The Employee Ownership Community Has Some Ideas

The Ownership Economy Newsletter, Vol. 148

👋 Welcome Back (from Michael)

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

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👉 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,

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📅 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

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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 Dave Odell 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

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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

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