. As he put it, “at best we support each other haphazardly, and duplicate each other’s efforts… At worst, we tussle.” Rather than dwell on diagnosing the “why,” Rodgers proposed “ield-wide responses, including more joint events, community statements on urgent issues like AI, and a shared EO event calendar [in the meantime, here is ours!]. He also committed NCEO staff and resources to help get the project off the ground.

• What are we actually achieving when appointing workers to the board of directors in ESOP companies? Melissa Hoover argued that “being the single worker on the board” can have “negative impacts on worker well-being and job satisfaction.” Chris Mackin, noting the difference between decision-making power and consultative power, thinks workers should occupy vetting committees for board members.

• The coming economic inequality and power concentration of the AI revolution cannot be solved by employee ownership alone. Even if all AI-related firms became employee-owned, economic inequality would continue to rise due to the monopolistic nature of the market.

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🥃 Top Shelf News

• Anthropic submitted a confidential filing for an IPO on Monday; Dr. Hand asks how it will relate to Anthropic’s Long-Term Benefit Trust

  • Bernie Sanders announces he will introduce legislation to create an American A.I. Sovereign Wealth Fund through a one-time 50% tax paid in stock, giving the public a direct ownership stake in major AI companies

• NCEO’s Corey Rosen finds sales to ESOPs are slightly lower than sales to outside buyers

• 🎨 Colorado passed the Artist Company Act, creating the world’s first legal entity built for artist-owned businesses; Jason Wiener explains

• Rutgers launched their Employee Ownership Research-to-Practice Hub, translating research into practical tools

👉 In This Issue

• Events This Week

• Employee Ownership, including ESOPs, worker coops, and employee ownership trusts

• The Ownership Economy, including AI + ownership and perpetual purpose trusts

• Academic News,

📅 Events

To see a comprehensive list of events, go to our main Events page.

This Week

• June 8-10: Cooperatives and Mutuals Canada’s CMC Congress 2026 is set to take place at York University, ON

  • 🆕 NCEO’s webinar with Mike Brady on Demystifying M&A for Acquisitive ESOPs

• June 9: University of Pittsburgh School of Business’s Pittsburgh Business Legacy Conference

• June 11: VEOC’s Selling Owner Pre-Conference in Burlington, VT

• June 12: VEOC’s annual Employee Ownership Conference

  • Pura Vida Festival hosts a panel on Conscious Capitalism and Steward Ownership

Employee Ownership

• The World interviews Joseph Blasi about Samsung Electronics’ plan to share 10% of the profits from its AI chip manufacturing with 78,000 of its employees

  • Read deeper context here (H/t Jenny Everett)

• Bill Fotsch, writing for Inc., explains how the benefits of employee ownership are realized when combined with management practices and engagement

• Regina Carls from JP Morgan writes for EO Equals on why more companies are exploring employee ownership earlier in the succession planning process

📈 Employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs)

• Tuttle Printing of Vermont has just became 100% employee-owned via an ESOP. Congrats!

• The SBA quietly raised barriers to ESOP loans for companies with non-citizen employees

• Beloved Economies stresses that ESOPs thrive when financial ownership is paired with worker input and accountability

• 👷 Matt Barney, CFO of Ohio-based Messer Construction, argues that ESOPs are an underutilized workforce strategy in the industry

• Bloomberg Tax’s Zachary Wertheimer examines how ESOPs can use outside debt to manage repurchase obligations

• TynanGroup CFO shares why they chose an ESOP rather than private equity when developing their business succession plan

• The Employee Ownership Foundation opened applications for its Charles R. Edmunson Scholarship; Applications close on June 15th

• 🎙️ ESOP Radio covered research from Rutgers showing that ESOPs increase productivity

  • The latest episode of Journey to an ESOP & Beyond brings on Art Smith to discuss DB Engineering’s transition to 100% employee ownership

🤝 Worker cooperatives

• North Carolina’s Poder Emma is teaching industrial sewing classes to members of the Latino community, with plans to create a worker-owned textile cooperative

• The International Center for Cooperative Management at Saint Mary’s created a playlist of videos from their recent Symposium held in May

• Euricse created the Doctoral Thesis Award in memory of Carlo Borzaga, rewarding research exploring the intersection of cooperatives and pathways to peace; the submission deadline is June 30th

• 🎙️ ICYMI: Episode four of the Coops Building a Better World podcast, called Educating and participating for a cooperative world

Employee ownership trusts

• Writing for Forbes, Project Equity CEO Evan Edwards introduced employee ownership trusts as a flexible, lower-cost succession alternative to ESOPs for mission-driven business owners

The Ownership Economy

• Julie Menter reviews Eric Ries’ new book, Incorruptible, on how companies stay true to their mission over time

• Clarasys’ MacCallum-Orr and Willford argued that purpose without structural protection is just branding

• A new report from Beloved Economies and partners urges a unified narrative to bring inclusive‑economy work into mainstream economic conversations

• Doughnut Economics Action Lab welcomed Pins Brown as its new Business and Enterprise Lead

• Forbes’ Aparna Rae shows how new grants are helping nonprofits pilot ownership‑based models

• Sarita Gupta writes for Time that to promote democracy, we need to address economic inequality

• Beyond Ownership officially launches its blog with a post titled “Why Are We Here? What Problems Are We Here To Solve?”

🤖 AI and ownership

• Daniel Wortel-London reminds us that the AI-and-ownership debate isn’t new. Louis Kelso made the same case for broad capital ownership in 1965

• In a new report, CanTrust Hosting and Hypha Worker Co-operative argue that building an alternative co-operative AI infrastructure in Canada is technologically feasible and necessary

• ICYMI: Paula D’Ambrosa asked who should own the AI stack and how communities can capture a share of the value it generates

Perpetual purpose trusts

• 💆 Osmosis Day Spa has become a perpetual purpose trust. Congratulations on the milestone!

📚 Academic News

• Abstracts are due June 15th for The Ownership Project at Harvard Business School’s Steward Ownership Conference

• Schmid and Dobusch find that most “open strategy” initiatives engage many voices but few actually count; workplace democracy is the fix

• Hannes Kuch defends plural cooperativism against critics, arguing that cooperatives outperform trust-owned firms and can deliver benefits that extend beyond the workplace

• In Renewal, Benjamin Thomas argues that “industrial democracy” has historical roots in the British left and right

We plan to keep learning and writing about this, and eventually launch a second newsletter on the broader ownership economy. If you’d like to become a partner or founding sponsor of that newsletter, please email us! And in the meantime, subscribe to our current weekender:

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A working definition of the ownership economy

In an ownership economy, those affected by or who contribute to an organization also have a stake and/or a say in how and for whom those organizations operate.

The ownership economy includes ownership of where we work (worker, employee, and producer ownership); where we live (community ownership of real estate); where we spend money (consumer ownership); our data (digital user ownership); and where our money lives (member-owned finance).

We’ll walk through each of those categories below, in addition to steward ownership, which might philosophically reject all of the above.

Ownership of where we work

Employee, worker, and producer ownership are much more widespread than you might think. 25 million Americans, ~14% of the US workforce, are employee owners in some way. That's far more than the country’s 15 million union members, more than half of whom are public sector workers. Walking through a few of those ownership forms:

• You have likely heard of the employee stock options common in the tech industry; some 12 million people are part of equity compensation plans like that. Millions of other Americans who work in publicly traded companies might have purchased or been granted stock.

• Typically, though, employee ownership in the US describes four forms of broad-based worker and employee ownership: worker cooperatives, employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs), employee ownership trusts (EOTs), and direct employee ownership. Employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs) are retirement plan equivalents regulated by the Department of Labor. They make up the lion’s share of the 11 million employee owners in America. WinCo, Bob’s Red Mill, and King Arthur Baking are all 100% employee-owned via an ESOP.

• More recently, private equity firms affiliated with Ownership Works, a nonprofit, have gotten in the employee ownership game by offering restricted stock to employees of the companies they buy and intend to sell.

• Globally, worker and producer cooperatives are much more common than in the United States. They “provide jobs or work opportunities to 10% of the employed population,” or ~280 million people. Mondragon, a 70,000-worker network of cooperatives in the Basque region of Spain, is the largest.

  • A note to the eagle-eyed reader: “and producer” is doing a lot of work in that sentence above. Worker cooperatives tend to be in a single firm; producer cooperatives are typically made up of independent producers of a similar good, often an agricultural commodity.

    They were central to Black Americans’ efforts at self-determination, bring much of India’s milk to its citizens, and also bring Tillamook Cheese, Land O’ Lakes butter, and Organic Valley milk to Americans. In Australia, Cooperative Bulk Handling handles generates $4 billion of revenue a year for its >$4k farmer-members.

  • Beyond cooperatives, countries like Canada and the United Kingdom have established other forms of government-incentivized employee ownership. Others, like France, have had government-mandated profit-sharing systems in place for some time.

One final note: Platform cooperativism is an emerging concept that references shared ownership of digital platforms by producers or contributors. Think Stocksy in Canada, CoopCycle in France, or the Drivers Cooperative in the US.

Ownership of where we live

In the early- and mid-twentieth century, entrepreneurs in England, India, and the US South began setting up what would become community lands trusts, in which a nonprofit permanently owns land, while residents own the structures. Many of the first CLTs in the US were formed to protect and empower Black farmers. Then, in the eighties, Bernie Sanders municipalized the model, and the housing-focused community land trust he helped set up is now the largest in the country. (Our own wrote about their potential use in Mexico, too.)

Also in the mid-twentieth century, energetic New Yorkers began scaling up local labor-focused housing cooperatives. Since then, other forms of community ownership (aka community wealth-building models) have ramified:

• In Los Angeles in 2001, The Staples center became the first real estate project to sign a community benefits agreement. That’s not exactly ownership, but it does lock in benefits to communities typically left out of major projects.

• In 2015, the NYC Real Estate Investment Cooperative launched one of the first real estate investment cooperatives, member-owned cooperatives that finance and hold commercial space—not housing, but still real-estate.

• In Portland in 2017, Mercy Corps launched the first community investment trust, designed not just to protect land for use by a community, but also to give community members appreciating ownership in it.

• In Philadelphia in 2019, Kensington Corridor Trust launched the first neighborhood trust, a sort of community land trust but built on top of a non-charitable purpose trust dedicated to a purpose rather than to beneficiaries.

The US hasn’t been alone in this experimentation, of course—along the way Americans have learned from similar efforts in Europe, Australia, Latin America, and the rest of the globe.

Ownership of where we spend money

What do REI, the Basin Electric Power Cooperative of North Dakota, and the Green Bay Packers have in common? They’re all owned by their customers, like the internet briefly hoped Spirit Airlines could be.

• Start with the most popular, but perhaps least powerful, example of consumer ownership: the Green Bay Packers. The football team is owned by half a million fans, but their ownership “pays no dividends, benefits from no earnings, isn't tradeable and has no securities-law protection.”

If that doesn’t sound like real ownership to you, we agree: the sort of ownership we imagine here includes both financial and/or decision-making rights. By contrast:

• The owners of outdoor gear chain REI have both: we get a patronage dividend and also elect REI’s Board of Directors.

• The Basin Electric Power Cooperative of North Dakota is a sort of meta-cooperative: it sells electricity to 138 rural electric cooperatives, in turn owned and controlled by their 3 million users.

• ACE Hardware is a cooperative owned by individual store-owners.

All these are examples are of consumers, users, customers, or even businesses owning the companies they buy stuff from, rather than the companies they work for.

Ownership of our data

In this economy, one industry hoovers up the lion’s share of our data, investment, and trained electricians: artificial intelligence. Think tanks, philanthropists, commentators, policymakers, and even tech industry insiders are asking:

Who should own and control these private companies, whose leaders make decisions with public consequences?

This is not the first time someone has asked who should own/control/make money from a new technology. For example:

• Wikipedia, Mozilla, the Internet Archive, ProtonMail, and Signal are all nonprofit- or foundation-owned; BlueSky is a Public Benefit Corporation, which (mostly) locks in it mission.

• Silicon Valley luminaries have long argued that data is the new labor, and we should be compensated when others profit from it.

• Data trusts, collaboratives, and cooperatives help protect user control over their data.

• Before Spirit Airlines’ brief TikTok moment, #BuyTwitter and The People’s Bid for TikTok explored what user-owned social media might look like.

One interesting thing: these examples tend to understand users (us) as producers, not customers.

• For most of these platforms, advertisers are the customer. We are the producers, and the product is our attention, which we trade for nice software or entertainment.

• For others (e.g. Anthropic’s Claude, which doesn’t have ads) we are both customers (if we subscribe) and data producers (if we don’t uncheck that box).

Ownership of where our money lives

Credit unions, mutual savings banks, mutual insurers, and cooperative banks offer

• Over 140 million Americans—more than half of adults in the US—are members of a credit union like Navy Federal Credit Union.

• State Farm and Nationwide are both examples of mutual insurance, or insurance companies owned by their policyholders.

• In Europe, mutual finance shows up as cooperative banking. Some of the Europe’s largest regional banks (Crédit Agricole and Crédit Mutuel in France; Rabobank in the Netherlands) are member-owned.

As with the Green Bay Packers above, there are some edge cases worth mentioning: Public wealth funds, public banking, and baby bonds are all to de-privatize finance in some way, and some descriptions of ownership economy-related terms include them. While those ideas have their merits, they are either (1) government ownership, or (2) at-a-distance ownership of companies via index funds, which seems pretty far from an individual having a meaningful stake in any particular company, much less a say in how they operate.

Ownership of—wait, have we gotten this all wrong?

There are three expressions of the ownership economy that don’t fit neatly into this bullet point framework.

Multi-stakeholder ownership

This category including multi-stakeholder cooperatives and multi-stakeholder purpose trusts. In both of these, as the name implies, multiple stakeholders (workers, customers, residents, users, suppliers, communities, nature) hold ownership of some kind.

• Multi-stakeholder cooperatives have developed mostly in two places: in Italy, thanks to a 1991 law supporting social cooperatives; and the Canadian state of Quebec, which in 1997 developed the legal framework for solidarity cooperatives.

• Organically Grown Company of Oregon is the first (and maybe only?) multi-stakeholder purpose trust.

Steward ownership

The second outlying expression of the ownership economy that doesn't quite fit our boxes is steward ownership, which stands somewhat apart from all this (and perhaps sometimes in opposition to it). For steward ownership advocates the answer to “who should own this?” is “no one.”

Steward ownership includes a commitment to two principles:

• Self-governance, in which control of the company is detached from passive, absent, or speculative investors; instead, people involved in the company control it.

• Purpose-orientation, which is that a company’s profits should serve the company’s purpose, rather than being extracted to owners.

In practice, steward ownership takes multiple forms, with varying degrees of commitment to those two principles.

• In Northern Europe, steward ownership manifests as enterprise foundations.

• In the US, it usually means purpose trust ownership (e.g. Patagonia and Anthropic) and sometimes foundation ownership (e.g. Newman’s Own, Dr. Seuss Enterprises, and the John Green’s Good Store).

• Others, like German search engine Ecosia and Finnish software company Sharetribe, use a golden share or veto share to protect their purpose.

• Another group, led by B Lab, advocate for nature inclusive governance.

We think this still belongs under the ownership economy umbrella as one set of defensible answers to our core questions about ownership. What is distinct about their answers is that they look (to us) more like the rejection of private property practiced by indigenous Americans.

Organizational democracy

The third concept that we think is a part of the ownership economy, cuts across these categories, and isn’t well defined is shared decision-making power. More on that in our next long read!

With A Little Help From Our Friends

As always, thank you for reading. We would love to hear from you in the comments or via email. Which of the above phrases resonate with you? What else do you think should be included here? Excluded? Broken out or described some other way? What other examples should we include?

Postscript: On Labels and Definitions

Many other organizations are building this ownership economy, with different labels and/or definitions, and with varying levels of overlap with our own (working) definition.

On the ownership economy:

• Unless you count George W. Bush’s ownership society, the first use of the phrase I could find to is a now-deleted distributist video series from 2015.

• In 2017 NCEO set up www.ownershipeconomy.org to host their research on employee ownership’s effects on early-career workers.

• In the early 2020s it re-emerged among technologists in reference to cryptocurrency and decentralized finance. The Ownership Economy Summit grew out of that world and has since become a more broadly-focused ownership certification program.

• The first recent use of the phrase in this broader sense might be ’s 2022 article in Fortune.

• launched ImpactAlpha’s ownership economy beat in 2024, the same year Ashoka’s started using the phrase.

• In 2025 raised >$100k for her forthcoming book, We Should Own the Economy.

  • The 2025 Aspen Ideas:Economy conference used the phrase and called for more ownership investing.

  • In the same year, Marjorie Kelly used the term to refer (only) to employee and worker ownership in an SSIR article

• In 2026, Former Ashoka fellow Alison Lingane uses it today to describe her Ownership Capital Lab roadshow

The phrase ownership economy has some momentum, but it isn’t the only label out there:

• Sara Horowitz’s definition of mutualism, for example, includes much of the above plus non-monetary organizations like mutual aid societies.

  • Kellogg College at Oxford’s Centre on Mutual and Co-owned Business is more narrowly focused on businesses owned by their members (customers, employees and communities).

Other labels include: shared and mutual ownership (used by the Urban Institute), community ownership (Nonprofit Finance Fund, Justice Capital, and Exit to Community), the solidarity economy (most of Latin America + ), alternative ownership enterprises (Transform Finance), the democratic economy (The Democracy Collaborative), a pluralist commonwealth (), an economy for the common good (the Germans and ), plural ownership (Elaine Tod and company), a distributism (Catholics), economic democracy (leftists), predistribution (other leftists), binary economics (Louis and Patricia Kelso), property-owning democracy (liberal political theorists), shared ownership (us, in a previous life), and incorruptible companies (Maybe? Eric Reis’s term).

Happy Friday! I don’t know if it’s the same for you, but this past week I have been (pleasantly) inundated with analysis, reactions, and hot takes on Pope Leo XIV’s first encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas. For the uninitiated, an encyclical is basically the pope’s long-form memo to humanity — and this one puts humans, specifically workers, at the center of the text. And it speaks to the same questions and issues that those working in the shared-ownership space are asking and answering today, including questions about the centrality of work to human dignity, technology’s benefits for or harms to workers, and a singular focus on the pursuit of profits (I can go on!).

As Nathan Schneider points out, this encyclical is best understood alongside one issued in 1891 by Pope Leo XIII, which focused on the upheavals of the Industrial Revolution and provided a “spiritual foundation” for reshaping economic policy and workers’ rights movements. Then, as today, the encyclical is best read not merely as a religious document, but as a rough sketch of what a system that works for all humanity would look like.

I’d like to think all you fellow Stakeholders have a few ideas of how to make that happen. It’s good to know the Pope does too!

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🥃 Top Shelf News

• The Aspen-Rutgers Employee Ownership Ideas Forum kicks off in DC next week

• Nathan Schneider argues that Pope Leo XIV’s new encyclical Magnifica Humanitas has the potential to help shape our economic future

• MICEO is hiring an Executive Director in Grand Rapids

• CU Boulder’s MEDLab launches a student-led and faculty-guided media campaign aimed at bringing community ownership into mainstream entrepreneurship in Colorado

• Jo Hun Han et al. use a dataset of over 1 million workers to understand what drives participation in company-sponsored Employee Stock Purchase Plans

• In Social Capital Insider, Chris Benguhe et al. highlight that workers’ well-being is directly connected to business performance, including profitability

👉 In This Issue

• Events + Reflections, including events this week, recaps, and job postings

• Employee Ownership

• The Ownership Economy

• Academic News

📅 Events + Reflections & Opportunities

To see a comprehensive list of events, go to our main Events page.

This Week

• June 1: Project Equity hosts a free webinar, Employee Ownership for B Corps: A Deeper Dive

  • And the Economy of Francesco’s webinar: What Is Integral Finance?

• June 2: The Aspen-Rutgers Employee Ownership Ideas Forum in DC begins

  • At SXSW London, Purpose Foundation hosts a fireside chat with Ben & Jerry’s co-founder Ben Cohen

  • The Grunin Center’s Conference on Legal Issues in Social Entrepreneurship and Impact Investing, with a track on ownership investing

  • 🆕 NCEO’s Mature ESOPs: What Boards and Leaders Need to Plan for Next webinar

• 🆕 June 3: Cooperatives Europe hosts a webinar for episode three of their dialogue series: Cooperating, adapting, responding: spotlight on environmental crises

  • 🆕 Boston Impact Initiative’s Advancing Regenerative Capital Fellowship Info Session Zoom webinar

• June 4: The Walker Group’s Beyond the Traditional Sale webinar, brings together owners of PPTs and EOTs

  • 🆕 Also, the UK Society for Cooperative Studies 2026 Annual Online Lecture: Co-operatives and their ecosystems: The ‘why’, ‘who’, and ‘how’ in supporting the sector to grow

Reflections & Opportunities

• Ownership Capital Lab reflects on its EO Capital Roadmap Roadshow in Atlanta, focusing on the post-conference workshop

  • Watch attendees share why community ownership matters, from frontline workers to philanthropic investors

• MICEO is hiring an Executive Director in Grand Rapids

Employee Ownership

• Zoe Schlag of Common Trust explains how to build an effective EOT transition team capable of assisting with the layered decisions selling owners must make

• Aspen Institute’s Matt Helmer and Maxwell Johnson writing in Forbes propose an answer to the problem of the “silver tsunami” - employee ownership (paywalled)

• A newly introduced House bill would exempt RSUs from overtime pay, making it easier for employee-owned companies to share equity with workers, writes Corey Rosen

• Peter Koehler suggests employee and trust ownership aren’t new; they’re modern solutions to an ancient question: How to make productive property serve the broader community?

• 🎙️ The Owners at Work podcast released a new episode exploring how employee ownership fits into economic development

• The ESOP Association released its monthly report, including event reflections and announcements

• Ownership Works outlines five key takeaways from its 2026 CEO & Executive Convening

Worker Cooperatives

• Congrats to the organizations selected to receive funding from the Cooperative Development Fund!

• COWOP launches a cooperative reading circle and podcast alongside a new Routledge Research Companion on cooperative economics

• ICYMI: CooperationWorks! posted an introductory presentation on cooperative governance

The Ownership Economy

• Jennifer Harris argues AI is speeding the creation of a new aristocracy, and expanding ownership through worker co-ops and public equity is the strongest remedy (paywalled) (H/t Jenny Everett)

• Nick Hanauer and Eric Beinhocker note that minimum wage increases, once feared to kill jobs, don’t. They hope this challenges our “certainties”(paywalled)

• Kyle Westaway of Vanguard breaks down how its customer-owned governance design saved $1 trillion for everyday investors

• For , Jeff Fong proposes giving city residents shares in their municipality, allowing residents to share the value created by their collective presence

📚 Academic News

• Investigating Japan’s labor-management relations, Hiroyuki Fujimura finds they remain stable and collaborative; however, working conditions have not improved as much as they should do to unions being too “cooperative” with management

• Jonathan Michie and others argue that cooperatives and mutual businesses are not just “ethical alternatives” but disciplined enterprises that generate social value

• Jason Spicer and Ruoniu Wang find that while most community land trusts pursue climate action and economic security, financial constraints force them to choose between the two, creating a “double bind”

• Reviewing forty-four studies, Norgaga et al. find that employee ownership is an effective tool for reducing agency costs and improving governance

Readers, I’m happy to report we have added another member to The Stakehold summer team. Co-author and friend will ship your next few newsletters while I take a breather to be with my (soon to be growing) family. Enjoy his first edition! - MCH

Happy Friday! Editing my first edition of The Stakehold got me thinking about community benefits agreements—formal agreements that developers and other organizations enter into with communities in which their project will be built.

One example: The Denver Broncos are negotiating a community benefits agreement with with community members from the host county for their new stadium that might commit the Broncos’ owners to things like “building affordable housing, expanding childcare options and creating opportunities for local artists.”

There is a long history of sports stadiums—often publicly subsidized, like the Cleveland Browns’ planned $1 billion new stadium—that do not quite deliver for local communities. Denver could serve as a model for development projects across the country, creating a formal mechanism that sets up stakeholders to benefit from a project they will have a hand in building and maintaining.

This is not quite shared ownership, but perhaps a distant cousin? And it could be applied to any project—including the 1000+ planned data centers across the US or the Tallgrass pipeline in Nebraska (h/t ).

About me: I’m a nerd for employee ownership and (strangely) thought it was a good idea to get a PhD focused on it. At the Ohio Employee Ownership Center I am lucky to work daily with business owners, employee owners, and academics in the employee ownership community. And finally, I am super excited to be in conversation with all you Stakeholders! -

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🥃 Top Shelf News

• Gavin Newsom’s Executive Order on AI includes language on worker ownership, writes NCEO’s Scott Rodrick

• The Perpetual Trust Ownership Network is hiring a Network Coordinator. (Maybe this will put me in Mark’s good graces, given that he co-founded the organization!)

• In Europe, the Steward Ownership Network (StOne) won a highly competitive grant from the European Cooperation in Science & Technology (COST)

• In case you missed it, Fidan Kurtulus and Eric Hoyt recently published a landmark ESOP study:

  • Using three national datasets, they find that ESOP adoption in manufacturing companies leads to productivity increases between 5.6%-6.7%, with those gains increasing as ESOP accounts increased in value

👉 In This Issue

• Events + Opportunities. This week’s events + new jobs

• Employee Ownership, including ESOPs and worker cooperatives

• The Ownership Economy, including community-owned real estate

• Academic News, including new papers

(Editor’s note: Thank you for filling out the poll! None of you use the links, and you were 50/50 on whether this section is useful, so we cut it in half.)

📅 Events + Opportunities

Visit our Events page for recently announced and other events.

This Week

• May 23: The Economy of Francesco’s International Conference on Franciscan Economics in Sansepolcro, Italy

• May 26: CUNY Law School Community Economic Development Clinic’s Building Mutual Social Economy Bridges in Queens, NY

  • And Steward Market’s Live Demo + Q&A

• May 28: The first day of the International Cooperative Banking Association’s 2026 Symposium at the UN Headquarters in Manhattan, NY

  • And Humanity @ Work & Life and ASETT’s Building Mutual Social Economy Bridges Reception in Boston, MA

Opportunities

• 40 Million Owners opened applications for an Employee Ownership M&A Analyst

• The Missouri Center for Employee Ownership is hiring a Community Partnerships Coordinator

Employee Ownership

• Employees at Hustle, a San Francisco-based social messaging company bought it from Social Capital

• EOX added Direct Employee Ownership as a flexible, low-cost path to ownership transition on its website

• The leaders of Text-Em-All, an employee ownership trust, won the Small Giants Founder & CEO Hall of Fame Award (h/t )

• Ownership Works launched its own newsletter, The Ownership Exchange

• Sophie Hares from MasterCard interviews Pete Stavros about the 180 companies where the Ownership Works model has been applied

Employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs)

• The Rutgers Institute is running a national survey of ESOP companies and their workers. Contact Doug Kruse if you (or someone you know) would like to participate

• SteadyRain, a 100% employee-owned digital agency, acquired fellow ESOP company Smooth Fusion (h/t TXCEO)

• The House Appropriations Committee urged the Commerce Department to address the financing gap holding back ESOP growth in small and mid-sized businesses, writes Corey Rosen

• Verit Advisors’ Jake Cravens outlines the benefits of partial ESOPs

• 🎙️ Journey to an ESOP episode covers the work done during the negotiation process of ESOP transactions

  • In the latest episode of Alternative Exit, Bob Whalen discusses how he turned a 94-year-old family business into a 100% ESOP

Worker cooperatives

• Solar Shaw of Colorado and Wasatch Food Coop in Salt Lake City are now worker-owned. Congrats!

• A National Survey of Worker Cooperatives is under way. If you would like to participate, or know a business that would, reach out to Mike Palmieri (yes, the same one)

• Adam Schultz and others are building a school in Durham to teach founders and workers how to create cooperative enterprises

• Tamah Yisrael reflects on her keynote speech at the California Co-op Conference

• ICA’s May 2026 Coop Insider newsletter is out

The Ownership Economy

• On ImpactAlpha, covers Calvert Impacts recent investments in employee and community ownership

• Two foundations filed a shareholder proposal demanding clarity about Home Depot’s use of customer data

• Michal Leibowitz of the New York Times profiled Deep Springs College, a student-owned and operated institution in the California desert (paywalled)

• We spotted that The Ownership Economy has ratcheted up their LinkedIn posts—give them a follow for their more-than-bullet-point analysis

• ICYMI: 🎙️ The Screw this… Let’s try something else podcast released all six episodes of its podcast telling stories of communities making changes from the ground up (h/t Jessica Friday):

Community-owned real estate

• The UK’s Community Right to Buy became law, though Yasmin Ibison of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation warns that the most deprived communities will need targeted funding to benefit

• Jessica Friday revisits Hazel Sheffield’s recent interview on community land trusts

• The Farm Bill that passed through the US House includes a provision to reinstate the Rural Cooperative Development Grant program through 2031

• Neil McInroy argues that Community Wealth Building isn’t soft social policy; it’s economic development done properly

📚 Academic News

• The University of Miami created the Community Ownership Learning and Action Lab, and it released its first report, as well as a webinar

• New papers

  • In his new article, Tej Gonza breaks down how Slovenia quietly built its new employee ownership law

  • Lisa Herzog published a new Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on economic democracy

  • Here’s a hot take: Stephen C. Miller believes Catholic Social Teaching supports free market capitalism

• Allen Tellis’s recently completed dissertation, The Well-Balanced Republic: Liberty, Domination, and the Maximal Production of Antipower, has a chapter on the “strategic interventions meant to ensure widespread ownership of productive property,” including employee ownership. Congrats!

Happy Friday. I’ve been thinking about the relationship work and meaning this week.

• My buddy Claude and I came up with fourteen potential relationships, ranging from work-is-a-calling to work-is-a-curse.

So it caught my attention when wrote:

…if artificial intelligence generates so much wealth that people can be compensated for their lost wages—which is more than plausible—where will they find a sense of purpose?” - in The Economist This Week

As someone expecting a second child next month, I laughed at how easily I could answer this question at the moment.

• But beyond parenting and caring for others, I haven’t come to a clear conclusion on this question any more than Claude did.

• Still, I have to think that purpose (at work) is only partially about the work done and mostly about (1) who you’re doing it with, and (2) who you’re doing it for.

• What I do know: It feels pretty great to be a part of a community asking those questions not just individually, but structurally.

I’m off to daycare pickup. Happy weekend! - MCH

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🥃 Top Shelf News

• Now is the week for launching…everything, it seems! All new this week:

  • Steward Market’s marketplace connecting mission-driven buyers and sellers

  • Subvert, the “Mondragon of Music”

  • The Center for Enterprise Foundations at Copenhagen Business School

  • ’s new not-a-newsletter, Writings and Rehearsals (thanks for the Stakehold shoutout…and maybe subtweet‽)

  • Beloved Community Incubator’s Cooperative Futures, fusing guaranteed income with worker co-op incubation in DC

  • Professor Ralph Hall’s Community Wealth Building Library Guide

  • 🎙️ Scaled Purpose’s The Equity Gap podcast

👉 In This Issue

• Events + Opportunities

  • This week

  • Opportunities

• Employee Ownership

  • Employee stock ownership plans

  • Worker cooperatives

  • Employee ownership trusts

• The Ownership Economy

  • Steward ownership

• Academic News

  • New papers

Editor’s note: We previously hyperlinked the “In This Issue” section, but Substack makes that a pain. A question for you:

📅 Events + Opportunities

To see a comprehensive list of events, go to our main Events page.

This Week

• May 19: Menke’s Executive Webinar on succession planning

• May 20: Austin Cooperative Business Association’s online Solidarity Economics: A Panel Discussion

  • Also in Texas, Texas Association of Community Development Corporations’ webinar with TXCEO’s Taylor Knickel

Opportunities

• The US Division of Employee Ownership created a new internship for students

• USFWC is electing new board members, recommending people, or self-nominating

• The Center for Community Wealth is hiring a Development Director

Employee Ownership

• Rhode Island unanimously voted to establish a Center for Employee Ownership

• Project Equity compiles four businesses’ journey to employee ownership

• WORC added to its Ownership Impact Index a feature connecting culture with financial projections (h/t )

Employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs)

• Fogle Pump & Supply of Washington sold 49% of the company to an ESOP

• Assistant Secretary of Labor Daniel Aronowitz, spoke to The ESOP Association on the Department of Labor’s new stance on ESOPs

• The House Appropriations Committee included pro-ESOP language in its FY27 funding bill

• Saunders Business School reveals the lineup for its ESOP panel at the Sharpen the Saw conference

• 🎙️ ESOP Radio talks with Jeremy Ames about the increase in entrepreneurs using their retirement savings to buy businesses

  • And Great Mondays interviews Bob Whalen on his new book, Beyond Your Ownership

Worker Cooperatives

• Dean’s Beans, a worker-owned organic coffee company, was recently named as Rural Business of the Year for Massachusetts. Congrats!

• Applications for the Capital Impact Coop Innovation Award are due June 12

• Heather McKay of Coop News outlines some of the barriers for youth in co-ops and how to address them

• ICYMI: Ian Adderley’s book Co-operatives: Linking practice and theory is now on our to-read list (h/t )

Employee ownership trusts

• Signature Vacuum of Pennsylvania is now an employee ownership trust. Congrats!

• Emily Alston explores why leadership succession is the most overlooked challenge after transitioning to an employee ownership trust (in the UK)

The Ownership Economy

• In Nashville, The Contributor interviews Stephen Watts of the Southeast Center for Cooperative Development

• makes the case for credit unions and community land trusts as natural partners in closing Canada’s housing equity gap

Steward ownership

• Copenhagen Business School has officially launched its Center for Enterprise Foundations. Congrats!

• Purpose Foundation’s Annika Schneider provides insight on the Spirit Airlines buzz

• Amy Clarke argues that mission doesn’t die at exit because founders sell out, but because most ownership structures aren’t built to protect it

• Newman’s Own Foundation’s CEO makes the case for steward ownership as a succession alternative for boomer-owned businesses

• Marie Arbelias Schuster compares steward ownership and FairShares Commons, arguing FSC goes further by distributing governance across all stakeholders and ecosystems (h/t )

📚 Academic News

• Harvard Divinity School opened applications for a Professor in Religion, Business Ethics, and the Economic Order

• Harvard Business School issued out a call for papers for its TOP26: Steward Ownership Conference; abstracts due June 15

• Haiming Li published a new book, Theories and Laws on Democratic Management of Enterprises in China

New Papers

• Seon Mi Kim et al. find that worker ownership and organizational support are the strongest drivers of job satisfaction among home care workers

• Andrew Skidmore looks at the relationship between ESOP comprehension and employee satisfaction

• Sor-hoon Tan proposes Confucian philosophy as an alternative for economic democracy, grounding ownership in social responsibility

• Elia Benveniste finds that worker-owned firms compress wages and flatten hierarchies, without sacrificing productivity or investment

• Peter Dorman argues that public ownership may be the fix for social media’s harms (cc and ?)

This week a dude on TikTok had an idea: What if customers owned Spirit Airlines? He put up a website and more than 500,000 people pledged at least $215 million to create a community-owned airline, reminiscent of the 2017 effort to buy Twitter.

• Folks on Instagram went even farther, asking “wait, why can’t all this other stuff be owned by us?” with just two posts getting 28k and 65k likes (h/t )

• My own post this week about who should own AI companies did not do those numbers, but I liked it

Jason Wiener is right we should be skeptical about the cash value of those pledges, but my reaction was similar Aunnie Patton Power’s:

• 500,000 people were talking about shared ownership this week, many of them for the first time

• Messaging about employee ownership tends to be directed at policymakers and business owners; this week is a signal of latent demand for organizational alternatives among employees and consumers

If any of you are connected to or , send them to The Stakehold! - Dr. Hand

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🥃 Top Shelf News

• The ESOP Association held its annual conference this year; Jim Bonham posted his remarks on the seven forces shaping employee ownership

• The leaders of Dr. Bronner’s and Patagonia joined the fight to free Ben & Jerry’s

• This week’s unlikely potential ally for the ownership economy is Tucker Carlson. Arguing that our current economic system “is not working,” Carlson told the :

  • “People have to own things. They have to be vested in the country in order to de-radicalize them. But when people own nothing, they’ve got nothing to lose.”

• 🎧 The Freakonomics podcast hosted Judy Faulkner of purpose trust-owned Epic Systems

👉 In This Issue

• Events + Opportunities

  • Newly announced

  • This week

  • Opportunities

• Employee Ownership

  • Employee stock ownership plans

  • Worker cooperatives

• The Ownership Economy

  • Steward ownership + purpose trusts

  • Community ownership of real estate

  • Workplace democracy

• Academic News

📅 Events + Opportunities

To see a comprehensive list of events, go to our main Events page. Send us your conference recaps, too!

Newly announced

• May 20: Austin Cooperative Business Association is hosting Solidarity Economics: A Panel Discussion, online

• May 26: CUNY School of Law hosts Building Mutual Social Economy Bridges in Queens, New York

• Aug 8-Dec 14: Trebor Scholz’s Community Section of his Fall 2026 course, AI Without Bosses

• Sep 1-3: Project Equity’s EO Equals Summit in Chicago

• Nov 12-13: The Institute for Business in Global Society at Harvard’s TOP26: Steward Ownership Conference in Cambridge, MA

This week

• May 11: Platform Cooperativism’s Consortium on cooperative platforms and democratic infrastructure

• May 12: PathLight Law’s webinar on community wealth building

  • Also, NCEO’s Creative ESOP M&A: Innovative Structures for Growth and Ownership (NCEO Member only)

  • And Raymond James’s Business Exit Planning Workshop webinar

• May 13: MICEO’s introductory webinar on smart profit share

• May 14: NCEO’s session on Understanding and Implementing Compensation

  • Along with the UK’s EsopCentre’s webinar, Esop Sofa: John Hoffmire on Transatlantic Perspectives on Employee Share Ownership

  • And St. Mary’s Energizing the Co-operative Brand online symposium

• May 15: Rutgers NJ/NY Center for Employee Ownership’s Business Exit Planning Conference in New Brunswick

  • As well as day one of the California Co-op Conference

Opportunities

• Ownership Works is on the hunt for a Managing Director for its European branch

• CFNE is hiring a Loan & Outreach Officer to help grow cooperative enterprises

• Village of Leaders Thriving in Solidarity seeks a Cooperative Business Launch Lead, in Chicago

• CDI has opened applications for its (remote) Executive Director position

Employee Ownership

• 🌊 Daniel Goldstein on why employee ownership is emerging as a key answer to the ‘silver tsunami’

• The Rhode Island Senate will vote to establish a Center for Employee Ownership after bill S2922 advances

• Martha Bentley and Coastal Enterprises have launched a Business Legacy Lab in Maine (h/t )

• Private equity-backed CoolIT Systems delivered payouts to long‑tenured employees

• Evergreen Cooperatives expands its network of employee-owned businesses by acquiring North Coast Sign and Lighting

• Angi Krueger offers key takeaways from NCEO 2026

• 📺 Employee Ownership Canada posted video of Tallgrass EO Equity Fund President Chad Friesen’s seminar on building an ownership culture

  • BLG also highlights ten key tax takeaways from the new Canadian EOT policy

• Carlisle announced its latest employee stock option grant

Employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs)

• ✈️ OGARAJETS of Atlanta, Georgia, announced its transition to an ESOP. Congrats!

• In Dallas, Pogue Construction’s conversion an ESOP won D Magazine’s 2026 Mergers & Acquisitions Award (h/t @TXCEO). Lazear, the advisory team on the deal, also helped Axis Neuromonitoring become employee-owned in April

• Congratulations to Christie Schuh, newly appointed member of the EO Foundation’s Board of Trustees!

• Corey Rosen reviews Bob Whalen and Jamie Dykstra’s new book on how employee ownership fueled HB Global’s 14‑year growth

• UC San-Diego is hosting a virtual course to train individuals on entering ESOPs; apply here

• 🎧 ESOP Radio talks with David Odell on the parallels between endurance running and running a business

Worker Coops

• 🕵️ Former FBI agents founded Ravenwood, a worker-owned intelligence service. Congrats!

• David Alcock reviews the UK’s progress on promoting co‑ops and identifies key areas for further action

• Connecticut theatre design firm Nextstage Design look backs on what they have learned since their transition in January

• Business Insider interviews Daniel Mondragon of The Drivers Cooperative in Denver (paywalled)

• The newly announced theme of the UN International Coop Day (July 4th) is “Cooperatives for a peaceful world;” ICA explains here

• RMEOC interviewed Minsun Ji on the struggles between co-ops and labor unions

• COWOP is looking for worker co-ops to fund in Massachusetts; apply here

• 🎧 ICYMI: Last month Stuff you Should Know explained how worker co-ops work

The Ownership Economy

Steward ownership + purpose trusts

• Purpose Foundation recaps its interview with Eric Ries on his new book, Incorruptible

• Purpose LatAm published a state-of-the-field on steward ownership in Latin America, Repensando la Propiedad (rethinking property)

Community-owned real estate

• East Side Community Investment Cooperative of Saint Paul, Minnesota, hosts its launch party

• Tabitha Eck reflects on the CLT Practicum by Habitat for Humanity in Sisters, Oregon

• Dallas, TX is one of fifteen cities in Enterprise Community Partners’ first Ballmer-funded cohort on land use and affordable housing; whether this will involve the Dallas CLT we don’t know—yet!

Workplace democracy

• In Platoniq’s WilderJournal, and Cristian Palazzi interview Adrian Bua on participatory democracy, capitalism and co-optation

• recaps his recent webinar with Tamarack Institute on collective decision-making

📚 Academic News

• David Wang and Shaun Pichler argue that a CEO’s political perspectives impact the likelihood of transitioning to ESOP and worker-family benefits

• Katharina Johanna Oetken introduces steward ownership as a potential tool for co-creation in urban design

• John D Wisman published a new book, Why We Must Work, on economic freddom, fulfilling work, and workplace demcoracy

• Philipp Stehr argues that a right to strike can fight organizational degeneration in democratic corporations

• Richard C. May & Chris Mackin argue that the primary obstacle to expanding ESOPs is the lack of access to equity capital

Most people I know in AI think the median person is screwed, and they have no idea what to do about it.

Sun’s Silicon Valley peers have begun to worry that a white-collar “underclass” is upon us, one just as precarious as the blue-collar workers left behind by Chinese industrialization. The leaders Sun interviews offer thin hope:

[Anthropic co-founder Jack Clark] sees the default path for A.I. as dire: one where we ‘let technology rip, and don’t think about the social effects until later.’ But he also feels optimistic that sufficiently conscientious A.I. builders and policymakers can steer the ship away from the storm.

“Sufficiently conscientious” is doing a lot of work there. When pressed on dealing with those societal effects, most in Silicon Valley point to universal basic income or jobs guarantees. But both will leave us vulnerable to domination by AI companies and the governments that control them, keeping our fingers crossed they prove wise rulers.

More redistribution won’t fix what ails us

In the language of political scientists, Clark is describing welfare capitalism, one of political-economic regimes found wanting by 20th century theorist John Rawls. Rawls similarly discarded laissez-faire capitalism and the command economy as fundamentally unjust. He considered two systems potentially fair enough to consider: liberal democratic socialism and property-owning democracy.

I recently posted a preprint of a paper on the politics AI (readers, please download and share it with your AI-obsessed friends!). In researching it, I became convinced that property-owning democracy—what we call here the ownership economy—could expand our imaginations about what political and economic realities are possible. I believe the answer lies not in redistribution but predistribution. Yes, we should have a stake in the profits generated from the technology built on all recorded human labor, as OpenAI argues in their recent policy paper. But we should also have a say—we should own them.

As artificial intelligence works its way into our workplaces, we should have a stake and a say in the companies where we work, too. The magic of worker/employee ownership is that it doesn’t just resolve the tensions between people with money (capital) and those of us that have to work to get it (labor). It dissolves that distinction by making employees owners. Investors get equity because they put their capital at risk. Workers should get equity, too, because they put their careers at risk when they dedicate their time and energy to building a company.

One last hopeful thing

In another working paper, my co-authors and I write about employee and worker ownership as a source of hope in the face of AI and other assaults on our students’ career prospects. One argument I have been persuaded by in researching for that paper: hope is a collective, not individual.

Compare the collective hopelessness inspired by generative AI to the collective hope inspired by the moon landing, which came from the (mostly) shared sense that humanity was taking a collective step forward. The attitude of many AI leaders, it seems, is more akin to

One small step toward wealth and power for me; one giant windfall for our shareholders; and…we’ll figure out what to do with the rest of you later.

The alternative is to ask now who should be benefiting from and shaping that future, and how. This is what worker and employee ownership ask about workplaces. It’s past time we start asking that about generative AI at the societal level, too.