As Black Business Owners Approach Retirement, Succession Planning Lags This story is based on reporting from Next City. Fifty by Fifty is beginning 2019 with a new series exploring city strategies for growing employee ownership. In our first article, we look at how Durham, NC, a city with a strong legacy of African-American entrepreneurial activity, is promoting […]
Continue ReadingAdd Employee Ownership to the Green New Deal
by Fifty By Fifty As we embark on the new year, there is a lot of talk about a “Green New Deal.” At Fifty by Fifty, we are all for policies that bring our economy into alignment with the needs of our planet. We’ve spent much of the last year exploring the relationship of employee ownership […]
Continue ReadingTransitioning Leadership at an Employee-Owned Firm
Kimberly Jones Is Preserving a Legacy and Building a Future for Butler/Till by Sarah Stranahan Fifty by Fifty spoke with Kimberly Jones to learn what it is like to step into leadership at an employee-owned B corporation. Jones became the president of Butler/Till, an advertising and media firm, in 2015, one year after the company’s […]
Continue ReadingFinding the Path to a Sustainable Economy
An Interview with Carina Millstone “We cannot have an ecologically sustainable economy when we have the publicly traded corporation as an economic actor,” says Carina Millstone, author of Frugal Value: Designing Business for a Crowded Planet, in a recent Next System Podcast. Millstone is deeply concerned with how we build a sustainable economy, one that “creates the […]
Continue ReadingThe British are Coming — ESOPs and Perpetual Trusts
John Lewis Partnership’s employee ownership structure is simple. . . . John Lewis employees are not bought out at retirement. Rather, they enjoy profit-sharing during the years that they work at the company.
Continue ReadingEmployee Ownership Championed by Leading Responsible Business Association
ASBC sees employee ownership as key to building a sustainable economy by Sarah Stranahan The American Sustainable Business Council (ASBC) is a network of businesses and business associations that have committed themselves to the triple bottom line of people, planet, and profit. In recent years, advancing employee ownership has been a key component of ASBC’s agenda: to […]
Continue ReadingWorker Cooperative Report for 2017 Shows Continued Growth
Conversions of conventional firms represent 25 percent of new coops by Karen Kahn In their annual report, “Worker Cooperatives: State of the Sector,” the Democracy at Work Institute (DAWI) and the U.S. Federation of Cooperatives paint a picture of the cooperative sector and how it is changing over time. Among the key findings, the sector continues to grow at a […]
Continue ReadingEmployee Ownership: Updates from the Field
Reports, meetings, webinars — employee ownership is a topic of growing interest by Karen Kahn National Center for Employee Ownership (NCEO) Issues Retirement Security Report: “S Corporation ESOPs and Retirement Security,” a new NCEO research report, compares the retirement savings of employees in ESOP companies to average retirement savings among all U.S. workers. The survey of members of the Employee-Owned S […]
Continue ReadingFifty by Fifty Inspires Employee Ownership Campaign in Scotland
Scotland for EO Sets “Audacious” Goal for Scaling Up Employee Ownership Last summer, First Minister of Scotland Nicola Sturgeon launched Scotland for EO, a public-private partnership to lead efforts to expand the number of employee-owned companies across Scotland. The campaign goal is to increase the number of employee-owned companies from 100 to 500 by 2030. Says […]
Continue ReadingEmployee-Owned B Corp Makes a Great Brew
New Belgium Brewery’s Sustainability Values Grounded in Worker Friendly Culture By Sarah Stranahan The New Belgium Brewing Company began when a couple of Belgium beer enthusiasts, Jeff Lebesch and Kim Jordan, made beer in their Colorado basement. Their amber ale, Fat Tire, was so popular that they decided to produce it commercially in 1991. Since then New […]
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