Vol. 29 (2025): Trends in Employee Ownership and Not-for-Profit Fiscal Sponsorship Management Models

Dear Reader, 

We are excited to collaborate with two partner organizations, Ownership Capital Lab and Social Impact Commons, to curate and present “Trends in Employee Ownership and Not-for-Profit Fiscal Sponsorship Management Models.” 

Ownership is ultimately what creates economic stability for individuals and families, whether home, business, or stock ownership. Broad-based employee ownership (EO), in which all employees can become owners of their workplace, creates opportunities for frontline workers to also buy a home, save for retirement, and provide for the next generation. EO is one of the rare topics that everyone seems to agree on because it creates benefits for all stakeholders: for workers, for businesses, for selling business owners, and for communities. All stripes of the political spectrum love EO—EO legislation typically gains unanimous votes, and polls demonstrate 80%+ support for EO among Republicans and Democrats alike.

In recent years, EO has been coming out of its silo, with the last five years seeing an explosion of new growth, new entrants, and new potential. However, most people still haven’t heard of EO. That’s where nonprofits and field-building organizations have critical roles to play: in awareness building, in the business ownership succession planning marketplace (most EO is created when a retiring business owner sells their company to an EO form), and in the lending and capital marketplaces (these sales of businesses require lending or investment capital).

The employee ownership articles below showcase a range of nonprofits that are each supporting the growth of EO in critical ways.

1. Evergreen Cooperative Corporation: Transforming Lives and Neighborhoods Through Community Wealth Building
2. Employee Ownership: A Strategy for Thriving Communities
3. Turning the Silver Tsunami into a Wealth-Building Wave: Project Equity’s Vision for Employee Ownership and Economic Resilience
4. Economic Justice for All – Cooperatives Lead the Way, CDFIs Fund the Vision
5. Growing Investment Capital for Employee Ownership Can Fundamentally Change the Face of Ownership in The U.S. and Address Racial Wealth Gaps
6. Catalyzing Worker Cooperative Ecosystem Development

Alongside these organizations, there are many, many more doing amazing work. We invite you to learn and consider EO, support its growth from whatever seat you occupy, look up (and shop at) EO businesses in your local community, and think about how ownership changes lives. Today, we have an unprecedented opportunity for employee ownership to address economic mobility and racial wealth gaps.

Fiscal Sponsorship is a growing field of nonprofit practice that offers a spectrum of management models for sharing nonprofit infrastructure among multiple discrete charitable missions and activities.  The US field of fiscal sponsorship dates to the late 1950s and has grown especially fast since 2000, per a 2023 field scan by Social Impact Commons. This growth has been motivated largely by the general polycrisis and increasing cadence of climate change, socioeconomic disparity, natural disaster, and socio-political unrest, whereby fiscal sponsorship is an effective way to move philanthropic funds to front-line workers and organizations, as well as a means to stand-up and operate charitable work quickly and more efficiently. In the past several decades, US fiscal sponsorship practices have been replicated by NGOs in other legal and tax jurisdictions around the world, operating under a variety of terms, such as fiscal hosting, shared platforms, umbrella organizations, and others.

At present, there are about 600 self-identifying fiscal sponsors operating in the US, though we estimate (we lack public data on fiscal sponsors, as they are just 501(c)(3) public charities and not separately regulated) that there may be upwards of 5,000.  Impact Commons’ fields scan of about 15% of the discernable population surfaced a remarkable scope of impact, including over 12,000 charitable projects; more than $2.6 billion in sponsored project funds; $575 million in government funding to projects; 18,000 staff members employed and contractors managed; and almost $700 million in contributions to households (employees and contractors combined). And this is just the tip of the iceberg.

The below fiscal sponsorship articles explore various facets of the rapidly evolving field of fiscal sponsorship informative and provocative.

1. What is Fiscal Sponsorship? A Primer
2. The Rise of Management Commons: A New Vision for Nonprofit Infrastructure
3. Strength in Solidarity – Fiscal Sponsorship as Intentional Community Building: Collective Action and Resource Sharing in Puerto Rico
4. Finding Values-Aligned Operational Homes in the How (Not the What) of Fiscal Sponsorship
5. Shifting the Narrative: From Incubator to Forever Home

We hope this edition, titled “Trends in Employee Ownership and Not-for-Profit Fiscal Sponsorship Management Models,” provides an overview of emerging nonprofit management and employee ownership models to address economic mobility and racial wealth gaps.

Sincerely,

Alison Lingane, Founder, Ownership Capital Lab

Thaddeus Squire, Chief Commons Steward, Social Impact Commons

Nicholas Torres, CEO and Publisher, Social Innovations Journal

Meet the Authors Event - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ve-8sQiYFfI