From the Star Tribune:
Twin Cities-based Nexus Community Partners plans to accelerate its worker-owned business initiative thanks to a $1.2 million grant it has received from the Kendeda Fund of Atlanta.
Moreover, earlier this year, Nexus entered into a related partnership with the St. Paul Area Chamber of Commerce designed to get more small-business owners to think about selling to employees as worker-owned cooperatives, rather than to a competitor or institutional buyer such as a private equity fund.
St. Paul is hungry for small businesses downtown and elsewhere and chamber CEO B Kyle has noted that up to three quarters of small-business owners don’t have succession plans and, in many cases, transitioning to local hands, including employee owners, is preferable.
Building equity through employee ownership, including Employee Stock Ownership Plans (ESOPs), has long been considered one of the few ways for workers to build wealth, after a retirement plan and long-term homeownership, in a country where the gap is widening precipitously between the small percentage of wealthy and the working class.
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