Transform Finance was founded in 2013 on the premise that for capital to be a force for transformative societal change, the basic tools, models, and practices of finance must be seriously reconsidered. At that time, with impact investing in its infancy, we saw investors claiming positive impact even as they replicated practices that perpetuate the issues with conventional finance: safeguarding the primacy of investors and increasing wealth concentration among capital holders, among others.
So, we asked our peers who were challenging conventional norms: what does it look like to truly center impact and do finance differently? From these conversations, we developed the three Transformative Finance Principles to guide investment practitioners towards a new path:
- Investments should provide affected communities the chance to design outcomes, govern processes, and share in ownership;
- Investments should add more value than they extract as returns; and
- Investments should fairly balance risks and returns among all stakeholders.
These principles were unique at that time, and in many ways still are unique in 2025, because they focus on the how of investment, not the who or the what. For more than a decade, we’ve been working to activate stakeholders across all corners of finance to put the Principles into practice:
- We’ve helped countless investors see completely new perspectives so that they can invest in more social justice-informed ways. Our actionable frameworks have helped investors see new ways of seeing issue-based investment, like our work on cross-asset class racial justice investing. We’ve lifted up impact areas and investment structures that were once fringe but now see coverage in mainstream impact circles, like alternative financing structures and community engagement in place-based investing.
- We’ve supported movement organizations in learning how finance intersects with movement work on a day-to-day basis, in setting up projects that place investment decision making in the hands of place-based communities, and in launching campaigns that engage with financial actors and influence their capital.
- We’ve served as connective tissue across finance, social justice, philanthropy, academia, and more, demonstrating a cohesive vision for a finance that is beneficial, not harmful, to working class communities and communities of color.
A Thread Woven Through Our Work
Throughout our projects, partnerships, and research, there’s been a clear throughline that shows up again and again: ownership. Ownership, in this context, broadly means having both decision making power over and economic benefit from assets, like shares in companies or stakes in real estate projects.
Ownership is fundamental because the distribution of who owns assets, and what rights are associated with that ownership, determines who controls and benefits from the economy.
In today’s economy, ownership is largely concentrated among investors and holders of generational wealth, as well as company founders. But many initiatives are challenging this norm, allocating ownership across other stakeholders who contribute to a project’s success such as workers, community members, consumers, and suppliers. This is often referred to as Shared Ownership. Instances of Shared Ownership, such as enterprises owned by workers or real estate assets owned by the community that uses them, align directly with our Transformative Finance Principles: they reckon with power, must be met by nontraditional financing terms, and shift risk and return.
We’ve been working on Shared Ownership explicitly since 2017, when we began synthesizing various existing investment strategies and research from the US Employee Ownership sector into a worker-centric Private Equity model for Employee Ownership conversions. Around the same time, we also began researching and advocating for community-led projects that have participatory governance over the deployment of place-based capital, such as community capital funds and certain real estate development vehicles. Since then, we’ve kept at least one foot in the Shared Ownership world, centering it as a major thread of our work to mobilize investors to adopt more transformative practices.
In 2025 and beyond, we’re digging deep into expanding Shared Ownership for two major areas of the economy:
- Alternative Ownership Enterprises (AOEs), or 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. This label includes Employee Ownership, multi-stakeholder ownership, and enterprises with structures that legally make a non-financial purpose the goal of the firm. We research and advocate for opportunities to bring new capital to AOEs, whether it’s through uncovering financial innovation opportunities, organizing investors, or educating stakeholders with our industry reports and analysis. You can see all of our discussions, findings, and original content on AOEs here.
- Community-Owned Real Estate (CORE) refers to real estate development projects that include a strong aspect of community governance and/or equity ownership in the project. CORE models have been developed in housing (e.g. Community Land Trusts, Limited Equity Cooperatives, Mixed Income Neighborhood Trusts), in commercial real estate (e.g. Community Investment Trusts, community-owned corridors), and for land itself (e.g. land back, rematriation). We’re launching a new project alongside peer organizations to research the factors that make CORE models successful, and to develop a set of tools that will promote these models in the arenas of capital, policy, and narrative.
Leveraging our relationships and existing experience, we hope to provide insights, connections, and direct support for various stakeholders in order to significantly scale Shared Ownership over the next few years.
Shared Ownership as an Organizing Concept for a New Economy
Developing AOEs and CORE may seem like a very specific intervention for impact, designed to help the individuals who participate in ownership. But at the same time, these models – and the specific businesses and projects that deploy them – serve a greater purpose: they are an organizing concept for a new economy.
Anyone who serves as a member in a cooperative, receives a check when their place of employment is sold, or lives in a home owned collectively by themselves and their neighbors becomes fundamentally changed by their experience, exposed to the idea that economic activity can serve everyone, not just investors. It’s no surprise that participants in the Shared Ownership economy have higher levels of civic engagement, taking skills, lessons, and relationships into other areas of their lives.
What would an economy based on Shared Ownership look like? It’s not a hypothetical future; it’s all around us, whether you know it or not. Household names from Patagonia to Publix are actually Alternative Ownership Enterprises, disproving the notion that these models are not viable at scale. Community Land Trusts have been transforming the lives of working class communities and people of color for decades. As Shared Ownership concepts become more and more familiar, we are seeing its application to new areas at larger scales, such as integration of Employee Ownership within private equity or proposed policies for large-scale public investment into community-owned forms of housing.
More and more individuals, investors, and organizations are seeing the potential for this economy. The Employee Ownership sector has experienced an explosion of new funds, investors, and energy from new entrants and veterans alike. Funders are starting to add Shared Ownership to their racial justice, worker power, and community development portfolios. Impact-oriented news outlets are centering ownership more and more, as evidenced by ImpactAlpha’s coverage of the Ownership Economy. Politicians on both sides of the aisle are pushing for legislation that incentivizes shared ownership.
Unsurprisingly, this interest in Shared Ownership has risen as inequality, threats to democracy, and corporate power grow. We believe this is because Shared Ownership models show promise of real solutions to these societal issues, and are palatable to a wide swath of decision makers. Doubling down on Shared Ownership now will strengthen the autonomy of many of the communities who are vulnerable to attacks and fallout from the current administration, providing economic support and a base for many to build political power with other workers and community members.
Join Us in Building the Shared Ownership Movement
A concerted effort of investors, funders, and on-the-ground practitioners will grow Shared Ownership to the point of being a lens that can be applied across an entire investment portfolio. It’s an ambitious task, and will take all hands on deck. We need to find allies in unexpected places and find new ways to leverage the resources at the disposal of ourselves and our peer organizations.
If you haven’t engaged with Transform Finance for a while, take this as an open opportunity to explore how we might partner together, in ways big and small. If your organization hasn’t yet explored the world of Shared Ownership, we can help you take the first steps. Reach out and ask us your questions, invite us to present on topics of Shared Ownership at your events or with your colleagues, and join in our discussions on LinkedIn.
If you are already supporting the Shared Ownership economy in one way or another, we want to make sure that we’re connected and coordinated as we help to develop the field. Join our mailing list to make sure you’re kept abreast of learning opportunities, conversations, and events (including our upcoming webinar featuring funds that finance community-owned real estate)!
We look forward to building the road as we walk it, together.
