Welcome back!
Expanding ESOPs is celebrating Labor Day with a series of employee-owner op-eds:
In Pennsylvania, Karrie Ravert still holds her “temporary” job twenty-two years later
In Connecticut, Heidi Lavigne considers the impact of an ESOP on employees at Web Industries from the perspective of HR
Keep an eye on The Stakehold next week—we’ll be running an op-ed from an employee owner on Labor Day, too, in partnership with Expanding ESOPs ✊
U.S. political and popular support for labor unions approaches record numbers, even as only 11% of workers report being union members.
Earlier this summer, The United Steelworkers union outlined its strategy for union- cooperatives, framing worker-driven leadership as a tool for long-term job preservation.
USWFC hosts its next virtual Union Co-Ops Council meeting on Sept 23
This week, guest contributor Andrea Steffes-Tuttle examines how employee ownership models can offer a competitive alternative to private equity buyouts in the childcare industry
🎙️ And...keep an eye out for next week’s episode of Owners at Work, featuring a new segment powered by The Stakehold 👀
🥃 Top Shelf News
IBT Media, parent company of International Business Times, transferred ownership to a perpetual purpose trust in Delaware.
IBT says the trust will protect its editorial mission. What could have been if Paramount/CBS and the WaPo had done the same many years ago...1
🚨 The New Jersey Governor’s signed a bill that will let the state’s Economic Development Authority subsidize EO feasibility studies, give financing to newly transitioned EO firms, and encourage EO proliferation in other ways. EO roots are growing deeper in the Garden State
@Antony Bugg-Levine argues that Mark Cuban's new tax proposal is essentially a rebrand of ESOP incentives that have been on the books for fifty years
👉 In This Issue
Events, Etc.
Upcoming Events + OpportunitiesEmployee Ownership
ESOPs + Employee Ownership Trusts + Worker CooperativesThe Ownership Economy
Community Ownership & Wealth + Ownership on Purpose + Workplace & Economic DemocracyAcademic News
🏙️ Events + Jobs
Events This Week
For more, see our Events page.
🆕 Sep 6: A Better Model for Data Centres: A Community Counter Offer, a community-led Southern Highlands initiative
Sep 9: EOT Advisors is hosting a webinar to help business owners learn about EOTs
Sep 10: Steward Market hosts The Next Steward, an online discussion with Hannah Sandmeyer and Kate Williams
🆕 Sep 10: MCM Collaborative shares their journey to becoming a psychotherapy cooperative
Sep 14-15: Ohio Center for Employee Ownership’s 2026 National Employee-Owner Summit in Chicago (check out their webinar schedule too)
Opportunities
For more, visit our Ownership Jobs Board.
Francesco Collaborative is hiring a Director of Investor Relationships
JPMorganChase is hiring a VP of US Governance, Global Philanthropy
Project Equity is hiring a Director of Communications & Public Relations
Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta is hiring a Community and Economic Development (CED) Advisor/Sr. Advisor
Trust Neighborhoods is hiring a Director of Capital Partnerships
Common Future is hiring a Chief External Affairs Officer
Employee Ownership
Deadlines:
Oct 1: MOCEO calls for employee ownership ambassadors in Missouri
Oct 9: Submissions for the 2027 Mid-Year Fellows Workshop in honor of Louis O. Kelso are due. Get them in and we’ll see you in New Brunswick in January
Oct 19: In the latest edition of The Ownership Constellation, NCEO calls for speakers at their 2027 Annual Conference in Pittsburgh
Congrats to Nathan Stuck for his appointment to Georgia Center for Employee Ownership board. Build those bridges between EO Land and B Corp Land, Nathan!
🍕 Data suggests employees may want more than just another pizza party (and no, a ping pong table in the break room probably isn’t sufficient either. Ht Michael Palmieri)
💡 Project Equity’s Evan Edwards proposes a mash-up of entrepreneurship through acquisition (ETA) with employee ownership in Forbes
📈 Employee Stock Ownership Plans (ESOPs)
Rise & Shine Social Enterprise, an Oregon-based care agency, surprised 250 employees with the chance to become owners in their new ESOP
The ESOP Association released their framework to evaluate new ESOP policy proposals through five guiding principles
📚 Mike Mallaro released his new book, VGM: Stories & Lessons of a Great American ESOP Company. Congratulations! In other book news…
NCEO’s Corey Rosen opines on how AI will —and will not— impact ESOP transactions
Harbor founder/CEO Andrew Dunlap sparks conversation around buying Virginia companies to keep them local vs. converting into ESOPs
🎙️ ESOP Radio drops a new episode on how ESOPs defer capital gains tax
ESOP Exit Podcast interviews Tenor partner Gary Gray on his journey from ESOP client to advisor (ht ESOP for Contractors)
🎙️ The Ownership Effect podcast, hosted by The ESOP Association, premieres Season 2:
🤝 Employee Ownership Trusts (EOTs)
🇨🇦 For Canadian Senator Tony Loffreda, EOTs represent a market-based strategy against foreign buyouts of Canadian firms
NCEO launched their new EOT Toolkit
TXCEO profiles LiveOak Living Community, an established EOT in the long-term care industry
Common Trust is now hosting The Ownership Upside on LinkedIn
Knox & Wells, a building contractor company established in 1888, transitions to Employee Ownership Trust with fds, an employee-owned corporate finance firm
🎙️ The latest Beyond the B episode hosts two CEOs who chose employee ownership structures over a conventional exit, including challenges faced in the transitions:
✊ Worker Cooperatives
Cooperative Development Foundation spotlights Cooperative Hall of Fame inductee Fannie Lou Hamer's journey from voting rights to collective ownership
🎬 Filmmaker Sarah Maria released a new documentary, After Capitalism: A Cooperative Economy
Drivers Cooperative Colorado might be getting tired of imposters and imitators…
Jaya Saxena of Ravenous, a worker-owned food magazine, details the ins and outs of worker-owned restaurants
Author Nathan Schneider cautions co-ops against overextended social agendas, arguing that bounded operational focus protects democratic governance from member burnout.
📺 ICYMI: This TedEd throwback features companies thriving without CEOs
Sep 20 Deadline: Apply to join the Food Co-Op Initiative’s 2027 Peer Learning Groups
🎙️ Who should Everything.Coop host on their podcast? Let them know!
The Ownership Economy
🛒 In Michigan, board members of the People’s Food Co-Op filed legal injunctions to successfully reclaim their store after another member’s allegedly unauthorized takeover
📺 A recording of the Urban Institute’s Who Owns the Future panel on locally-owned economies is now available
Martin O’Neill reviews Mariana Mazzucato’s The Common Good Economy for Stanford Social Innovation Review
New analysis by Prospect Law examines the legal and capital barriers facing UK mutuals and co-ops
Common Good Journal launches an initiative ahead of Neighborhood Economics 2027, gathering stories of the ownership economy in Cincinnati—early shout out to Co-op Cincy. Go get ‘em
ImpactAlpha debuts Edge, their new Claude tool to help analyze sustainable investment opportunities
Digitals Commons Collective released a cool new tool to investigate historical land ownership in the UK. Bless them for obviating the need to learn ArcGIS. Grad students across the world rejoice!
Community Ownership & Wealth
Farmer-owned co-op CHS partners with OCP North America to bolster fertilizer production supply chains
🏠 NCBA CLUSA spotlights Michigan Community Land Cooperative as leaders in the cooperative housing movement
Transform Finance publishes a new briefing on Capital Needs for Community-Owned Real Estate
Predistribution Initiative predicts worker participation in corporate governance will increase with British Steel converting to public ownership
The city of Seattle, the Duwamish Tribe and Shared Spaces Foundation work together to rematriate 3.56 acres to the Tribe for community stewardship
Ownership on Purpose
Dave Whorton of Tugboat Institute asserts that separating ownership and control is the most underrated benefit of building an “Evergreen company”
Wallowa Resources, a Rural Development Hub, releases their new Stewardship Economy Community Guide (ht Aspen Institute)
The Impact Explorers Club Fieldbook features a chapter on Steward Ownership (ht Steward-owned)
Elisa Achterberg’s essay analyzes the psychology of ownership, stewardship and belonging
Peter Dorman argues for purpose trust ownership of AI
Think tank Purpose introduces Stuart, their AI-assistant built on steward ownership knowledge
Workplace & Economic Democracy
OpenAI’s Hugging Face breach revealed 1,200 rogue AI agents formed an organizational hierarchy, managing task delegation and compute budget without human prompts or financial compensation
🍑 Ari Weinzwieg of Zingerman’s (a purpose trust) is raising money for Democracy Now through his Apricots for Dignity and Democracy store
Corporate Rebels curates a reading list on alternative management cultures
Sean Geobey offers his own reading list, plus an argument that cooperatives must build low-stakes voting habits to be prepared for high-stakes crises
📚 Academic News
The Center for Community Investment posts the New Economy Project case study on “ecosystem stewardship,” including Transform Finance’s analysis of the Arlington Ave acquisition
🏄🏾♂️ Larry Wigger publishes “Silver Surfers: Employee-Ownership Conversions for Retiring Entrepreneurs” in the Journal of Economic Issues this week
Morehouse College releases the latest issue of The Collective from the International Comparative Labor Studies program
🎙️ The Institute for Economic Democracy drops a new podcast, a companion to their 2026 textbook, Global Cooperative Economics and Movements
Ryan Claassen argues for a social ownership democracy as a third just arrangement of society, in addition to Rawls’ market socialism and property-owning democracy
This bullet and the post title were edited to reflect the complexity of the litigation around ownership of Newsweek. If any of you readers dig into this, let us know.