Racial Equity

Transitioning your small business to employee ownership can have positive impacts on employee engagement, productivity, and retention; anchor a lasting legacy for your efforts building the business; and offer a financially rewarding exit path that can be supported by experienced professional assistance.

We all have a stake in cultivating and preserving a vibrant small business community. Thriving small businesses promote job stability for local residents and anchor neighborhoods that help driving local economies.

Together with Citi Community Development, Democracy at Work Institute (DAWI) is collaborating with National Urban League and key local leaders to enable more people to share in business assets in their communities– not through creating new businesses, but through leveraging and preserving assets already invested in communities, specifically by promoting shared ownership of existing businesses.

The Workers to Owners 2017 Annual Impact Report, produced by the Democracy at Work Institute, introduces the Workers to Owners Collaborative catalyzing a wave of business conversions to employee ownership at a moment of generational opportunity.  Led by a core practitioners group and convening the business, cooperative, community development, finance, and nonprofit sectors, the Collaborative advances worker cooperative conversions as a strategy for good jobs and equitable economic development.