Employee Ownership Blog

Corey Rosen

House DOL Budget Omits WORK Act Funding, Senate Backs ESOP Support

The 2026 proposed appropriation for the Department of Labor (DOL) passed by the House Appropriations Committee lacks funding for state employee ownership offices authorized by the WORK Act that the Senate Appropriations Committee recommended in July. That committee is recommending an initial $2 million for 2025 to help fund state employee ownership outreach programs. The Senate committee also urged the DOL to finalize its ESOP valuation regulations.

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Ramona Rodriguez-Brooks

Forum Keynote Preview: Leadership Strategies

This September in Indianapolis, I’ll have the honor of joining Jen Briggs on the Fall Forum main stage for our keynote conversation, “Brewing Potential: Leadership Strategies for Employee-Owned Businesses.” Jen is an insightful and experienced leader, and we will present a candid “beer with the boss”-style keynote focused on building effective leadership that prioritizes high-performance culture. As we start our engines and prepare to #racetoIndy, I’d like to share a few of the landmark themes Jen and I plan to explore in the keynote.

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Madelyn Hammack

National Economic Council Hosts White House Convening on Worker Ownership

On July 25, the National Economic Council (NEC) hosted a meeting on employee ownership in the White House compound that gathered representatives from federal agencies, legislative offices, and the employee ownership community, including the NCEO’s Loren Rodgers. As Joseph Blasi, speaking as a representative of the Treasury Department, noted, never before has a presidential administration hosted such a prominent inter-agency meeting on employee ownership. 

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Madelyn Hammack

NJ Partners with Rutgers University to Promote Employee Ownership

The New Jersey Economic Development Authority (NJEDA) has announced a significant collaboration with the Rutgers University School of Management and Labor Relations (SMLR) to foster employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs) across the state. This partnership aims to create educational and informational programs to increase the number of New Jersey businesses implementing the ESOP model. Professor Bill Castellano, Executive Director of the New Jersey/New York Center for Employee Ownership, will be leading the charge. “A large percentage of retiring business owners have few succession plan options, and don’t realize they can sell the company to their employees instead of closing up shop,” he said. “Employee ownership strategies save jobs and help to keep the business and the local economy going.”

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Corey Rosen

NC Law Allows Minority ESOPs to Qualify for HUB Program

The North Carolina legislature has passed and the governor has signed S. 802 (PDF), an infrastructure finance bill that also includes an unrelated provision allowing ESOPs in which at least 51% of the participants are “minority persons or socially and economically disadvantaged individuals” to qualify for the state’s historically underutilized business set-aside program. The law states that “an ESOP company applying for certification as a historically underutilized business shall provide an attestation that it meets the requirements of this subdivision together with such documentation supporting the attestation as may be required by the Secretary." The law became effective on July 1, 2024.

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Lindsay Isaac

The Download: A Year in Review

This June marked the one-year anniversary of The Download, a monthly NCEO member resource designed to help improve education and engagement at employee-owned companies. To commemorate, we've put together a "yearbook" to highlight the resources that have been distributed so far. The Download has covered a variety of topics in its first year, including the ESOP landscape, ESOP nuts and bolts, and ESOP culture.

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