Winding down (a bit)

EO+WD Weekend Newsletter, Vol. 81

Welcome Back

It has been a heck of a year for shared ownership! We started putting together a list of all that happened in 2024 but… it was too much. If you’d like to contribute to a retrospective, holler. In the meantime, here is ImpactAlpha’s 2025 look-ahead.

One fun thing: EO+WD is wrapping up 2024 with our own milestone: we’ve hit 500 subscribers! And over 250 of you open the newsletter every week, which makes us proud.

See you in 2025; until then, we’re cogitating on the maxim to work from rest, not for rest 🥂.

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🗞️ News To Know

• Thomas Dudley passed the reins of Certified Employee-Owned to Joe Belsterling

• Employee-owned Kirsch CPA Group is hiring a senior tax accountant

• Colorado just announced the Employee Ownership Tax Credit to Strengthen and Thrive program for employee-owned businesses

• Gary Community Ventures, Aspen Institute Financial Security Program and The Bridgespan Group published the Assemble100 report with insights on ownership investing (PDF version).

• Transform Finance and Ownership Capital Lab published their December briefing, Capitalizing the Employee Ownership Opportunity. Thanks for the shoutout, amigos!

• The ESOP Association will begin lobbying for the confirmation of Donald Trump’s appointee to lead the Department of Labor

📇 Transitions

• Employees of the Albuquerque based architecture firm Dekker, will now own a portion of the company through an ESOP

• Michigan interior contractor Ritsema Associates transitioned to ESOP after nearly 70 years in business

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🔍 Research & Analysis

• In The Future of Work: Employee Ownership and Economic Transformation, Graeme Nuttall, shares insights for Australia from the UK’s employee ownership success story (h/t Alan G)

• Also from Alan G: Scott Bader, a UK employee owned chemical manufacturer, published its 2036 Vision as a model for combining employee ownership with long term environmental and social goals

• Carta published its second Ownership Trends in Private Equity report

• Bruce Dobb highlights good news for worker-to-owner advocates as the EDA reauthorization legislation passes Congress

• Sam Tabachnik reports on Colorado as the leader in state-level support for employee ownership

• The Employee Owned Contractors Roundtable reflects on its inaugural summit in Washington, DC.

• Kevin Kuros, director of Massachusetts Center for Employee Ownership, explains why Massachusetts is now investing in employee ownership

• Connecticut Center for Employee Ownership board chair Amy Huot advocates for employee ownership of CT businesses

• Debra Rectenbaugh Pettit discusses the concept of “employee owned cooperatives,” with Morning Bell Coffee Roasters in Iowa as an example

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🌇 What’s Coming Up: Events

• January 10-12: The Rutgers Institute’s Annual Kelso Workshop in New Brunswick, NJ

• January 13-17, 2025: The Heckerling Institute on Estate Planning includes a session featuring Natalie Reitman-White on using purpose trusts for business succession

• 🆕 | January 24: The Skoll Centre’s Towards Purpose: Redesigning Business From Within

• February 3-4: NCEO hosts Is an ESOP Right for You? in Austin, Texas

• February 20, 2025: The Employee Ownership Transition: A Deep Dive, a workshop on the process of selling to an employee ownership trust (in Scotland)

• April 9-10 2025: The Aspen+Rutgers Employee Ownership Ideas Forum in Washington, DC. Tickets will be released via the Aspen EOP mailing list

• 🆕 | May 6-8: Community Spaces Network and Community Vision’s Social Purpose Real Estate Summit (h/t Gretchen B)

• October 23 2025: The 3rd Annual Employee Ownership Conference in Ankeny, Iowa

Pictured Above: Two happy EO+WD contributors (Tiffany) and authors (Dr. Hand) after the Purpose Trust Ownership Convening in D.C. this April.

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