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 this second annual update, the database provides a helpful starting point for investors seeking funds to back, and for advisors and businesses seeking capital for transactions.
What’s new?
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.
In this second annual update, the database goes international. For the first time, it 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.
How to use the database
The database is hosted on Airtable which includes sorting, filtering and grouping functions as well as the possibility to download the information as a .csv file. Here are some useful tips for getting the most out of the resource.
1. Filter by “Structure”
The Structure column refers to vehicle structure. Most investors will want to focus on entities tagged as “Fund” and “Fund of funds,” which include closed-end and evergreen structures. Additional types of structures include:
- “Bank” or ”Credit union:" typical providers of senior debt for EO transactions
- ”Conglomerate:" EO company that grows through acquisition, some of which raise outside capital to fuel their growth in addition to their own cash reserves.
- ”Independent sponsor:" raise capital on a deal-by-deal basis
2. Filter by “Investment approach"
This column captures the type(s) of AOE models a fund invests in, as well as its degree of explicit impact focus. These categories are important, as the investment approaches vary widely, even within EO. We have categorized existing funds into eight different types of investment approaches, which can help identify which type of fund might best align with an investor’s financial and impact priorities.
EO exclusive: invest only in Employee Ownership. They mainly fund conversion deals, but can provide other forms of financing (for startups or for ongoing needs) as well.
- “EO: ESOP conversion:" focus exclusively on ESOPs.
- “EO: Worker Cooperatives:" focus exclusively on Worker Cooperatives (start-ups, conversions, or other capital needs).
- “EO: EOT conversion:" focus exclusively on EOTs
- “EO: Multiple models:" invest across EO models, which increases complexity for the fund but also allows them to use the model most aligned with the needs of the business.
- “EO: Partial broad-based employee equity:" approximate partial Employee Ownership by sharing a portion of the business’ financial success to a broad base of employees through mechanisms such as profit sharing, broad based equity grants, or phantom stock grants, at no upfront cost for employees.
Non-EO exclusive: Many funds are not designed to invest solely in Employee Ownership, but see EO as an important dimension of their strategy.
- “All cooperatives, incl. Worker coops:" finance many types of cooperatives, in addition to Worker Cooperatives, such as Producer,Consumer and Multi-stakeholder Cooperatives.
- “Other impact strategy, incl. EO:" have a variety of impact strategies, ranging from financing underrepresented business owners to supporting economic development, building climate resilience in a particular region, and advancing shared ownership beyond just enterprises (e.g. real estate and other asset classes).
“Non-impact strategy, with some EO financing:" focused on providing market-rate returns to investors, which occasionally includes EO transactions as part of this strategy due to their beneficial taxation.
As an alternative to using the “Investment approach” as a filter, database users can select the types of entities they are interested in financing in the “Recipient of investment” column to access funds that are most relevant for them e.g. Worker cooperatives, EOTs, AOE funds, etc.
3. Additional Filters
The database can be further refined using other fields. 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.
A note of thanks – and a few caveats
We hope this database serves as a useful tool for those exploring capital that supports Alternative Ownership Enterprises and, ultimately, a more inclusive economy. For users, we’d love to hear feedback from you on how you’re using the database, and how it could grow in the future!
Thank you to all of the fund managers and investment leaders who are experimenting with these fund models that distribute wealth and power in transformative ways. These leaders, managers, and investment teams make the database possible via their publicly available information and through Transform Finance surveys. Additionally, deep thanks to Transform Finance’s donors who make this database, our AOE learning hub, and much more, possible.
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. Spot an error, or want to suggest a fund? Email info@transformfinance.org so we can keep improving the resource.
