RETAIN BUSINESSES
in Metro Atlanta
As business owners retire, we help keep these businesses thriving in our communities
Metro Atlanta
Employee ownership as a strategy for retaining businesses
A solution to preserve jobs, recover from the pandemic and narrow the racial wealth gap
Legacy businesses are essential to Atlanta’s local economy and community vitality. Keeping small businesses and the jobs they provide rooted in the community are among the challenges this region faces, as the Silver Tsunami—the retirement wave of baby boomer business owners—and the Great Resignation impact Atlanta.
Wealth building through employee ownership
With half of the business owners in this region beginning to retire, it is time to turn risk into opportunity. By selling businesses to their employees, owners can preserve their legacies, keep companies rooted in the local economy, and generate wealth for employees.
With a great number of businesses struggling to retain, recruit and reward workers, by providing workers an equity stake in their workplace, business owners activate a powerful tool for keeping workers engaged, attracting new workers and unlocking increased productivity, all while realizing liquidity or additional operating capital.
In the Atlanta metro region, employee ownership can help close the racial wealth gap by providing many more Black or African American workers the opportunity to participate in and benefit from business ownership. The power of employee ownership translates to 92% higher household net worth, 53% longer median job tenure and 33% higher median wage income, according to a study by the National Center for Employee Ownership.
Our approach
Project Equity provides one-on-one advising and support to companies that want to explore and execute integrating partial or full employee ownership, and also offers working capital and transaction financing.
Black business owners often do not have access to or receive the detailed counsel Project Equity provides to develop a successful exit strategy establishing what will happen to their business and employees once they retire or transition, which can lead to ineffective business succession, and reduce the value of the owner’s hard-fought efforts to create a thriving enterprise further widening the racial wealth gap.
Watch the webinar:
Closing the Racial Wealth Gap for Shared Prosperity
The Atlanta Wealth Building Initiative and Project Equity discuss current efforts to narrow the racial wealth gap in Atlanta by supporting small business transitions to employee ownership.
About Project Equity and our partners
As a national organization, Project Equity advocates for and raises awareness of broad-based, democratic employee ownership, and we support businesses in transitioning to this highly beneficial business model. Through amazing local partners, like the Atlanta Wealth Building Initiative, we support this work in regions across the country.
The Atlanta Wealth Building Initiative reimagines economic realities in communities of color through community wealth building strategies that powerfully leverage ideas, people and capital.
Employee-owned companies in Metro Atlanta
Agusta Industrial Services
Anna Julia Cooper Learning & Liberation Center
Benning Construction
Dixie Plywood and Lumber
Elliott Machine Shop
Essential Ingredients
Greenberg Farrow Architecture, Inc.
Inland Fresh Seafood Corp.
Pecan Milk Cooperative, LLC
Ogden Forklifts
Southern Restorations Cooperative
Discover more employee-owned businesses at Certified EO
Don’t miss
Our latest articles
Sign up for our newsletter to receive our news and events straight to your inbox.
2023 Employee Ownership Equity Summit highlight series: Part one
Watch highlights from Project Equity’s inaugural Employee Ownership Equity Summit. In part one of our four part series, we focus on the question, “Why EO now?”
Bellegarde Bakery
Industry: Hospitality and Food Services
Location: New Orleans, LA
Transitioned: 2022
Employees: 10
Read story >>
Chicago enlists Project Equity in Community Wealth Building Initiative
Chicago enlists Project Equity in Community Wealth Building Initiative The City of Chicago has announced a new program that includes employee ownership as part of its community wealth building strategy. Project Equity is excited to be one of 17 organizations awarded...
