Project Equity
Focused on employee ownership
Project Equity is facilitating a significant transition of small businesses into employee-owned companies in order to grow community wealth and address our nation’s racial income and wealth gaps. They do so by raising awareness about the tremendous benefits of broad-based employee ownership, by working directly with business owners and employees to facilitate the transition, and by leveraging the public sector (beginning with cities) to encourage and promote this under-represented and highly impactful business model.
In an era of the highest levels of income and wealth inequality since the Gilded Age, and with major forces – from globalization to AI – bringing uncertainty to the future of work, employee-owned businesses offer a powerful opportunity to address the wealth gap while bringing stability and quality jobs to millions of workers. What’s more, we are at the front end of a “Silver Tsunami” with nearly 2.5 million baby boomer business owners considering whether, how, and to whom to sell their business.
Data consistently shows that employee-owned companies increase job quality, invest locally and have demonstrable positive impact on job creation, and on business retention. Job stability is also higher, given lower employee turnover rates. Project Equity is focused on making transitions as easy as possible while simultaneously building demand so that employee ownership moves from a misunderstood outlier to a common and celebrated path toward an economy that works for all. Founded in 2014, Project Equity is now collaborating with major California cities on ways to accelerate employee ownership and was involved in the drafting of recent federal legislation (the 2018 Main Street Employee Ownership Act) to advance business transitions to employee ownership.