We've posted highlights from our Annual Conference on our website. The highlights include presentations from speakers; photos of all the happenings; and video clips from the morning and afternoon General Sessions, including the Annual Ohio Employee Ownership Awards and the keynote speech from Joseph Blasi. Check it out!

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The Foundation for Enterprise Development has released the trailer for their new film on employee ownership. Titled "We The Owners: Employees Expanding the American Dream" the film follows three differently structured employee-owned companies as they create a stakeholder economy based on 'prosperity through ownership'. And, in a publishing coup, the OEOC can preview a few stills from the film:

The purpose of the film is more than entertainment. In conversations with your humble scribe, Executive Producer Mary Ann Beyster expressed the additional goal that the film be a tool for broadening the discussion and teaching of the concept of employee ownership in the nation's universities and MBA programs (a goal that we at the OEOC certainly applaud and support).

Scheduled for release in Summer 2012, you can view the trailer at the site linked above or on YouTube.

The Foundation for Enterprise Development was founded in 1986 by Dr. J. Robert Beyster. The Foundation's mission is to promote broad-based employee ownership and entrepreneurism.

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The Spring 2012 issue of our newsletter, Owners At Work is now online. New for this issue are some web-enhanced versions for your viewing pleasure, including a flash-based magizine-view version, as well as a version for your Kindle.

Covered in this issue:

• Vistula Management Corporation Becomes Employee Owned
• What Makes an Ideal ESOP?
• Misconceptions about 401(k)'s and ESOPs
• The Value of Employee Ownership
• News from around the world of employee ownership and from Ohio's Employee Owned Network, and more

Check it out now, and let us know what you think!

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The OEOC will be taking another technological leap this week by streaming two portions of our upcoming conference on Friday April 20th:

1) the Morning General Session - 9 am 10 am (EST) - Events during this session will include, a welcome from Kathleen Clyde, Ohio State Representative for Kent State's district; Opening Remarks from Bill McIntyre, OEOC Director; two welcome videos from Senators Rob Portman and Sherrod Brown; and presentations for the Annual Ohio Employee Ownership Awards.

2) Keynote Address - 12:45 pm - 1:15 pm (EST) - This year's Keynote speaker is Dr. Joseph Blasi, the Robert Beyster Professor of Employee Ownership at Rutgers University. Dr. Beyster will be talking about his latest research into the trends and best practices of employee ownership.

To watch the live stream, you can 1) go to our home page for the embedded viewer, or 2) go to our Facebook page and click on the Ustream tab.

Join us live on Friday April 20th!

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This week's Christian Science Monitor has a nice article highlighting the cooperative business model and 2012 being the International Year of the Cooperative.

Two important points are made in the piece:

Co-ops worldwide represent much more than hippie grocery stores: They're a fast-growing way to do business better in fields from finance to agriculture to industry...

...Cooperatives are more widespread than you might think. From banks and credit unions to apartment buildings to worker-owned businesses, co-ops appear in every facet of today’s economy. In most cases, they formed in response to economic crises like the Great Depression, or to let small groups compete in monopolized markets. In 2012, both of those conditions exist – and unsurprisingly, so do cooperatives.

All too often when talking to the general public about cooperatives, misconceptions and misunderstandings occur about the nature and scope of cooperative enterprises. The truth is, there is enough flexibility in the cooperative model to handle any type of business endeavour.

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If you're interested in learning "a better way of doing business," we invite you to attend the 26th Annual Ohio Employee Ownership Conference. The conference, titled Employee Ownership: A Better Way of Doing Business, will take place April 20 in Akron, Ohio, and will feature keynote speaker Joseph Blasi.

Joseph Blasi is a professor at the School of Management and Labor Relations at Rutgers University where he was named to the post of Robert J. Beyster Professorship of Employee Ownership.

Attendees will have the opportunity to learn about various aspects of employee ownership, and meet with other network members. If you're interested in attending you can register and find more information on the OEOC Website.

We hope to see you this April in Akron!

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If you're interested in learning more about cooperatives, we invite you to attend the Ohio Cooperative Symposium: Cooperative Business Structure for Small Business Owners and Operators in Akron on April 19. This program is underwritten by the USDA Rural Cooperative Development Grant and brought to you at no cost.

Cooperative enterprises are successful and common business models playing a vital role in our local communities. This session is for anyone interested in learning more about cooperatives and talking with people who have worked with successful co-ops. Sessions will include basic and advanced cooperative topics as well as tracks on developing Co-ops and Cooperative activities in the Food Community. 

For more information on topics to be discussed and registration click here. 

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The Aspen Institute is now host to the largest online academic repository pf teaching and background materials on employee ownership. The resource, the Curriculum Library on Employee Ownership (CLEO) includes an impressive array of books, articles, case studies, and teaching materials on everything employee ownership. CLEO was a collaborative effort of the Aspen Institute’s Center for Business Education, the Foundation for Enterprise Development and the Employee Ownership Foundation.

It is definitely worth a look!

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...from the OEOC family, to yours!

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Bloomberg BusinessWeek has a story on two measures passed by the house of Representatives that loosens rules on equity investors for smaller enterprises:

House lawmakers voted 407-17 to pass a measure that would exempt from Securities and Exchange Commission registration firms that solicit and pool small investments, often online, of up to $1 million. The practice, known as crowdfunding, garnered bipartisan support after Obama’s Sept. 8 speech to Congress...

...Representative Kevin McCarthy, the third-ranked Republican in the House, sponsored a second bill passed today that would allow closely held firms to market offerings to accredited investors. The SEC currently bans closely held firms from soliciting funding from investors.

Both measures passed on a bipartisan basis and now move to the Senate for approval.

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I thought I would let all of you know about some of the more interesting stories I've read over the last week from the world of employee ownership.

First up are a couple of stories from two officers from seperate employee-owned companies who both stress that employee ownership is good business, and a great way to support the retirement savings of workers:

Greg Klein, CFO and Vice-President of Inland Truck Parts from the Des Moines Register 

Mike Heitmann, President and CEO of Garney Construction from the Kansas City Star

Next up is an article from the Financial News & Daily Record newspaper (based in Jacksonville Florida) on the power of "ownership thinking."

And finally, from the other other side of the world (specifically from the Sydney (Australia) Morning Herald) comes an interesting piece on how the "us-vs-them workplace is just bad business".

I think the common theme among all the pieces is the idea of when you allow workers to share in the risk and rewards of operating a business, the end results tend to be positive.

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Normal.dotm 0 0 1 118 677 OEOC 5 1 831 12.0 0 false 18 pt 18 pt 0 0 false false false

DotCoop, sponsor of the .coop domain name, announced the winners of its Cooperative Excellence Awards last week. One of the more interesting winners, at least for me, was s.coop, a web link shortening service.

For those of you who don't know what a 'web link shortening service' is, well, let me show you.

If you would like to read a nice article about the full slate of award winners on the excellent Co-operative News website, I could provide you with the following link:

http://www.thenews.coop/article/dotcoop-announces-winners-global-awards

Quite a mouthful, especially if you wanted to send out the link via a social media outlet (such as Twitter) that has a defined limit on the number of available characters allowed in a message.

By using s.coop's service, I can get the link shortened to a more manageable:

http://s.coop/5sqj

Much better!

To begin using the s.coop service, and to show a little cooperative pride, log onto http://s.coop/

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The OEOC has started a new group on LinkedIn. Join up, and receive updates on events and happenings at the OEOC, and network with fellow travellers in the employee ownership world!

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So get out there and celebrate the men and women making a better economy for all of us.

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A group of North American cooperative organizations are hosting a conference on business succession planning and employee ownership in Quebec City from October 11-13. Roy Messing from the OEOC will be participating in a number of events during the 3 days.

Interested? Find out more here.

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A Bill has been introduced in the U.S. Senate that, among other things, will make it easier for companies to convert into S-Corp ESOPs. A press release from Employee Owned S Corporations of America provides some details. Some important quotes:

The bill eliminates barriers that businesses and their owners currently face in establishing a new S corporation ESOP or expanding the employee-ownership stake in an S corporation. Congress created the S corporation ESOP structure to encourage and expand retirement savings, giving more workers in private companies the chance to own their companies through an ESOP qualified retirement savings program. A similar bill, currently endorsed by 18 Republicans and 18 Democrats, was introduced earlier this year in the House of Representatives as H.R. 1244...

...The S corporation ESOP structure accomplishes exactly what Congress intended it to do by creating retirement security for millions of American workers in all 50 states. A study from University of Pennsylvania shows that S ESOP employees have retirement account balances three to five times higher than the average 401 (k) or other defined contribution plans and that S ESOPs generate $14 billion in new savings each year for their workers beyond what they otherwise would have earned, offering greater job stability and job satisfaction. According to a Georgetown University report, S ESOPs have been better able to weather economic downturns, preserve jobs and, in the case of the recent recession, have grown wages in comparison to their non-S corporation ESOP counterparts.

An S-Corporation that is owned 100% by its employees through an ESOP is a 100% income tax free entity.

The bill was introduced by Republicans Pat Roberts and Olympia Snowe and Democrat Ben Cardin and mirrors House Bill 1244 that was introduced earlier this year. The House Bill has been endorsed by 18 Democrats and 18 Republicans.

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The AllBusiness website has an interesting article on the use of employee-owned cooperatives in small businesses. The article highlights a number of companies, including Cleveland's own Evergreen family of cooperatives, who have used the cooperative model to empower and motivate their employees. A few have even used the model as a tool for ownership succession.

The article restates a familiar objection to cooperatives:

Co-ops have long been dismissed as touchy-feely experiments in business socialism, but with growing pressure on many traditional companies, the co-op model is getting increased attention -- not just as a political statement of owner-worker solidarity, but as a fresh approach to business success.

For some people, cooperatives may indeed conjure up negative images of "socialism." But for the many cooperative members around the country, the idea that they are engaging in some form of utopian exercise would be some fresh news indeed (we cover this and other misconceptions about cooperatives in a previous post on our blog.)

It should be also noted that the author throws different types of cooperatives into the same jumbled bag. Employee cooperatives are part of a broad family of cooperative businesses, which include agricultural co-ops like Land of Lakes or Agland, which are owned by their farmer members (as mentioned in the article); credit cooperatives like credit unions, which are owned by their depositor members; mutual insurance companies like Nationwide and State Farm, which are owned by their policy holder members; and consumer co-ops like some natural food stores, which are owned by their customer members. For many of these other types of cooperatives, the employees may or may not also be owners of the business.

The OEOC has an extensive practice in setting up new employee-owned cooperatives, as well as significant experience with ownership transitions to employee-owned cooperatives. If you are interested in exploring this option in your company, drop us a line. 

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