You can get a big picture overview of all things related to making an ESOP company work well at the Fall ESOP Forum, but most people I talk with have one aspect of ESOPs at the top of mind. We structured the Fall Forum with four tracks so you can be confident that you can focus on building your knowledge and getting ideas you can implement. Get our Fall Forum curriculum guide (PDF) to help choose the best sessions to attend based on your areas of interest or job focus. See the Fall Forum program for a searchable list of sessions and speakers; you also can filter by track. If you haven't registered yet, be sure to register now.
Businesses across the country are struggling to find, hire, and retain the employees they need, so this finding from the General Social Survey should be welcome news to everyone responsible for recruiting at an employee-owned company: “Democrat or Republican, female or male, black or white, union or non-union, a majority of respondents said they prefer to work for a company with employee share ownership.”
One of the perks of my job is that I get to talk a lot with people from employee-owned companies, and I have noticed two themes in my conversations with CEOs around the country in recent weeks.
As you've probably heard by now, our 2021 Fall ESOP Forum will now be exclusively an online event. While this news is disappointing to all of us who were eager to reunite with the ESOP community in person, we’re very excited for the Forum’s virtual shift and all the ways we’ll connect in our online format. Both of us were excited to travel to San Diego: As the NCEO’s board chair and CFO of member company Realityworks, Mary was planning to lead a team from Realityworks and was also looking forward to having face time with service providers and other ESOP peers. Loren, among many other things, was looking forward to meeting some of the new NCEO staff in person for the first time!
The Certified Equity Professional Institute (CEPI) at Santa Clara University is accepting applications for the 2021 Marilyn Perkins J. Classen Memorial Scholarships. CEPI Senior Director Alex Florea noted that "this is a great opportunity for individuals in the equity compensation industry to earn their CEP designation." The two $5,000 awards support study and certification as a certified equity professional (CEP). Applications are available online and will be accepted until August 20.
Since the Main Street Employee Ownership Act (MSEOA) was signed into law in August 2018, the NCEO and others in the field have questioned whether its implementation matched Congress's intent to promote employee ownership. See, for example, our blog post Proposed SBA Regulations Appear to Weaken the Impact of the Main Street Employee Ownership Act.
On June 24, 2021, Meld Studios announced that it was transitioning ownership from its three founders to an employee ownership trust (EOT) that owns shares on behalf of all 22 Meld employees.
The NCEO is excited to announce that the 2021 Fall ESOP Forum will be back in September, this time as a hybrid event! After more than a year of virtual education, the NCEO’s 2021 Forum will take place both onsite and online. This one-of-a-kind gathering will give attendees, speakers, and sponsors the ability to meet and engage with the ESOP community from wherever they are—onsite in San Diego, online via our state-of-the-art virtual platform, or both.
The U.S. Innovation and Competition Act (formerly titled the Endless Frontier Act (S. 1260) has now passed the Senate. As it was being considered, Senators Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Jerry Moran (R-KS) submitted an amendment that would incorporate a version of the WORK Act (the Worker Ownership, Readiness, and Knowledge Act). The amendment was never acted on, however. The WORK Act, versions of which have been proposed by Sen. Sanders in prior Congresses (see S. 1081 from 2017, for example), would create a $50 million fund to be disbursed over four years for outreach to promote employee ownership through employee ownership centers sponsored or contracted by individual states. An office within the Department of Labor would create an “employee ownership and participation” initiative to coordinate and provide technical assistance for the program. A state, or an organization designated by a state, could receive a maximum grant of $330,000 per year, which would be increased by 5% per year, from 2022 through 2026. The idea of federal support for state-level employee ownership has been promoted by several think tanks, and has roots in an idea raised by the NCEO’s Corey Rosen in 1986 and initially introduced by Senator James Sasser that year.
