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ESOP Pre-Feasibility Toolkit
Considering an ESOP? The Pre-Feasibility Toolkit, a collection of resources to help you determine if an ESOP is right for you and where to go next, includes readings, webinars, ready-to-use sample documents, resource lists, and research that draws on the NCEO’s decades-long history of talking with business owners, conducting research, and distilling common lessons and best practices into an easily usable format.
Going through this material will help you know if it makes sense to take the next steps in an ESOP. When you are done, you will know:
- If your situation meets the “tripwire” criteria for ESOP suitability
- How well the benefits of ESOPs match your goals
- The pros and cons of the major types of ESOP transactions
- The steps in creating an ESOP
- Your next steps
Go to the pre-feasibility toolkit
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Being Acquired by an ESOP Company Toolkit
You have a lot of choices when selling the company you have worked so hard to build. Employee ownership is an appealing exit strategy, but sometimes an alternative path is what's needed due to a variety of potential factors.
Selling to a company that already has an ESOP may be an attractive alternative and the potential benefits are plenty.
This toolkit will help you decide if, given your goals and the current situation of your company, a sale to a company with an existing ESOP is a strategy worth investigating. It includes key decision factors, research highlights, case studies, and many links to resources where you can learn more.
The content is organized into four sections:
- Threshold Questions: Getting Started
- The Transaction: Selling to a Company with an ESOP
- After the Sale
- Finding a Buyer
Go to the toolkit
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ESOP Finance Toolkit and Lender Directory
The Finance Toolkit has resources to help NCEO member companies secure financing, either for an ESOP transaction or commercial lending, and it includes guidelines to best practices when seeking financing as well as a directory of bank and non-bank lenders with ESOP experience.
The toolkit is organized by the following topics:
- Overview of financing for employee-owned companies
- Working with banks
- Seller financing
- Working with non-bank lenders
- Finding and managing finance advisors
- Finding the right lender for you
- ESOP-specific issues in financing
- NCEO's lender directory
Go to the finance toolkit
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Repurchase Obligation Toolkit
As an ESOP matures, retirees and other former employees convert the shares in their ESOP accounts into cash. Ultimately, it is the company’s responsibility—called its “repurchase obligation”—to ensure the availability of cash to buy those shares.
Repurchase obligation is almost always manageable if the company plans for it, but without planning, the repurchase obligation can constrain companies' ability to invest in growth and, in extreme cases, can make the ESOP unsustainable. This toolkit is a guide to the NCEO resources that can help you adequately plan for your repurchase obligation and become a more sustainable ESOP company. It is divided into four parts:
- The rules for repurchase obligation
- Planning for repurchase obligation
- Approaches to financing the repurchase obligation
- Maintaining a sustainable plan
Go to the repurchase obligation toolkit
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Employee Ownership Month Toolkit
Employee Ownership Month (EOM) provides us with a unique opportunity to celebrate, educate, and reward employee-owners and the companies they work for. There is often untapped potential to spotlight employee-owned companies out in the public through communications efforts and PR. This toolkit is designed to highlight the “why” behind Employee Ownership Month and to provide resources and examples to assist with the planning and execution of the month’s activities.
The toolkit is organized into the following categories:
- History and Significance of Employee Ownership Month
- Education and Content Planning
- Recognition and Celebration
- Learning from Other Companies
Go to the Employee Ownership Month toolkit
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Recruitment and Retention Toolkit
Employee ownership lowers voluntary turnover rates, and anecdotally, many employee-owned companies believe they have more applicants than average per position. The goal of this toolkit is to help NCEO member companies improve their ability to both recruit and retain employee-owners. This page provides an overview of the key steps in recruiting and retention as well as guidance specific to different stages in an employee-owner’s lifecycle, from onboarding to long-tenure employees.
As with all NCEO toolkits, this page provides easy access to resources such as articles, sample documents, recorded webinars, and data collected by the NCEO’s research team.
The content is focused on the following topics:
- Employee ownership: the value proposition
- Finding potential employees
- Onboarding and year 1
- Retaining employees with 2 or more years of service
Go to the recruitment and retention toolkit
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Board Excellence Toolkit and Candidate Directory
This toolkit is designed to help NCEO member companies improve the effectiveness of their boards of directors, as well as successfully recruit and onboard independent directors. Centered on usable templates, sample documents, articles, webinars, and data collected by the NCEO's research team.
After spending some time with these resources, search for potential independent directors among more than 130 NCEO members using the Board Candidate Directory.
The following topics are covered in this toolkit:
- Overview of the role of the board
- Defining the characteristics of the candidates you need
- Identifying candidates
- Evaluating and onboarding candidates
- Board operations
- Boards and ESOPs
- Board activities
Go to the board excellence toolkit
