New Policy Kit: Financing Shared Ownership

Today, DPN has released our Financing Shared Ownership policy kit, an open resource for legislators, advocates, journalists, and citizens to learn how governments can help create robust financing infrastructure for cooperative enterprises, employee-owned businesses, and other forms of broad-based shared ownership.

The kit was developed by Júlia Martins Rodrigues (a commissioner on the Colorado Employee Ownership Commission, an Associate Researcher for the University of Colorado Boulder and an Associate Director of the Media Economies Design Lab) and Nathan Schneider (an Assistant Professor at University of Colorado Boulder and Founder and Director of the Media Economies Design Lab).

A truly democratic society should be capable of extending democracy into the workplace and everyday economic life. Shared ownership is a fundamental stepping stone toward such economic democracy. In this context, shared ownership refers to broad-based structures that make company ownership available and reasonably accessible to all members of a stakeholder class—such as its workers, consumers, neighbors, or other groups of direct participants. This way, the owners of a business are people whose lives its operations affect, not just outside investors seeking profits. Through broad-based shared ownership, access to the responsibilities and rewards of ownership can be distributed throughout society rather than concentrated in the hands of a financial elite, resulting in more democratic governance and shared prosperity.

Shared ownership isn't just good policy—it's good business. Employee-owned companies produce reduced wealth inequality, better firm performance, workforce retention, and increased productivity. Our markets are already shaped by policy that channels capital toward wealth consolidation through venture capital and private equity. But what if policy could instead support businesses owned by the people who depend on them?

In this kit, explore comprehensive strategies to level the playing field for shared ownership, including:

• Creating inter-agency frameworks to coordinate federal and state support across sectors
• Implementing appropriate tax treatment, including expanding the successful "1042 rollover" to all forms of shared ownership
• Establishing cash collateral and loan guarantee programs to overcome financing barriers
• Enacting statutory rights of first offer and refusal for workers and community stakeholders
• Developing public investment funds and revolving loan programs to support shared ownership
• Learning from successful precedents in Colorado, Italy, Brazil, and Quebec

If you are a legislator, activist, expert, or journalist looking to help promote economic democracy in your state or community, check out (and share) our kit — and please get in touch.