On February 26th, 2019, The Berkeley City Council adopted a set of recommendations provided by the Sustainable Economies Law Center (SELC), based on significant input from Berkeley worker cooperatives, organizations that support worker cooperatives (including Project Equity) and city staff.

Project Equity & Nexus Community Partners hosted the Government Equity Summit in San Francisco, California, with a focus on advancing equity, retaining assets and supporting legacy businesses and to promote and support small business retention through employee ownership conversions.

The City of Berkeley is the first California city to invest city funds to advance employee ownership. Other cities are becoming aware, and Project Equity will be increasing the number of municipal partnerships in the year ahead to address these very issues.

“Employee ownership is both a profound and a simple business model in which business decisions are made through the lens of what is good for their employees and by extension, their families and their communities. It creates true pathways to opportunity and quality jobs.”