Unleashing an Ownership Economy: The Role of Government Agencies

um you know I was I was sort of struck by um uh congresswoman Houlihan talking about like so everybody knows the rule about like you know the the Schoolhouse Rock of how a bill becomes a law and kind of walking through that and I was like okay but it doesn't really stop when it becomes the law right because then the law goes over to the agencies to write the regulations and then the agencies have to get that out to their field offices that kind of work with the plans and and and that we have sort of Community Partners that kind of help with that implementation and so so that's the that's the other side of it that we're going to be kind of talking about in in this panel um government agencies as you're all aware do a range of things to support entrepreneurship small businesses um businesses at large through technical assistance through tax incentives Contracting and procurement incentives Market development and more and we touched on some of those things this morning um and in the case of employee ownership there's a lot of different federal agencies that play a role um we talked a little bit about the Main Street employee ownership Act and the work act and how those created new opportunities for the small business administration and the Department of Labor to support employee owned Enterprises um in addition and I think we may have shared a little bit about the treasury Department's State small business credit initiative and that can be used to support broad-based employee ownership so I our colleagues at treasury shared a little fact sheet about that they unfortunately couldn't be here today um and of course the agriculture department has a long history of supporting cooperatives including worker co-ops as part of its work in in America's rural communities and there are other agencies that also can and do support on employee-owned Enterprises uh through their procurement processes using other initiatives and many of them also coordinate with each other as they Implement congressionally improved programs so in this session we're talking a little bit about the ways federal agencies work with Partners around the country to support employee-owned employ-owned Enterprises and you know what they're doing as relates to some of the legislation that's that's passed in the past few years um so I'm going to quickly do a little sort of names to faces introduction I'll remind you again that we have that handy dandy QR code on your uh on your agenda if you'd like to sort of find people's bios and learn more about them because um they are a great panel but my main task right now is just to get through not butchering their names I will do my best um so next to me I have Raj Nayak assistant secretary for policy at the U.S Department of Labor uh next to Raj we have Dr Karama Neil administrator rural business Cooperative service at the U.S department of Agriculture um next to Karama we have uh David hinkapi I think that works okay uh Economic Development specialist in the Washington metropolitan area district office of the small business administration and next to David we have Melissa Hoover senior fellow at the Rutgers Institute for the study of employee ownership and profit sharing and founder and co-executive director of the Democracy at work initiative work Institute so thank you all so much for being here and excited to to jump in and Raj I'm actually just gonna going to start with you um oh and I should note um so this is the coveted after lunch spot right so you'll notice that none of our Congress people who we invited to give opening remarks chose this time slot but what that means for all of you is that we will finally get to that thing I promised early in the morning where we engage the audience in the Q a so um so do just keep that in mind as as we're going through we will be welcoming your your comments and questions um okay Raj uh so as we have been discussing one of the and we've discussed a lot this morning and I've discussed with you before one of the great benefits of employee ownerships is how it really supports good jobs um that's really important to the Department of Labor and you guys have a whole initiative on good jobs um uh and you've been collaborating with the Department of Commerce on that and building a shared understanding of good jobs so so tell us a little bit about that work and sort of what are the some of the markers of a good job we should be keeping in mind as we think about how employee-owned companies can support good jobs well thank you Maureen uh can you hear me I'm like no how about this oh how about this better okay great I'll just go a little closer uh great to see you I feel like I should be uh offering to interested bill or something um but uh Maureen thanks for having me today it's really exciting to be here and I was saying tomorrow when I walked in like just the energy and and uh interest in this issue is is really exciting um you know as you mentioned the Administration has been talking a lot about good jobs which is a conversation that I have to say every time we talk about this conversation I think well Maureen's been talking about this for a number of years and we just want to recognize that you and your team have really been the Forefront of these questions we all know that good jobs provide stability and security for workers at their and their families but at the Department of Labor we started really thinking in Earnest about what Maureen talked about and has been talking about for a long time which is what exactly makes a good job what are those markers uh in the beginning of the administration when a steady stream of employers sometimes public sector employers sometimes private sector employers came to us and said look how do we find workers in this tight labor market right folks were strong and and I know that the labor market has changed and shifted in time and space but there are still sectors where folks are struggling to find workers and so to us that's the thing about good jobs we know that employers who provide good quality jobs have a clear competitive Advantage when it comes to recruiting workers but also maybe more importantly sometimes retaining workers uh that question of how do you find workers is a lot easier if you're not losing folks on the back end and asking us for you know when they were asking us for advice we would say well good jobs are an important strategy for for Recruitment and Retention in addition to creating a more Equitable and resilient economy so our then secretary Marty Walsh started talking about what makes a good job in his speeches we're hearing things from our key stakeholders at the same time the same conversation was going on with the Department of Commerce and so who had a whole stakeholder engagement effort around the question too so as Maureen said we really joined forces with them to develop what we called our good jobs principles like eight high-level principles that we thought would be a good framework for some of our own thinking about what makes a good job you can read them all at goodjobs.gov but the higher the highest level of those eight principles will probably be old news to all of you but I'll walk through them one is just actively recruiting and hiring qualified applicants especially folks from underserved communities who may be looked over in in other in other circumstances right this is that chance to to Really to really jump out and hire more people second providing family sustaining benefits like health insurance or retirement plan paid leave and caregiving supports just to name a few third promoting diversity Equity inclusion and accessibility in the workplace and giving all workers real opportunity again including workers from underserved communities fourth ensuring the workers can engage in protect the concerted activity without fear of retaliation including forming and joining unions five giving workers job security and safe healthy and accessible workplaces six building an organizational culture where all workers belong are valued and contribute meaningfully to the organization to whatever the organization's mission is whether it's a private sector Mission or whether it is a public sector mission seventh paying all workers a stable and predictable living wage with pay that is fair transparent and Equitable I'll say this is something clearly the Department of Labor we care deeply about we we care about workers wages it's something that every Department of Labor you know day in and day out thinks about but we were very thoughtful about saying this is not our lead look this is not number one in part because I think too often all of us might say well good job it pays well that's great and and I think all of you have been thinking about this question all day and for much longer which is when you look behind that pay what else do the markers are good jobs and finally giving workers Equitable opportunities and skills to progress that kind of career ladder to progress within an organization uh and to progress you know as you're thinking about in other ways into ownership we'd love to talk more about these principles and what makes a good job as we talk later today and then about our broader good jobs initiative so thank you again for having me great thank you Raj um Grandma I'm going to come to you next because the rural business Cooperative service has a variety of programs to support business growth and development and help people connect to jobs particularly in America's rural communities can you give us a little overview of kind of your agency how how it supports rural Economic Development and how kind of employee ownership fits into that and also I know you actually had an experience working at a employee-owned company so maybe you could share a little bit about that too and how absolutely yeah thank you so much really pleased to be a part of this conversation um when I talked to my colleagues about coming to speak they reminded me as they often do when I I have these kinds of conversations that we are the only public agency that has Cooperative in the name the only Federal agency that has Cooperative name so we do take that very seriously and also of course we know where the rural business rural business Cooperative service our main goal in collaboration with the other two agencies that are part of rural development at USDA the rural housing service and the rural utility service is to help rural communities Thrive right so all the kinds of things that go into that whether it's the utilities piece the housing piece or in our case helping businesses provide the jobs and provide the economic um stability and growth that is so critical for Rural communities we take and think about several priorities in this work and these are reflected these are part of what you'll see in the USDA strategic plan but we have a rural development specific version of that where we think specifically about climate and how do we combat climate change through our work how do we ensure racial and place-based equity and how do we create new and better markets for the businesses farther agricultural producers for others who are in rural areas so they can sell and Market their products and their services more Broad oddly of course then building up their business and building up the opportunities in those rural communities so we have work that focuses broadly around business I sort of hear two different things oftentimes when folks maybe know a little bit but not not a ton ton about our work they think well you're in the Department of Agriculture so maybe all you do is agricultural businesses and that's not quite true or they think oh they think they know a little bit more and they say oh well you know you're the real business Cooperative service you do everything except Agriculture and the rest of USDA does agriculture and that's not quite true either right we have a a body of work in across rural businesses because we know and understand the breadth of activities that happen in Rural America and so we work we have a lot of General business activities um and when I say General business I'm including cooperatives work on and other types of cooperatives in that we do have a specific we do have a sort of a deep dive work on agricultural producers and food we also have a deep dive of work on energy in the bioeconomy and so as we think about those kinds of things how do we help those sectors what is the work we're doing we're thinking about grants loans loan guarantee programs many of these programs are intentionally open to cooperatives and to Cooperative lenders so credit unions in this particular case and so we're really intentional about thinking about how what can we design what what are the various types of programs and supports that we can offer businesses and communities either directly or through intermediaries and perhaps an intermediary lender and intermediary technical assistance provider that can then of course then can support that work so um you know I'll talk a little about some of the programs I think there'll be some opportunity to have conversation and of course welcome your questions but you asked specifically about my my own experience particularly an employee ownership and I did work for a company and was actually there to see the sort of the the ideation around moving to employee an employer and it was an ESOP model and then the transition and what that conversion looked like and that was a really exciting process it was really was well received there was a lot of Education that went into that for all of the staff all the people who were involved in that that was a really exciting process it was really exciting also to see what that investment meant I mean I think it was really appreciated Raj how you talked about you know it's not just about you know good pay and there were some pay things that happened there there was some some compensation elements that people were very excited about but they were also very excited about owning that company and having that sense of ownership in the company and what that meant for them and how what that meant for how they made decisions in the company what that meant for how they you know talked about how they spent money on their budget line items you know they they had a real sense of ownership we had a real sense of ownership in that in that particular situation and what it what it um I think about that experience a lot because a lot of the work that we do at USDA rural development in terms of direct technical assistance that we provide which is not a ton but we do do quite a bit of that and a lot of it is based on conversion so how do we help businesses that potentially particularly in rural communities might be in a situation where they don't have a an heir or someone to take their business on there's no willing buyer in that particular rural community so but of course the people who work there want their jobs and so you know how can they think about what that conversion looks like so that is that is experience has been really helpful in thinking about the work that we do now around conversions so I'll pause there I'm looking forward to the conversation great thank you so much Karama um David I'm going to come to you next as I noted earlier implementation of federal policies doesn't just happen in DC in in federal agencies but also out in the offices in in communities um and uh and so and you work in one of those district offices so can you talk a bit about your your background and your role at um with the small business administration and how the work that you do in kind of the district office connects to the ideas of expanding employee ownership happy to all right we're good you have to pull up close a little closer okay well I've I should begin with uh a short overview really short of the SBA people don't actually know us very well despite us being in the news um for the past three and a half years there are 68 district offices across the country right and I work in the Washington Metro Area district office there's 67 others all of them except ours are fully contained in a state or they fully contain the state so Montana has one California has six New York has what three Texas has six so it works like that we are the local points of contact with the business the small business world for the SBA at the district office level we primarily work with our Resource Partners and these are the four kinds of non-profit organizations that provide technical assistance to aspiring entrepreneurs and small business owners those are the Small Business Development Centers the women's business centers the veterans business Outreach centers and the score business mentors they're all partly funded by us and they're not part of us but they're partly funded by us or non-profits usually housed in universities the spdcs in particular and or colleges and they do the work of offering free business advice to people who want to expand or grow their business or business succession as employee ownership can be the business owner is going to retire doesn't know what to do doesn't know how to plan for it wants to find a buyer for the business the spdcs in particular have expertise in this that's our point of contact as far as implementation of policy then there's the Lend The Lending programs that we have SBA does primarily guaranteed lending we guarantee the loans and so we're in touch with all the lenders in a particular district office so someone in the Cleveland district office There's A lender Relations Specialist they're the often there's more than one and they're the points of contact with all the lenders informing them of all the policies and the procedures and everything they have to do to do SBA type Lending right that's the implementation of any policy that comes out connected that in particular the Main Street employee ownership Act what came out of that that's how we connect and that's how we can be involved in this it's through the technical assistance provided through those those Resource Partners that we partly fund and through the lending programs that the SBA is uh that the SBA is a part of that's how we can connect with business owners in that way so implementation of policy we can get more into it uh later but I I have to say this is going to be a bottom-up thing if it's going to happen it's not going to be a top-down thing in spite of the hard work of my colleagues here it's not going to be a top-down thing and it's not going to be a top-down thing because there is no National Registry of business owners there is no list anyone can go to and say where are all the business owners who are older than 50 and whose business has been around for at least 20 years I can't do that trust me I looked I can't do that I can't even do that locally the big obstacle is finding these business owners I have tried and failed for four and a half years to create a Groundswell of employee ownership conversions in my district office area and I can't because I got to find these business owners and that level of business owner especially at the smaller level of businesses that we're dealing with that's a person who's so busy they don't have time to pay attention to everything that comes into their inbox someone is always trying to sell them something so the only way they're going to hear about this is through some trusted advisor some lender they've been doing business with they've had their business line of credit with for the last 12 years maybe their lawyer maybe their brother maybe their sister that's the only way they're going to hear about this every business conversion that has happened that I have heard about whether it's Cooperative or ESOP since I started working at the SBA every single one The Story begins like this I didn't know what I was going to do and then somewhere somehow someone mentioned esap cooperative and that's how it happened totally by accident nothing topped down I tried top down and my little level I failed they're trying top down I don't know how much success you guys can tell us how much success you're having this is going to be bottom up at the local level district office level that's how we can be involved in this in helping this kind of thing happen great thank you David and we'll come back and talk a little more about 7A and some of those things too but Melissa I want to I want to come to you because you have a long history and experience in this field and particularly from the nonprofit sector sort of thinking about how are things working on the ground and that kind of thing and so you have sort of this both working on the ground with folks but also sort of saying hmm this isn't what's working and kind of communicating that back up to the top level so um maybe you could sort of share a little bit about yourself and your experience as it relates to kind of implementing policies to support employee ownership sure yeah thank you I'm so glad to be here so um I'm Melissa Hoover for the last 10 years I've been the executive director of the Democracy at work Institute which is a national non-profit expanding worker ownership employee ownership as a strategy for social and racial Equity um and our DNA is really in worker-owned cooperatives we take a broader approach but in in the capacity of working with co-ops our very first government relationship was with USDA and we've been funded through the rural Cooperative development Grant and so socially disadvantaged group groups grants these are a mouthful for a while and as a as a baby Ed as my one of the very first things I did when I was a new executive director was go to USDA headquarters and meet with staff I put on my collared shirt and I went to go meet with the staff there and um it was really eye-opening they were immediately responsive they were they warmly received the request to meet they were curious about what was going on in the field they wanted feedback about whether the programs were working and how and that was a really formative experience for me because I had sort of previously thought oh you know the it's the bureaucrats in Washington they're far away we're just a little a little agency that you know they don't and they knew our work and um they knew the field and we were thought partners and so I think you know that was my my very first taste of like really realizing like government is not separate from what we're doing they are part of it and we're Partners in in thinking about how to you know make policy more accessible together and so later on when I wanted to brainstorm with someone about the BNI Loan program I knew who to call they remembered me we had a good conversation um and it was about using the BNI program for conversions this is the business and industry Loan program at USDA which is one of the many sources of government Capital available for these kinds of transactions um so since then I've been keenly aware of agencies as our partners and potential partners and even though most of the interest that I receive from government comes from local and state government and that's where a lot of the juices because I think that's where the problems are that the government is trying to use and play ownership to solve even though the work starts there if you do local and state work long enough you bump up into federal agencies so not only are states Laboratories for policy experimentation as Jen said earlier they're also where all of this legislation sort of lands and the funding stream sort of come through so we've been increasingly engaged with federal agencies but the early experience with USDA sort of gave me some footing to now work with SBA to work with Department of Labor out of the in those relationships that come out of the state and local work great great thank you so we're going to dive in a little more on some of the details of of some of the things that your organizations do in Chrome I'm gonna gonna start with you this time and and maybe you could just talk a little bit more about some of the the history of the agriculture Department's work and employee ownership and the specific ways that um that you that you work to support this work but also I know that you work a lot sort of on these interagency kinds of things so maybe you could also share some of that work as well happy to I'm really happy thank you so much Melissa for sharing that story I can't wait to take my take that back to my colleagues um I'm sure they will continue to remember you and and I appreciate that so thank you usca has had it's almost 100 years so we had a co-ops had a Cooperative marketing division starting in 1926 so come I said coming up on 100 years um has initially was very very focused on agriculture so Agricultural cooperatives and you know that's that's the first version of what I share before right the department of AG you're probably focused on Agricultural cooperatives and that the time they were the name has changed throughout the years twice it's been sort of an independent agency within USDA once called The Farmer Cooperative service another time called the agricultural Cooperative service now of course it's merged into the world business Cooperative service so it has existed in a variety of forms in a variety of sizes and shapes as one can imagine over almost 100 Year history but we're pleased really excited about that history and over the years have really gathered a lot of materials and the kind of work and so you think about you know how do we engage cooperatives whether worker cooperatives or others I mean it is still that research we still do a lot of that research we still do a lot of we are the main source for agricultural Cooperative statistics and so we do a huge survey I was just talking to my colleagues recently about what a what a big job that is a huge survey review of that and we combine that with other entities across the country who are serving Service uh surveying and compiling statistics on other types of cooperatives um and so that you get a real full between us you get a real full picture of the Cooperative sector in the U us I mentioned already that we provide some level of technical assistance I'll mention that in the context of of conversions but there are other things as well we don't have a huge huge staff but that staff is mighty and they do a lot of excellent work in addition we do a lot of program Administration so you heard already Melissa mentioned the rural Cooperative development Grant the social disadvantaged groups Grant those are two grants that are specific to cooperatives right or to Cooperative services to operative kinds of work and so in those cases we are funding other entities to provide technical support to help cooperatives develop grow start all those kinds of things um so that again that that Focus has expanded from Simply focusing on agricultural cooperatives back years and years ago to now really a wide breadth of of topics I mean I was I was looking over the list of uh probably uh two dozen or more um conversions that my team sent me in preparation for this meeting I have a few of them highlighted here but this time I can share some of those examples um but they were on a variety of things Timber and Manufacturing and child care just all kinds of things that folks are working on in a variety of sectors you mentioned our work on the with the interagency working group on Cooperative development we've been really excited to to be able to lead that work that is something that is in statute that we are you know the secretary and and then secretary delegates it down to to our agency um it's something that we're we are excited to do and so um that group is is has we've rejuvenated it in recent years if you if you Google interagency working group cooperatives you'll find the website that's probably the easiest way to do find it but there's there's quite a bit of information there that talks about the other agencies Federal and non-federal public and private that are involved in that interagency working group and one of the things we've done recently is really think take a sector-specific approach to thinking about how that working group works so when you look at that website you'll see there was recent we had recent interagency meetings on care the care economy and cooperatives the food economy and cooperatives environment and cooperatives and conversions Cooperative conversions we had specific meetings there and I think when we think about like you know how do people find out about these things sometimes the sector-specific approach can be really helpful because maybe your sector is food or maybe your sector is you know the care economy you're in the care economy and maybe you hadn't thought about cooperatives but you had thought about care and you had thought about food and so if you can get in it through that angle through that lens that might help open some ideas and begin again in that in the context of that interagency working group you see a variety of people across the country both in the federal government and outside of the federal government who are thinking very actively and working very active on this on this work so we have a new set of meetings coming up that are focused on some other topics and so again we're excited about really bringing folks together to think about cooperatives writ large but also in a really sector-specific way that we hope will generate and is starting to generate some additional interest and some some folks who might not have been already interested in that in that work great thank you so much and I I love the the sector-specific approach and particularly care is one that's dear to me and one of my first uh professional experiences was actually writing a profile of Cooperative Home Care Associates so you know so I really appreciate how that uh brought dignity to the work of those care workers um David jumping over to to you um you mentioned earlier the Main Street employee ownership act and and also sba's you know 780 program which is such an important source of capital and so I'm wondering if you could talk about you know some of the recent updates to it that have um made it more sort of useful to support employees I have unambiguously good news okay great uh who uh for the audience are there any lenders in the audience there's two okay are there any people who work closely with lenders for the financing okay a little bit more all right so this is going to make sense to you everybody else well uh write it down and that's your work assignment um so we're removing or we have it's going to go into effect August 3rd I think the new lending sop uh 50 10 7 that'll mean something to the lenders um there's removing the equity injection requirement so there's no ah see okay so no equity injection and I can explain that quickly if anyone needs it you can use the delegated authority to submit the loan to get the guarantee do a little overview okay so the equity injection requires uh there's a requirement when you're when you're getting an SBA uh guaranteed loan the the we call it the project the project cost so you're you're selling the company it's small company the maximum of 7A loan is five million dollars so you're selling the company for four million dollars there has to be a 10 Equity injection coming from whoever the buyer is usually so I'm I'm selling it to her and she has to provide 10 percent in cash for the project we're removing that in the case of an ESOP because it never made much sense to have it because the the new owner has no assets yet other than the firm itself the new owner is the ESOP Trust the only asset it has is the stock of the company where is it going to get more cash so that's removed that makes it a little easier to get the 7A loan uh they can use delegated authority this means lenders who have delegated authority the preferred lending Partners these are usually banks that have enough experience making 7A loans they're allowed to take the application make the credit decision send it to us and because they have delegated authority We Trust they know how to underwrite these loans we do a quick review and they get their guarantee everything turns on the guarantee everything is about that guarantee 75 percent guarantee on the loan if you don't use delegated authority the lender is going to do all that work they're going to send it to us and then we're going to do it all over again to make sure they follow the underwriting standards with delegated authority you cut that out we trust them it happens faster now the third thing and this has been formalized into the SOP is that now the the the trust must have documentation from the IRS from Labor Department of Labor and the treasury that the trust has been created according to all the rules that apply it's a good trust it meets the rules so they get that submitted through delegated authority no equity injection the loan happens we're all happy so those are the those are the regulatory changes that have happened and that for the people involved with lenders you'll know that that's a really big deal yeah um now that doesn't mean every lender relation specialists in every one of the 68 district offices is going to know this because district offices like every other government or non-government entity private business is staffed by human beings and human beings have their interests they have their Lane they have the thing they have become expert at and so this lender Relations Specialist over here in this district office in Oklahoma knows everything there is to know about lending to General Contractors that lender Relations Specialist over in Maine knows everything there is to know about lending to fishermen so you are going to have to educate the lender Relations Specialist almost as much as they're going to educate you this is why I said this is bottom up you go out you know the the the SOP is a public document download it find the chapters that matter you know put your hard Focus reading cap on because it's government Pros so um learn it and you go to your local district office and you go to your lender Relations Specialist and say I want to know a little bit more about this thing we want to make more employee ownership happen here in this district offices AO that's that's how you're going to get implementation right you're going to drive it as much as the agency is going to drive it because you may have noticed we don't advertise we there's there's no advertising for this how is anyone ever going to know this even the lenders aren't going to know this because lenders they're just human beings with their own lanes and expertise the examples I gave there's lrs's in the district office who have their expertise the lenders lrs lender relations specialists in the district offices right so the lenders themselves the loan officers the underwriters at the banks they have their expertise right they may not know about this so you all who are interested in this we all were interested in this and want to make this happen we have to go out to lenders we have to go out to the district office employees of the SBA and say let's make this happen all right well Melissa that's a great segue over to you um because you uh you know I talked earlier about sort of how nonprofit Partners can often play an important role in implementation and so um I thought it would be great if you could give us a couple of examples of how that's worked kind of in in your experience and you know agencies you've partnered with such as AG or SBA or others to support employee ownership sure yeah so I mean if I could sum it up um and I can't take credit for this phrase this is a nugget Joseph dropped just off the top of his head and then I I'm gonna take credit for trying to Lodge it in your brains today I think the role of the community-based organizations and non-profits is to connect and perfect so we're there to connect the policy that gets passed to the people who are going to take advantage of it and as you said people are busy there's no advertising budget at the SBA so we are the front lines of that sort of connection so we help make that policy accessible we educate as we can um maybe both the lender relation Specialists and the borrowers right so there's a there's a role there um and then I think we aggregate their feedback as well or as a senator Cardin said this morning harmonize right so we can be of a con it's a two-way conduit we can share from the field what what is working what's not working and as member-based org we are the sister organization of a member-based organ trade Association weekend we have a pool of experience to draw on that we can share from um and same with the ESOP Association so that bottom-up I think is really real that's the partnership right you're doing the the top-down implementation and then it's really going to move when we push I think in example of that to some extent is the main street employee ownership act you know it was a big policy Advance as we know employee ownership is a popular policy proposition it's bipartisan it's multi-partisan um and uh yet right and partisan I might not um but it was unfunded right so it passed but it was unfunded and that presents a challenge to everyone it presents a challenge to the SBA staff to the field organizations there's no money there to go behind that kind of will so there was a comment period there were listening sessions that you know the SBA solicited input and I think following up on that input for an iterative process is really critical for where for actually making use of that policy the district offices a lot of the work we do is with those Resource Partners so we work with sbdcs and score and women's business centers um the direct relationships that the sbdcs have formed a special interest section on employee ownership so around the country the Small Business Development Centers many of them have an interest in employee ownership and so they have this sort of community of practice within SBA I think that's the kind of thing that really gets underrated as a mover of hearts and Minds if not resources yet and then I think if we think about how sort of an example within an example there's a real role for the ecosystem and I'll just give one kind of um illustrative example of the uh we convene a national collaborative of practitioners who are supporting conversions to worker ownership employee ownership called workers to owners it's about 50 organizations uh all around the country some of them are rural so they are connected to USDA several of them are sbdc so they are connected to SBA some of them are cdfis so they're connected to the treasury Department still others use Workforce Development funding layoff aversion funds to do feasibility studies for business retention so they are connected to the DOL so in this one body of 50 organizations from around the country you've got a ton of agency relationships and they're sharing information with each other they're Gathering feedback and they're playing that active role in the field for policy implementation and recently we've been focused on the state small business credit initiative that that's coming down through the treasury Department and I can talk a little bit more about that when we maybe talk about a particular programs and policies but I think that there's a the important part for me is that there's a space where we can create a hinge between the agencies and the practitioners out in the field um and our role I think is to be aware of all the levels at which policy works I mean I'm I sort of maybe work the least at the legislative advocacy level and the most with at the agency level and then with the Resource Partners generally so building a relationships and being that hinge I think is is our charge I hear it very clearly from you can can I say something about the local so about local implementation uh here's a couple of concrete examples from my own experience um I with project Equity one of the one of the organizations that's very expert in this field we wondered about how to engage local elected officials and um and government officials right so I we thought okay we'll start with Northern Virginia The Three Counties here Fairfax County Arlington and Loudoun County which which are in my district office Is AO and we included I think Prince William County just south of it um so we had a thing informing them about the Main Street employee ownership we invited them and made sure employee ownership Act and the lending rules and everything and the lending rules were not as good as they are now right this is recent changes I wanted to make clear to these local officials why this should matter to them why should they think about this and include this in their whatever economic planning and policy they have so I dug into the census bureau's statistics on on small business and on payroll I focused I focused on payroll because this was after the pandemic had begun so this was in 2021. um not Revenue I focused on payroll because we had just experienced what happens when people lose payroll right we just saw what happens when people either don't spend the payroll they have or they just lose the money they they earn so I thought this is an important approach to it so I discovered that in Fairfax County 92 point something percent of payroll is produced by small businesses defined by the SBA broadly as under 500 employees but most of us don't think of 400 employees as a small business so let's let's think of what we might think of as a stereotypical small business so under 100 employees so I I calculated that and it was 51 point something percent 51 point something 51 percent of payroll in Fairfax county is produced by businesses with under 100 employees half the spending power of the county comes from businesses with under 100 employees so I got curious does this hold across the country I randomly pick up picked a bunch of Metropolitan statistical areas with the census and I found these numbers hold except for weird outliers you know super rural counties and you know Upper Peninsula Michigan or something like that right except for outliers like that this is generally true 90 or more of payroll is produced by small businesses pick your MSA Metropolitan statistical area or counties roughly 50 percent it goes from 48 to 49 50 51 52 roughly 50 percent is produced by businesses with under 100 employees so I go and I say I'm going to tell this to the people at Fairfax County Economic Development authorities or I'm going to talk to some City so for you out there doing work at the local level this is a way to approach it this is a way to talk to them and say this is why this should be part of your thinking in whatever you're implementing there is no advertising for what the SBA does but they could get interested and they can do advertising for it they could start some small pilot City program or County program and say because guess what it turns out in some states who who has access the database of the business licenses cities counties and in some cases States right they all care about jobs right and they all care about that so you say you know uh Madam Mayer this is true in your city uh maybe you can go get a list of business owners um that are over 50 and the business been around 20 years maybe they're thinking of retiring maybe we can do something about this yeah yeah so that's great because I think it is true that like you know they all care about jobs kind of at the local level and even you know politicians at the national level right so um you know so so Raj just kind of to go another layer you know and I think Melissa also brought up sort of how you know the layoff aversion can relate to sort of employee ownership and and that kind of thing right because everybody cares about jobs and job stability and and also hopefully good jobs right so so talk a little more about um sort of the mission of DOL and how good jobs and employee ownership can potentially fit no thanks for that um it's a great it's a great reminder for research purposes too that though that that's where you can get like a lot of great research on companies that local level licensing uh so dol's Mission and I'm I'm uh I've been at DOL over the course of nine years in two different administrations but I have to actually read this off it's to Foster promote and develop the welfare of wage earners jobs speakers and retirees of the United States improved working conditions Advance opportunities for profitable employment and assure work-related pensions I'm sorry benefits and rights you could basically sum that up as good jobs right that's the that's the whole point we know that employers pay a play a huge role in that mission and my guess is employee owners probably know that better than anyone right that they know they see that connection between good jobs uh and employers really as well as anyone the the story you told about like just the changes it makes if you're looking at even your budget and thinking about how that impacts you know the business if you have a skin in the game makes a lot of sense to me um we do though as a result of that work closely with employers to ensure that you know for example the workforce system is helping steer workers into jobs where there are you know their needs get people into the right training programs to uh to get the credentials they might need for those jobs into apprenticeships which is a great kind of learn and earn opportunity it's all also important for us for our worker protection agencies to work with employers to understand the laws and the rules we enforce to make to give them clear guidance I mean when you're talking about government ease earlier I was thinking you know I've been you know I've helped to run a non-profit right and and looking at government uh looking at government ease is very hard you kind of need very clear uh very clear guidance on kind of what what you can and can't do um so one thing we've done at the Department of Labor uh in this Administration is we've built what we call the good jobs initiative we launched that initiative which is led by my fantastic colleague Caitlin Walker Mooney who actually we were kind of hoping could join today but she's she's also uh tied up um it has three main goals this initiative one is providing easily accessible information to workers about their rights like the first step is so workers know what their rights are the second is engaging with employers as partners in improving job quality those good jobs principles was a co-production of this good jobs initiative and the rest of our policy team at the Department of Labor and third it's supporting Partnerships across federal agencies we work really hard with our federal Partners who are doing for example are putting out grants right the federal government's investing a lot of money through the bipartisan infrastructure law through the chips and science act through the in the inflation reduction act and we work with the agencies who are putting out the grants and the uh and the tax credits under those laws to try to find ways to embed more good jobs into those into that work so those are some of the big picture ways where we're trying to use our engagement with workers and employers alike to advance good jobs great so I'm so I'm going to do one more round of questions with Folks up here and then I'm going to come to to you all for questions and comments um so just wanted to to let you know and then we'll have a final round of sort of like final thoughts questions um before so I'm just going to get to the Q a a little earlier but um so Melissa uh so starting with you this round so you pay attention to policy but you've uh you know connected to sort of the Practical work on on the ground um I'm just curious like what are some of the um positive things that you're seeing right now and and what are also like what are the sort of continuing roadblocks that you're concerned about yeah well a lot of my positive things have been scooped by my fellow panelists already and prior presenters but I just want to I think the most most important one I want to lift up are those new 7A Provisions at SBA do meaningfully address program barriers for ESOP loans and it's not the sexiest form of policy right it's behind the scenes it's inside baseball but it does enact the spirit of the legislation which you know and I think that's like critically important so I want to make sure that we recognize that and appreciate and celebrate SBA for doing that the work that only they can do which is change the SOP so um the second I think bright spot for me is the Department of Treasury and the state small business credit initiative um uh including employee ownership as an authorized use of funds and that was just a tiny little thing that got tucked in and treasury honored it and decided to do a really thorough and thoughtful process about how that might be used uh the state small business credit initiative might be used to support employee ownership and then the field did its own thorough process we in our workers to owners collaborative two of our partners just collaborated on uh to finance a transition using the state small business credit initiative and they will be sharing their lessons and we'll be lifting that up and I think it's these you know building blocks uh are for me really positive and then the the third one I want to recognize is the Department of Labor sort of taking not only a regulatory interest in employee ownership but also promoting interest right and trying to better understand how employ ownership can support quality jobs and worker voice and I think that's uh such a positive development you know in the as as Jim mentioned you know the work act does need to be funded in order to sort of get us over this one of the challenges that I'm going to identify but you know to be able to really do robust state center Outreach um and then of course he got the USDA interagency working group I think is amazing there's the Congressional Cooperative business caucus all these sort of educational initiatives at the agency and Leadership level I think some of the challenges are this chicken and egg question right you're too small for government programs but if you're always too small for government programs how are you ever going to access government programs so I think getting uh you know doing these bits and pieces raising the profile using designing things that are thoughtful that we can actually use sort of helps us address that challenge I think making maybe having the ambition and I'm not a policy person so this may be a non-starter but to have a funded uh and you know policy initiatives when we when we when we Implement something at an agency to say it would be great if there was some money behind it um I think we were getting in where we could fit in for a while and maybe it's maybe there's an opportunity now to um put funding behind it and then I guess third is just so the again the unsexy but critical work of building those communication Pathways and just sort of orienting ourselves to partnering with government understanding the bottom-up top-down understanding that there's a shared interest there in making sure policies usable yeah great great so Karama I'm going to come to you next um because you are engaged as you mentioned in a number of different sectors and industries so what are the opportunities and challenges that you're seeing now um as you're sort of leading the work to grow ownership within that yeah thank you for that I think you know there are a number of things make you think about opportunities and and challenges I mean you think about some of our programs you know we we heard mention of the world Cooperative development Grant I mean that's a one-year Grant we'd love to see that be you know be better funded we have have longer durations so folks have time to plan and really Implement their their programs so you know there are a lot of those kinds of things some of which we have control over some of which we don't have control over um but they're they're they can be important to the to the work um that we're talking about here um I think there's also really an opportunity and I think this is evidence about what we've heard about the 7A loans what you mentioned with the business industry guaranteed loan programs that don't aren't specific to cooperatives still conserve cooperatives right and so that's a really important thing sometimes it's really easy to say well we're Cooperative so we only look at the ones that have cooperatives in the name the programs that talk explicitly about cooperatives and that's fine obviously that's a good place to go but it means that if you don't if you only do that you're leaving out some other opportunities opportunities like 7A opportunities like the business industry guaranteed loan program which are broad but certainly in our case we're very intentional about trying to design all of our programs where it makes sense to include cooperatives include employee ownership where that makes sense so that we're very intentional around that and we've been pleased to have gotten some good feedback even on some of our newer programs that we saw that you all did that and you made it easier for Cooperators to participate and that's a really intentional thing that we're doing so I think they're you know those kinds of opportunities and things that we seek as we think about some of the other places where we're seeing work and seeing additional opportunity I mentioned the the sector-specific approach we have have been taking there's also another round of these interagency working groups working group on Cooperative development sector specific meetings that are coming up and these are going to be focused on home ownership Child Care Equity food and real estate and so again if you're interested in that just Google that phrase and you should be able to find that and sign up and get more information I think there there's potential significant potential there um I think that that's those are really the main things I mean I do think one of the things that we see when we think about you know there is a challenge I mean we don't have advertising budgets typically at least not in any kind of meaningful way so it is a challenge I mean we we are very excited about this work we're very committed to this work we want to see it happen we want to see it happen well and we're doing the best that we can with the tools that we have to get that word out so there is certainly a role for bottom-up approach in addition to that top-down approach that we're we're trying to sort of meet in the middle on that um but what I think we what one of the things I think we can do an opportunity is to to take advantage of where there is a Synergy and where there's some activity and part of what we see is that in certain communities kind of like you said before like you know maybe somebody who's really expert on fishing lending and so there's a lot of good fishing loans in that in that Community right how can you take advantage of folks of of situate relations communities resources Partners who are really expert in conversions expert in the child care economy in the context of cooperatives expert in that to help them grow not only in that sec in that sector but potentially in that space right so maybe you're not a child care Cooperative maybe your home of adult care cooperative and so you know you you go and you look to the child care folks and say well what can I learn from that how can I take this and translate it into the sector that I'm working in um and we definitely see places where um geographically from a sector-specific approach as well where there's sort of nucleating places where you know you've had some excellent success stories and it grows from there and I think the more we can highlight that connect those those sort of hubs of of good performance and success stories the better off we're going to be able in terms of of growing employee ownership more broadly great um so Raj I'm coming to you next and we've been talking about sort of the the good jobs initiative and and you know I think you can hear kind of the ways in which it it helps um uh it connects to a lot of employee ownership themes so can you talk about some of the successes and challenges of the initiative and how connecting more with employee ownership could maybe contribute sure uh so you know I mentioned earlier the uh good jobs initiative does support these these Partnerships across federal agencies and we provide technical assistance on grants contracts other Investments that's worked the Department of Labor has actually done for a long time on an ad hoc basis this initiative is really about deploying some unique strategies to get that work done so for one thing we actually we have like formal Partnerships now with other agencies we've entered into mous with the Department of Transportation Commerce and energy the idea being we're going to support them and help them commit to using their bipartisan infrastructure law funds to support Equitable Workforce Development Pathways into good jobs in those relations ships and those Partnerships the results you know we've seen are really are real we've now uh with them gotten 97 billion dollars of competitive grant funding out the door that has uh that has Equity the jobs markers built in we've also tried to you know for example incentivize registered apprenticeship programs and collaborations with the Department of Labor's office of federal contract compliance programs to think about again bringing more underserved communities into those jobs another strategy is just around engagement we hosted a summit lost uh but last summer I think Maureen you were there and maybe some others uh where we had over 350 cross-sector stakeholders engaged in a full day conversation exploring what are these strategies for building Partnerships to empower working people uh we've got small and large employers across the country showcasing how they're recruiting retaining diverse workforces and really kind of working to invest in higher wages and training and everything else thinking about kind of challenges and opportunities uh you know down the line uh we also you know I know you've been talking about this all probably earlier in the day as well as part of the larger secure 2.0 package uh from the FY 2023 Appropriations act which was a really kind of exciting bipartisan package to shore up retirement savings around the country the Department of Labor's employee benefit Security Administration is leading the charge to implement actually dozens of pieces of this law uh our assistant secretary for employee benefits Lisa Gomez was hoping to join today she is uh she's out of town in another panel and regrets she couldn't be here but uh but I know you've been talking about the work act which is one key part of secure 2.0 it directs the Department of Labor to establish this employee ownership initiative that would provide education training and the promotion of employee ownership together with State programs and providing guidance on valuation of of actual values under esops so ebsa will be taking this on we're actually really excited to start working with holders on this important initiative stay tuned Lisa and ebso will be announcing more about this and how to actually get involved and make your voices heard in the process so uh I will say though the flip side of that the challenge which has been noted is that's another a piece of that initiative that grants have not yet been funded so that is uh if you had your local Congressman here you could you could make a pitch another pitch for squeaking about something great um so David uh you brought up sort of successes of like you know changes to the 7A program and the challenges of a lack of a marketing budget I'm just wondering from the sort of local perspective as the if if there are other sort of successes or challenges that you'd want to highlight for folks now well like I told you I've been very public in many places about my utter failure in creating the Groundswell I I started at the SBA seven days before the passage of the Main Street employee owners are back just coincidentally I started I saw that it passed it's something that mattered to me before I was interested in an academic way I saw that and I thought oh this is great this is going to be my SBA career now four and a half years two and a half of those you know dealing with a pandemic all work on that stopped so the we the the charitable way of looking at this is the you know that Thomas Edison quote I found a thousand ways it didn't work I until someone maybe I'm wrong but find the business owners that's the thing find the business owners because even before The Lending rules changed this was possible it it was possible the problem is finding the business owners where are they we keep we read the statistics everybody's employed by a small business in America small businesses Drive everything I believe it all it's true where are they all right right all right and and and I'll just say in fact they're everywhere I'm from Southern California and in Southern California we have these industrial parks which I think and I've driven across the country three times right so I've seen this everywhere and there are all these businesses out there that are ripe for this uh in college I worked at this one place that had they sold brass fixtures and it was started by I don't remember the guy who started it and there were roughly 50 to 75 employees and I worked in inventory inventory control part-time job and I'm thinking that guy is retiring now who is he selling this business to they're everywhere so a great one around here Mid-South Building Supply in Springfield Virginia no you've never heard of it you were you were never ever going to hear about it but there's one like that and a dozen others in your county wherever you're from EA Engineering in Maryland you've never heard of it you were never gonna hear about it there's a dozen like that in your county most of them are not good candidates for them go talk to them find those business owners and the policies are they could be better but they're good enough you just gotta find these business owners and start having that conversation okay great I I really do want to hear from folks in the room I noticed a little like dimming of the lights I was afraid it was nap time in the back of the room I wasn't really sure what's going on back there um so would love to hear sort of comments questions from folks in the room so I have one in the front and one in the back we'll start in the back because Matt's there okay is the sun oh okay great hi hi everybody I'm Hillary Abel with project equity and uh really delighted to be here today and wanted to just build on what what David was just saying so a lot of what we do at project Equity is is find the business owners and I'm encouraged by the fact that we have a lot more throughput now so we we're working with about 40 companies at any given time on either a feasibility assessment a transition or post-transition support and we hand people offer esops but we do a lot of Recruitment and marketing of esops and then we do the co-op transitions ourselves and have recently done eots um and we have done some advertising oh sorry play ownership trust excuse me and also Perpetual purpose trust which can have other purposes like an environmental purpose um so I just wanted to sort of add into the mix some of the the things that you know folks in the ecosystem are doing like the many members of the workers to owners collaborative like everybody in the room um and we have been doing some advertising we're starting to get leads from that we're learning which types of pictures which types of messages work better and I wanted to lift up local government Partnerships because we have about nine of them right now and we are finding that that Economic Development message and we do local data studies and it's usually that the Legacy business is 20 years old or older are about 20 of the total businesses in any given community so we've seen this across a dozen studies we've done and they represent about two-thirds of business revenue and about half of employment so the case for retaining them they have an outsized positive impact on our communities and economic development officials are starting to embrace the case for for retaining them so those are those are your Long Beach statistics right yeah I have those memorized I remember yeah and about a dozen others yeah I've looked at the pattern that it always is right about in there so so it's powerful like we know this to be true along with all the other great data folks have shared so just wanted to to mention those things and say that um I think we're all learning a lot at the local level the state level with with California Washington State Massachusetts Pennsylvania is working on a bill Tennessee and Texas so I think those Laboratories are proving really important and I'll just say two other things real quick one is that the the Washington State bill has language that says that individual guarantees personal guarantees on loans for employee ownership and cooperatives cannot be used in the state they have to find other proven ways of underwriting of which there are many so now there's a precedent in law and hopefully we can build on that and maybe 10 or 20 years from now we'll get the SBA to agree with that um and I just want to appreciate all of this cross-agency participation today and I saw it at the good jobs initiatives convenings last year and I think that we now have a real opportunity thanks to the you know the groundwork that the USDA has laid with interagency convening to collaborate across government agencies and across sectors so all of us in the nonprofit and private sector collaborating with government so I'm super optimistic and grateful for this day thanks thank you Hillary there's somebody right here hello my name is Dr Myrtle Alexander Institute for academic management I thoroughly enjoyed everything that was said today because I during the pandemic I had logged onto one webinar that SBA did and then it went quiet for me so I didn't know what was happening and having read Freedom Farmers like three times in the last three months and looking at co-ops and and stemming from my research in Switzerland for a major um um employee-owned organization then and coming from the UK I wanted to know is there a toolkit I mean I know the businesses that are out there is there a toolkit that we can go to to say okay here are the guidelines here's where you start here's what you're looking for here's what you need to do if there is if there isn't one how can we generate one so that's kind of like where I am so my research is academics to apprenticeships to entrepreneurship and so we're in the process of launching our first Academy here that caters through Nursery through 12th grade but 18 to 80 year olds in that segment of the population that is forever underserved so I'd like to know where do we start with regards to a toolkit do you mean a toolkit for conversions for example do that yes because when you meet the businesses how do you how do you can you know introduce them and take them through the guidelines yeah I want to see if there's a couple more questions before we go to back to the panel so um yeah um uh hi um uh so my name is Eric Foreman um I'll just share a little bit of context and I've got a couple questions um about in 2019 I started working on something called the driver's Cooperative which right now is a driver-owned alternative to Uber in New York City with over 1800 owners um we've had a lot of successes but one of the challenges we found is that we needed a line of credit because we were doing a lot of business on contracts that had you know receivables gaps um so I set about getting a line of credit back in January of this year and immediately heard from the banks that you needed a personal guarantee which uh and that it would need to likely be oh so reach out to the SBA and immediately begin getting bombarded with phone calls from lenders who would be just so delighted to lend our business with five to ten million dollars in Revenue annually uh tons of money we would only the thing is we need to provide a personal guarantee or they said we need to which they said could come from either a board officer or somebody a senior manager or a majority of the owners I wanted to ask a little bit more about that David because I'd heard about this issue before and we encountered it ourselves in the end I ended up providing a personal guarantee for the for the co-op but I'm wondering since we got different answers from different lenders about what that personal guarantee would need to be what actually is the SBA policy on this so okay wait wait I'm gonna I'm gonna let the gentleman in front of Eric ask his question and then we'll come back we'll have we'll have the tool question the personal guarantee question and sorry didn't mean to cut the line here but no no I like to take questions in threes okay great thanks very much I'm Kevin McPhillips I'm with the Pennsylvania Center for employee ownership and uh David I thought you made an interesting point about uh how it's difficult to find the businesses that are transacting but but we can find the businesses we can find those and many of us are doing that uh Hillary suggested uh you know what some of the things that project Equity are doing we're doing a a project with uh 30 000 businesses in Pittsburgh and and um if if you acknowledge or if you understand that one of the biggest problems we have is simply awareness not just for those that are preparing to sell their business but also for the population that may be selling their business at some day in the future and we just don't know that a study was done some Years Ago by the nceo that said that in in an analysis they did 92 percent of transacting businesses that they spoke to did not know about or consider employee ownership when they transacted their own business that's a big number so what what what many of us are focusing on is trying to get the message to not just those that we can find are ready to sell their business but those that that will be selling their businesses eventually and we can get that information we can do that many of us are many of us are doing that here great okay now I'm gonna let you guys answer questions so so we have this question about a toolkit for conversion and we have this question about what is the sba's actual policy on personal guarantees and maybe the corollary of are they following it but um so do you want to start with the the personal guarantee and yeah okay so here's the unambiguously unwanted information um the SBA requires a personal guarantee for for Lending for 7A lending uh it there's an exception to that with esops but that's because there's other legislation other laws that Trump that right so the an ESOP can't be required to provide a personal guarantee in any way and so how can that how can that change bottom up now there's potential for change in that hundreds thousands of cooperatives received economic injury disaster loans because they're eligible for them anecdotally I know that they are doing better in handling the repayment of those than businesses in non-cooperative businesses in general so I always thought the Silver Lining as far as Cooperative Landing to the pandemic was this will demonstrate cooperatives are well-run businesses or at least as well run as any other business and perhaps that can change unfortunately it hasn't changed yet but it's going to come from the bottom up you have to demonstrate that this personal guarantee thing makes no sense in the context of a Cooperative it defeats the purpose of a cooperative but that requires changing Decades of settled thinking on this so like I said bottom up unfortunately I wish there were a better answer can I chime in on that one as well and this wouldn't work for you all because I think you said you're in New York City and we're the rural business Cooperative service but I and I don't want to misspeak so I won't go into details but I do know that many of our loans to be in our loan uh guaranteed loan program and others do offer some flexibilities around that in terms of requirements around personal guarantors I know this has come up in some of the interagency working group on cooperatives meetings where sort of you know question is how are y'all doing this how can we do this like those kinds of things and I just I'll take this opportunity just any of the kinds of things that that I've been talking about of course you have welcome to reach out to me but also would recommend our State offices who are really experts in all of our programs and have people we have over 400 State offices across the country and this is what they do they're there to help you and to talk with you directly about the kinds of things that you're interested in if you go to our website Rd for Rural Development rd.usda.gov and you'll see contact just click the state office link and find the one nearest you so um just want to know it's again not going to be helpful for you in New York City but there may be some others who are thinking about similar kinds of things and or rural areas one other thing about that also the guarantor doesn't necessarily have to be a person it can be an entity right and so if if there is some cooperative development advocate of some kind who'd be willing to do that that can happen as well it's difficult you have to work a little harder to get that but it it can happen that way as well you know and I understand your need for the credit line you know it's it's very important yeah let's talk some more after this anybody working on a conversion tool toolkit question there are any number of tool kits out there there are maybe perhaps too many toolkits um so uh a lot of the organizations that do conversions make some or all of their process available some of them are proprietary some folks charge for the you know sort of that along those somebody's paying for that whether it's a government funding or a foundation or private clients so some of that is proprietary but if you um one of the places I know that Aggregates the organizations that are doing cooperative and uh employee ownership conversions is becoming employeeowned dot org so you can go there there's some toolkit elements and then there's also links to organizations doing it I will say that one of the advantages of having a community of practice is that you can sort of harmonize those tools and so the workers to owners collaborative has sort of set a five-stage process that's roughly the same for all of these conversions and is working on you know Gathering data about our pipeline sharing that data out so I think that there's it's a pretty nascent field so we're only a few years in but we're already seeing data and Tool standardization that is in process I would say right now the uh the oh I remember when I was learning a lot about this early on the Ohio employee ownership Center at Kent State has something online it's it's a few years old now but it's still good and give you a broad overview of how that would work in the United States uh under current laws here um that's one and yeah in the becoming employee owned is the other really good one I did a lot of learning from from that one there that's true we should mention the national Center for employee ownership also has a ton of really incredible and useful tools on their website and I'm sorry I'm gonna the Rutgers program how could I have forgotten there is a video a series of videos and an online curriculum through the Rutgers Institute um so yes my apologies I'm sure I'm missing others too but yeah the only thing I would add to that real quickly it's a little bit broader is that you I mentioned the world Cooperative development grant that is a grant to to fund Cooperative Development Centers many of those centers might be well positioned to provide direct support and they have two kids and maybe some of the ones who are doing this exactly and there's a list of those on our website as well so just encourage you if you're interested to look at that list as well and then when you're done with all of that you can go to employer.gov where you can find out all the laws that applied to employers and just like the plain language plain language kind of labor law information for employers great okay so last round of questions for you all is just kind of a looking looking ahead sort of thing um and uh you know Chrome I'm gonna gonna start with you sort of you're working with a variety of different government agencies and and you know as you think about like what what what kind of comes next in that work in terms of the work you're trying to do and what are you what are you hoping to see going forward in terms of how agencies can be working together and supporting this yeah thank you for that question I mean I've I'll just use this to highlight some of the things I've already shared already right and I think you know thinking about the interagency working group on cooperatives there's a real there's there's significant momentum there and there's room for it to grow right there is particularly as we think about a sector-specific approach and how we can how we can draw more people more entities and get to get them more engaged in this work um I think there's there's a real a whole lot of opportunity there and as I mentioned there's another series of these meetings that's coming up um starting fairly soon on that um you know I think there is uh in terms of next steps thinking about some of our we have a number of online resources because we've been around for almost 100 years doing you know varieties of this work at some level or another there's a number of those resources that are available and I think you know making sure that folks have access to that um know about that those educational opportunities I think are is a real option as well um and I think I'm able to just close by saying I think the the you know as we are think about what's next I think really helping tell this story around what this means right it's about Job retention it's also about you know oftentimes about wages um you know how do you tell that story about employee ownership about worker worker on cooperatives um in a way that is really compelling that helps folks who might not be in the sector might not be in this room right now or listening in right now understand what that potential value is and get excited about investigating that and we're excited to be partners with with them and with you all in doing that great but I'm going to come to you next and you mentioned the work act and that it authorizes DOL to you know establish a network of centerset would provide information technical assistance and you know address some of the challenges we've been we've been talking about so so what should what should folks here understand about sort of what dll's plans are at this time so I will I will say I was taking careful notes about the various uh all of the toolkits out there you know anytime The Duel gets a new program we we need to hear from stakeholders right in order to know uh where we need to go and what we need to do with it a big part of my job at the department day-to-day is Rule making like I spend all my time not all my time but a huge chunk of my time on our rulemaking uh efforts and that you know the the kind of notice and comment process I find incredibly helpful because we don't know everything about even the stuff that we do know the great thing about rule making though it's a long and tedious process is we put proposals out there and then we get comments and we sometimes get 33 comments and sometimes we get thousands and thousands of comments um you know thinking about the various pieces and components of the work ahead you know Epps is committed to hearing from stakeholders and finding ways you know if if there are rules coming out of this that to do notice and comment rulemaking but if there aren't rules you know just to hear find ways to hear from stakeholders about where we want to go hearing this conversation about folks and on you know this panel but also just all of you in this room I know there's a ton of expertise out there so stay tuned for more ways to get involved um and to to really make your voice heard in in this process as we're planning our new activities great thank you um uh David sort of I wanted to come to you next and and you've been sort of maybe maybe you also just kind of want to summarize because I think you've been giving people a lot of advice but you know we've been talking about you know in improving implementation part you know this fixed policy Improvement implementation kind of Nexus and and you've and you've shared some examples of that so I guess what's what's the key thing you want folks to take away about that it's that this is all top down I'm good you were listening [Laughter] I we have covered the the policy stuff quite a bit so I let me bring everybody back to why we're interested in this how many just quick raise of hands how many people here have heard of the marcora law in Italy few okay for those who have it um there was a law passed about 30 years ago the legislator's name in Italy in the parliament was Mark Cora and it's it allows a laid off person an unemployed person who's entitled to unemployment benefits a certain number of months of at that time lira to get it in a lump sum if they can find nine other people they get it as a lump sum to and that's their starting capital for a cooperative now this is a nationwide law in Italy and they've improved it once they've gone back and done some changes to it once this resulted in an improvement in a region that I was already Cooperative dense there's a there's a city bologna the region is Amelia Romania how many of you have heard of this place oh a lot of you okay for those who haven't two-thirds of the people who work for a living there work in a Cooperative they're worker owners and one-third of the GDP of that region is produced by work our own businesses in the form of cooperatives so why are we all doing this all right think back to your region wherever it is you're from I'm from Los Angeles County broadly speaking all of La Riverside San Bernardino and Orange County are one big giant suburb so um what would it mean for two-thirds of the people who work in the for a living in those counties to be worker owners in an ESOP or a co-op and what would it mean for one-third of the GDP of that region to be produced that way apply that wherever you're from and I guess you would you would find it very difficult to even imagine what that looks like it's so literally unimaginable but stop and think and let yourself get creative and go what what does my City look like if that's the case what does my County look like what would this place look like the DMV I live three metro stops away from here and so the three counties in Northern Virginia and two in Maryland that that I serve Prince George's in Montgomery what if this region was like that it's such a beautiful world so as you're figuring out how to get this to happen keep that in your mind I think it'll I think it'll improve your creativity and help you overcome whatever obstacles you I mean that's why I keep it reminded why I haven't given up after four years so yeah thank you that was very inspirational um really appreciate that so Melissa now we come to you remind me never to follow David reach yes so uh three things I think you know I want to thank our partners in government for being here for giving your time um and I really want to thank my brilliant colleagues in this room and and Beyond this room wasn't happening 20 years ago even 10 years ago so we are an emerging and maturing ecosystem and I think it's really critical to keep that in mind we are at a moment in time where your effort matters it builds institutions and that's what we're doing um you know we collaborate now that ESOP and worker Co-op and employee-owned trust and broad-based ownership and Equity compensation we collaborate now on advocacy and we're starting to collaborate on implementation which is I think the game changer it's easier I think to collaborate on it than it is on implementation but that's where the real the real the real work happens and I think Joseph is right um that the sort of general population support for the concept of employee ownership outpaces the bureaucrats and institutions who are sort of implementing it and so and I think that's a good problem to have in a lot of ways right that means we push um my second thought is that their synergies happening to to sort of to this this idea that we are in a moment um if this legislation passes gets implemented gets funded um if the work act you know results in this growth in State Centers that's certainly going to create a pipeline of um borrowers for SBA loan programs um it will resonate into USDA it'll resonate in you know into other agencies we're already seeing some of that happen so there are synergies in policy um and then particularly in the implementation that our the sum is going to be greater than the whole of the parts or the is that the way we say it um yeah so I I think you know sort of keep that in mind when you're pushing two and then the last thing I think you know policy is a door right it opens a door um we all have a role in making sure that things don't get lost in translation from intention to implementation we've heard about the the role of the agency staff we've heard a little bit about the role of the field I think those hinge points um are where are potential gaps but they're also where connecting and perfecting policy happens so I mean that what I mean by that I mean the hinge point between legislation and implementation I mean between Federal and district office I mean between the public sector and the non-profit sector and the private sector I mean the hinges agency to agency so I think you know uh if we want to keep the door open we got to keep the hinges oiled so what I would uh encourage you to think about all of us and research has has a role to play here too is what are you doing to oil those hinges to identify where they are and to keep them oiled so that the doors can swing open I'll leave you with that that was wonderful I want yes uh we're done but I just want to thank the panel this is fantastic thank you all so much thank you [Applause]