The growing number of ‘alternative ownership enterprises’ shows how varied the approaches to growing employee ownership have become.
Since 2024, Transform Finance has built a fund database for such AOEs — firms that significantly shift economic value and decision-making power toward the non-investor stakeholders they impact, such as workers, producers, consumers, community members, or even a non-financial purpose.
With our second annual update, the database provides an even more helpful starting point for investors seeking funds to back, and for advisors and businesses seeking capital for transactions.
Among the new funds launched since our last update is The Mezzanine Fund, based in Cleveland, a commercial lender that finances ESOP conversions alongside its other middle-market work. AllHold Capital, in Philadelphia, pairs employee ownership trusts with real estate, aiming to keep both the businesses and the buildings in the hands of workers and their communities. Meroka, backed by venture capital, brings employee ownership to independent physician practices as an alternative to private equity roll ups.
In addition, several established funds have grown over the past year. Apis & Heritage, which finances conversions to ESOPs for businesses that employ low- and moderate-income workers, has already surpassed its $250 million target for its second fund, a considerable step up from their first $58 million fund.
Cooperative loan funds have grown too, with established financiers like LEAF, Evergreen Cooperatives, and the Cooperative Fund of the Northeast each adding several million to their assets under management.
For the first time, the database includes vehicles financing alternative ownership beyond the United States and Canada to include funds in Europe. We’re glad to finally honor a frequent request and continue to explore the growing ways that alternative ownership enterprises are financed across the globe.
Employee ownership remains the most active area of financing in the database, which now includes close to 100 funds and financing vehicles. It also includes financing partners for all forms of cooperatives as well as a growing number of funds focused on steward ownership. Roughly four in ten of the vehicles in the database finance alternative ownership alongside other work, such as real estate, mission-driven businesses, or even other businesses, as more investors fold alternative ownership into a broader impact, private credit, or private equity strategy.
This year’s update reflects a field that continues to grow, and a financing ecosystem that is ever more varied — in the types of capital deployed, the scale of the vehicles, and the places they serve.
New channels
Financing Alternative Ownership Enterprises has always taken more than one kind of capital. Capital is needed to seed new models and first-time managers, scale proven approaches toward the mainstream where relevant, and sustain the deep impact work that purely commercial markets cannot or should not reach.This year, new channels for different kinds of capital are opening.
At the catalytic end, more vehicles, such as Unlock Ownership, Social Finance’s Impact First Fund and World Within, use philanthropic capital such as recoverable grants to seed investments into transformative shared ownership solutions. Each turns philanthropic dollars into capital that can be invested, returned, and put to work again.
Public markets are perhaps opening as another channel. In June 2026, Teamshares, which buys small businesses from retiring owners and helps their employees earn company stock over time, began trading on the Nasdaq. It joins Capital for Colleagues, which invests in employee-owned businesses in the United Kingdom and has been listed on the Aquis Stock Exchange since 2014. Until now, reaching employee ownership through public markets has mostly meant buying shares of large companies whose employees hold a minority stake. Some alternative ownership funds also accept investments from the general public, and it’s inspiring to see the expansion of opportunities for anyone to support these models.
Place-based capital
The database includes vehicles of very different sizes, from larger national funds to small, deeply local ones. While a majority of the funds in the United States operate across the whole country, about a third focus on a single city, region or State. Place-based funds like Mission West Community Development Partners, the Chicago Community Loan Fund, and the Shared Ownership Loan Fund of the Minnesota Consortium of Community Developers, reach places and businesses the larger funds do not.
The principles these vehicles finance also show up in how some of them are run. A number of the funds are themselves cooperatively or democratically governed. The Kachuwa Impact Fund is an investment cooperative, owned by its members. The REAL People’s Fund is governed by a coalition of grassroots community organizations in the San Francisco East Bay. The Boston Ujima Project and the Colorado Solidarity Fund both make investment decisions through democratic processes that involve their members. In each case, the people affected by the fund’s decisions have a hand in making them.
Cooperation also extends across businesses. Holding companies such as Evergreen Cooperatives and Obran acquire businesses and bring them into a shared, worker-owned whole, so that companies grow together rather than separately. Capital moves within the cooperative movement itself, too: the Valley Alliance of Worker Cooperatives is a group of worker cooperatives that finances each other, as well as other worker cooperatives. Its fund is still small, but it is the kind of model that would be exciting to see grow.
Using the database
The database is hosted on Airtable, with sorting, filtering, and grouping built in, and the full dataset available to download as a .csv file. A few columns are particularly useful for finding what is relevant to you:
- Alternative ownership (AOE) model(s) financed shows which ownership models a vehicle invests in — ESOPs, worker cooperatives, EOTs, broad-based employee equity, other cooperatives, and steward ownership. The employee-ownership models share an “EO:” prefix, so you can filter to all employee-ownership financiers at once, or narrow to a single model.
- Other investment(s) shows what a vehicle finances beyond AOEs. A blank indicates a vehicle dedicated to alternative ownership enterprises; entries such as community real estate, social enterprises, or nonprofits indicate a broader mandate.
- Geographic focus, Fundraising status, Target return, and Structure help refine further — by where a vehicle invests, whether it is currently raising, the return it targets, and the type of vehicle it is.
Ecosystems are not built overnight, and alternative ownership financing one is still maturing. But its variety — many models, many kinds of capital, many scales and places — is what will help it innovate, endure, and let more workers, producers, and communities share in the ownership of the businesses that influence their lives.
Spot an error, or want to suggest a fund? Email [email protected] so we can keep improving the resource.
Disclaimer: The information comes from desk research, with efforts made to validate it with investment teams where possible. It may contain errors and omissions. The information provided in this database is intended for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice.
