From Yes! Magazine: As Tom Adams, co-founder of Adams & Chittenden Scientific Glass, started planning his exit into retirement, he knew what he didn’t want to happen. Twenty-six years earlier, Adams was a production manager at a scientific glass blowing company in Berkeley, Calif., when the last of the company’s founders decided to sell the […]
From the Atlanta Small Business Network: When it comes to small businesses and entrepreneurship, Atlanta is where business owners go to thrive. However, the story is not as bright for all of the city’s citizens. While Atlanta boasts a booming economy for most, the city became the number one most unequal large city in the country on […]
From Next City: Philadelphia and other cities across the U.S. face an impending wave of small business upheaval as Baby Boomer-era owners reach and pass retirement age. The majority of those owners have no clear succession plan, nor do they have a new generation ready and willing to assume ownership. As this “silver tsunami” approaches, […]
From the Mercury News: When Rendell “Ren” Boguiren got a job in college at a South Bay pizzeria, he wasn’t expecting it would become a career. Now, as a part-owner in the business, he can’t imagine leaving. It was a transition made possible because co-founders Kirk Vartan and his wife, Marguerite Lee, made a decision […]
From the San Francisco Chronicle: In late March, the clients and staff at Every Dog Has Its Day Care in West Oakland received a shocking email: After 22 years, the business would close within a few months. Grief ensued. Clients picked up their dogs, lamenting their broken hearts. Kelly Hall hugged Katie Wojnoonski, the company’s […]
From the Atlanta Business Journal: One of Atlanta’s top private companies ranked by companywide revenue will soon be 100 percent employee owned. Atlanta-based Choate Construction Co. reported it is transferring beneficial ownership via the newly created Choate Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP) Trust. Company founder Millard Choate said the firm was “solicited continuously over the years by […]
In the first video (above), Jordan Klein, the City of Berkeley’s Economic Development Manager, describes the tremendous potential that employee ownership can offer cities and why Berkeley embraces it. In the second video (above), Jordan describes how Project Equity has helped advance the city’s goal to keep businesses rooted in the local economy. Get the […]
From Truthout: Five years later, Reyes is now A Yard & A Half’s board president. He still works on the field team doing landscaping and hardscaping work, but he now has a much broader range of responsibilities, which include facilitating meetings, developing agendas, and meeting with the executive committee once a month. A Yard & […]
From Next City: At Shared Capital Cooperative, a Twin Cities-based loan fund, Executive Director Christina Jennings rattles off what the fund has in its pipeline. About a dozen loans were recently approved, she says, another 16-18 in the final application phases, and another 25-30 leads that are in active pre-application conversations with her team. “I’d […]
From the Santa Barbara Independent: The phenomenon of worker-owned cooperatives is a simple concept. Workers weigh in on the conditions that affect them most: They vote to elect their board of directors and/or managers and/or to set wages and rules around profit redistribution. They can design the business so they have no managers or serve […]