Inclusive Ownership Funds (IOFs), which would require
corporations to place a percentage of shares into a trust operated on behalf of
workers. Recently, The Democracy Collaborative partnered with YouGov to conduct
polling on these types of policies and found that 55% of
respondents would support a policy requiring companies with over 250
employees to put 10 percent of their shares into a workers’ fund. Read more
about IOFs, including support from Senator Bernie Sanders, in the Washington Post,
Vox, New York Magazine,
the New Yorker,
and Common Dreams.
The growing discussion of IOFs is also the product of a developing
transatlantic exchange around the democratic economy that The Democracy
Collaborative is helping to facilitate, as detailed in The Guardian,
New Statesman, and
Jacobin.
In addition to being politically popular, employee ownership can also help
achieve goals related to sustainability. A recent article in Fast Company
highlights The Democracy Collaborative’s research in this area, profiling a new report
published by Fifty by Fifty that found that mission-led
employee-owned firms outperformed on metrics related to environmental impact.
Fifty by Fifty recently re-launched its
website, bringing together news and updates related to scaling
employee ownership. To receive email updates, subscribe to the newsletter here.
Earlier this month, the Healthcare Anchor Network (HAN) hosted its spring
convening in Cleveland, Ohio, bringing together over 40 health systems to
discuss how they can leverage their sizable economic resources to support
inclusive, local economic development. HAN also worked in collaboration
with Modern Healthcare to host their Social
Determinants of Health Symposium, which centered on
shifting the underlying economic conditions that create poor health. Read more
in Modern
Healthcare. Harvard University’s School of Public Health
recently published a case
study detailing the work of HAN member UMass Memorial Health Care
(UMMHC) in Worcester, Massachusetts. UMMHC worked with The Democracy
Collaborative to explore how to advance anchor strategies in the areas of
investment, hiring, and purchasing. Reflecting on some of these themes,
Director of Healthcare Engagement David Zuckerman has contributed a
chapter to a book on how to institutionalize the anchor mission
approach. The chapter was co-authored by HAN members Michellene Davis with
RWJBarnabas Health and David Ansell with Rush University Medical
Center. Read more in the recommended reads below.
Democracy Collaborative Fellow, and founder and chair of the Public Banking
Institute, Ellen Brown has released a new book, Banking on the People:
Democratizing Money in the Digital Age, published
by The Democracy Collaborative. The book explores the development of the
current banking system, rooted in extraction, and how banking can be
transformed to support the public good.
