Annual reports

2021 was a year of growth and change for Project Equity, fueled by the support of our donors and funders. We helped more workers and businesses than ever along the pathway to employee ownership. We expanded to new regions, built new partnerships, launched new initiatives and advanced our efforts to create economic opportunity for Black and Brown workers by making employee ownership a fundamental part of the way America does business. And, with your support, we appointed our first CEO and expanded our team to make this work possible.

Some highlights from our 2021 Annual Report:

• Find out how a Los Angeles bakery and a Berkeley tech company empowered their workers and secured their founders’ legacies by becoming worker-owned cooperatives.
• Learn about our second capital initiative, which has enabled us to provide flexible and forgivable funding to help businesses recovering from the pandemic to pursue employee ownership transitions.
• Discover how we ramped up our work to influence state and federal policy, including helping to craft the California Employee Ownership Act (SB 1407).
• Read interviews with our Employee Ownership Champions, offering their unique perspectives from across the employee ownership ecosystem.

Project Equity’s 2020 Annual Report includes the incredible stories of resilience during the pandemic, made possible through your partnership and support.

These stories renewed our sense of hope that employee ownership can help us build a more equitable and resilient future:

• The employee-owned solar installation company that harnessed the ingenuity of its employees to retain their jobs and become stronger than ever during the pandemic.
• The Black-owned cooperative grocery that prioritized getting food to elders in the community, worker health and buying local, alongside profitability.
• And the pair of pizza shops whose diverse employee-owners weathered the crisis by engaging the full team in creating solutions to COVID-related challenges.

Fueled by these stories of triumph—and support from our donors and funders—employee ownership is reaching new heights! Last year, in spite of the massive disruption of the pandemic, we nearly doubled our reach. We helped more workers and businesses than ever along the pathway to employee ownership; expanded to new regions; forged new partnerships; developed a new capital fund; and redoubled our efforts to create economic opportunity for Black and Brown workers through employee ownership.