Employee Ownership as a Model for Building Community Wealth

This presentation was given at the Community Indicators Consortium's Community Impact Summit 2017.

Almost half of privately held businesses in the United States are owned by baby boomers and many are facing retirement with little or no succession plans, leading to loss of jobs and tax revenues. Fortunately the coming 'Silver Tsunami' also presents a once in a generation opportunity to restore and accelerate wealth-building, particularly in low income communities of color. One proposed solution is the conversion of privately owned businesses to employee-ownership. Working with Project Equity of Oakland, CA, we have undertaken an analysis to uncover possible solutions to this predicament. This presentation walks through the analysis, describes the indicators of opportunity, and shows how we captured the industries and individual businesses that might be saved through this approach.