👋 Welcome back! From Colin:
In the latest episode of Owners at Work, the Stakehold’s Mark Hand stops by to discuss the fuzzy distinctions between stewardship, purpose, and employee ownership.
There are lots of good tidbits in here, and not just because Mark signs my and Kate’s paychecks. One that stands out to me as an organization theorist: Organizations can be structured by their purpose, their distribution of power, and the distribution of profits. We can think of these characteristics like selections from an à la carte menu — none of the elements necessarily needs to accompany another, but combinations can interact and enhance individual elements.
Give it a listen!
🥃 Top Shelf News
Steve Storkan and Aaron Dean release a new EOX study documenting the wealth ESOPs have generated for workers from 2009-2024 (spoiler: $141.8 billion)
Nov 20 | Rutgers’ Private Equity & Employee Share Ownership Symposium (ht Joseph Blasi)
👉 In This Issue
If you’re new here, friend, welcome! You may want to start with Stories & Dealflow.
Events and Opportunities
News
Stories & Dealflow
Research and Insights
🏙️ Events and Opportunities
Events This Week
Nov 9: LSE’s Philanthropy and the Impact Economy | King County Communities of Opportunity: Community Ownership Investment Models, in Seattle
Nov 10: 2026 Southwest Ohio Employee Ownership Forum | B Local San Diego’s Always B Learning: Employee Ownership in…San Diego
Nov 12: The Institute for Business in Global Society at Harvard’s TOP26: Steward Ownership Conference in Cambridge, MA | Day one of the 12th Platform Cooperativism Consortium Conference in Bangkok, Thailand | Predistribution Initiative: The Value Workers Bring to the Boardroom | NCEO: ESOP Amortization Questions Answered
Nov 13: Oxford’s Skoll Centre asks What is Your Organisation For? Redesigning for Shared Purpose, Power and Profit — s/o to our very own Mark Hand!
For even more events, see our main Events page.
Opportunities
New Majority Capital | Partnerships & Recruitment Manager, Chicago
Collective Action for Just Finance | Ecosystem Director
B Lab U.S. & Canada | Regional Director
The Latino & Latina Roundtable of the San Gabriel and Pomona Valley | Worker Cooperative Developer in Pomona, CA
Nov 20 Deadline: Elroy Webster Cooperative Studies program offers scholarships to graduate and law students interested in agricultural cooperatives (ht GEO)
Jan 11 Deadline: Cooperative Development Foundation is now accepting applications for the Cooperative Leaders & Scholars Fellowship, with Nov 30 info session
Rutgers and Kellogg Foundation offer free Business Advisors ESOP Education Program
In The Ownership Constellation, NCEO invites EOT companies to present their stories in the 2027 Weekly Webinar Series
For more jobs, including at employee-owned companies, visit our Jobs page.
🗞️ Ownership News
Employee Ownership
Dec 8: Palo Alto Networks (NASDAQ: PANW) shareholders will vote on if the Board should conduct an ESOP feasibility study; Jim McRitchie is advocating for it while the Board is against it
Hamilton County, the City of Cincinnati, Co-op Cincy and DAWI launch Business Legacy Cincy to expand access to succession planning
New Partnership: HEC Montréal’s Institut international des coopératives Alphonse-et-Dorimène-Desjardins and the International Cooperative Alliance sign an MOU to strengthen the collective knowledge of co-ops and mutuals around the world | Check out PortailCoop, the digital platform at the heart of this new collab
The ESOP Assocation and The Employee Ownership Foundation announce Kristie Mark as the Foundation’s first Executive Director
In the NCEO Legal Digest, Kleinbard’s Chris Wingard discusses the $7M settlement for former New England Biolabs employees who allege their ESOP shares were redeemed at an unfairly low price
🇪🇸 The King of Spain visits MONDRAGON to learn their cooperative model, track record and future challenges/opportunities (thanks, Reddit!)
You’re invited to participate in Free Ben & Jerry’s: The People’s Campaign
Ownership on Purpose
Impact Alpha’s Roodgally Senatus profiles Steward Market (paywall)
Conscious Capitalism launches their new website
The Ownership Economy
Angel Cabrera becomes the President and CEO of Aspen Institute
CLT News: Kensington Corridor Trust (PA) successfully fundraises $19.6M acquisition of the mixed use J-centrel building (paywalled) | 🇬🇧 Community Land Trust Network brings in Anna Clarke to oversee their new Industry Partners Network and invites housing stakeholders to join
🇯🇵 Ownership Works announces the launch of TOPCON’s broad-based profit sharing program through their first international affiliate, Ownership Works Japan
Stories & Dealflow
Employee Ownership
📺 World Within produces the story of Old Salt Co-Op (MT), a ranching cooperative redefining land ownership and local food systems
One way that Web Industries’ Kyle Danzo (IN) and his coworkers exercise ownership is with their Ideas Board (ht Expanding ESOPs)
🇨🇦 Peter Elkins responds to Social Capital Partners’ Dan Skilleter’s article on business succession challenges by proposing an EOT Mezzanine Fund
Empowered Ventures shares stories from their operating companies in the latest EV Monthly
The Ownership Economy
🇨🇦 GEO interviews Michelle Panting from Peg City Car Co-op, a car share co-op that offers an alternative to public transportation
⚽️ The Democracy Collaborative produces A Force for Good, a documentary on the intersection between sports clubs and community wealth building (🇮🇪)
Ownership on Purpose
Case studies: Coloplast’s new holding structure (global medtech) | Sumthing, a Dutch steward-owned startup whose investors include a government fund and a bank | bio verlag, a German publisher aligning steward ownership and EO
🎙️ Ethical Exits hosts Jason Wiener and Jacqueline Radebaugh of CurrentShift Legal, Colorado’s first PBC law firm (also a B Corp)
Dealflow
US ESOPs: ContactUS Communications, Inc (OH) (ht PaCEO) | HCVT, accounting firm now rebranded as Holthouse (CA) | Baldwin & Shell Construction (AR), for their 80th anniversary
📺 HMS Motorsports, LTD (NC) completes conversion to EOT
Organically Grown Company (OR) acquires Soully Organic - Heath and Lejeune (CA) (ht Hannah Sandemeyer)
British EOTs: Swansons Fruit Company | Frank Rogers Building Contractors | BSP Consulting, engineering consultancy | Edenstone, housing developer | Bugler Group, affordable housing construction | Sandy Mount House, boutique hotel
For more, check out our Dealflow page.
Research & Insights
The latest arguments, analysis, and academic research (📚). Go deeper with our other topic-specific, spillover newsletters.
Employee Ownership
📚 Rutgers-Oxford Employee Ownership Research Conference papers are made available to the public
📺 Aspen Institute EOP releases What Employee Ownership Means to Workers
Gary Reber makes a case for ownership unions as the future of the labor movement in the context of automation and AI
Project Equity’s Zarin Kresge and Peter Lucas believe closing the awareness gap between advisors and EO should start in the higher education classrooms
🎙️ Thoughts Sparks drops a new podcast: Why Employee Ownership Works with Corey Rosen
ESOPs
Gary Reber gives an overview of ESOPs, from origins to limitations to the proposed Economic Democracy Act and other means of broadening ownership
📺 The Ownership Effect releases Women in ESOPs: Empowerment & Opportunity
EOTs
NCEO drops a new case study of manufacturing EOT ShopBot Tools, Inc.
Worker Cooperatives
National Cooperative Bank releases the 2026 Co-op 100 Report, where the 100 largest co-ops in the US generated $309B in revenue and held $1.33T in assets
📚 Journal of Co-operative Studies publishes a special issue: Imagining co-operatives? Co-operatives and co-operative economy in art and culture
🇬🇧 Co-op lawyer Cliff Mills examines the challenges and opportunities of co-operative governance
The Ownership Economy
🎙️ OEOC’s latest Owners at Work goes “Beyond Employee Ownership”
🎙️ Transform Finance drops a new episode of Own the Block
NeighborWorks America reports on 8 years deploying the Shared Equity Housing Initiative, investments designed to expand permanently affordable housing
📚 Jennifer B. Hinton publishes her new book, Game Changer: An Economy Beyond Profit
Rick Osbourne makes the bipartisan case for economic democracy
Community Ownership
Affordability: Aspen drops a new edition of the EOP Resource Roundup, looking at affordability through the eyes of workers | In Forbes, Purpose Built Communities CEO Carol Naughton makes the business case for investing in the social determinants of wealth | National Co-op Grocers cuts prices on holiday meal staples, donating part of each sale to North American Traditional Indigenous Food Systems
Della Rucker rethinks economic development through a community ownership lens (ht TXCEO)
Neighborhood Commons: Rich Baum argues for the return of neighborhood houses, community-built institutions built around neighborhood needs
Economic Democracy
Common Future co-CEO Jennifer Swayne Njuguna explores what it would look like if democracy funders also invested in economic power
As we think about who gets a voice and building relationships across sectors, check out Democratizing Philanthropy Research Initiative
Workplace Democracy
🎙️ Private Innovation in the Public Interest asks University of Pittsburgh’s Trevor Young-Hyman about the short term vs long term trade offs of shared governance
Digital Ownership
A Stake in AI: One Project interprets the midterm backlash against data centers as voters wanting a say in what’s happening around them
One final thank you to PURPOSE® for shouting out our new Ownership on Purpose spinoff!