Impact Investing and Employee Ownership

This report explores the existing landscape of employee ownership opportunities for impact investors and highlights emerging models and strategies for inclusive investment in Employee Stock Ownership Plans (ESOPs) and worker cooperatives. The benefits of employee ownership as a strategy for achieving broad-based prosperity are well documented, but the growing field of impact investing has yet to fully recognize the key opportunity employee ownership presents for tackling economic inequality. The report concludes with the idea that employee ownership could be integrated into a portfolio approach that would satisfy needs for return, risk, and impact, while also transitioning ownership of business from few hands to many.