From Forbes: Razsa has a bachelor’s degree in community studies and economic justice from the University of California, Santa Cruz. Before becoming an entrepreneur, Razsa was the director of campaigns for 350 Massachusetts for a Better Future, a community organization dedicated to fighting climate change. But Razsa also had five years of experience as a […]
From Fifty by Fifty: Since 2012, CFNE has financed 15 co-op conversions including providing nine loans for business acquisitions and twelve working capital lines of credit to recently converted businesses. Some of our borrowers include: A Yard & A Half Landscaping Co-op, a largely immigrant co-op serving residences throughout the greater Boston area; Island Employee […]
From NPQ: Typically, when US businesses think of employee ownership, the form that ownership takes is an employee stock ownership plan (ESOP) company. The most up-to-date data (from 2015) finds that 10.8 million Americans work at an estimated 6,669 companies in which an ESOP owns all or part of the company. Because an ESOP is a federally regulated […]
From LEAF: LEAF recently provided Carolina Common Enterprise (CCE) with financing to support the Rural Cooperative Development grant funding that CCE was awarded from the USDA to provide strategy and insight into how to prepare rural businesses to convert to cooperative ownership. Carolina Common Enterprise’s mission as a cooperative development center is to assist individuals […]
Industry: Food and Beverage Location: Boston, Massachusetts Number of employees: 30 Became employee owned: 2018 Financing: Local Enterprise Assistance Fund From the company http://www.democracybrewing.com/ Learn more Politico – How Boston Is Becoming the City Where Workers Rule (2020) Forbes – When Banks Say No, Where Do You Go? Ask Boston’s Democracy Brewing (2019) Harvard Law […]
Electric Violin Shop is a 5-employee instrument sales and repair shop in Durham, North Carolina that serves both retail customers and a global mail-order business. The founder, planning to retire, saw in his employees a level of expertise and commitment to the business that would be impossible to find in an outside buyer. Succession was made […]
From the Electric Violin Shop: May 16th, 2016 looked like any normal busy Monday at Electric Violin Shop. Our small staff worked in concert to address email inquiries and ship e-commerce orders taken over the weekend in between answering the usual barrage of customer phone calls. This group of employees has the day-to-day of running […]