Marjorie Kelly co-authored a recent article in Fast Company about the role that employee ownership coul play in the economic recovery. Read an excerpt below and the full article here.
Despite these benefits, the number of employee-owned U.S. firms has not grown for decades. What’s needed to scale up conversions, we argue in our new report, Opportunity Knocking, is risk capital, similar to the kind that the Fund for Employee Ownership provided to Phoenix Coffee. Our research found about a dozen such investment funds in existence or being launched to finance employee ownership conversions, many offering investors midrange annual returns of 12 percent to 15 percent. These funds are financed by a growing group of impact investors (whose assets under management reached $715 billion in 2019) committed to using investments to drive social change. Such impact investing in employee ownership could become the lever to redirect wealth into the hands of working Americans, creating a more equitable economy that is more resilient against future shocks.
