About NCEOC

The North Carolina Employee Ownership Center is on a mission to protect jobs, increase community wealth, and create a more vibrant, inclusive economy through employee ownership.

We do that by telling stories, forging partnerships, and providing unbiased information to business owners and their advisors about their succession options — Employee Stock Ownership Plans (ESOPs), worker cooperatives, and Employee Ownership Trusts (EOTs). We are a 501(c)(3) nonprofit serving the entire state, with a particular focus on outreach to businesses owned by Black, Indigenous, and People of Color, and those with 40 percent or greater BIPOC workforces.

Our vision is that all North Carolinians benefit from strong local economies and shared prosperity through employee ownership.

A large group of employees gathered on the steps outside their workplace for a group photograph
Employee owners at The Link Group.

Why this work

North Carolina's economy runs on small business. Those companies provide close to half the jobs in the state, and a great many of them are owned by people old enough to be thinking about what comes next. Only a small share of businesses pass from one generation to the next. Most never sell at all.

When an owner runs out of options, the business closes, or it is bought by someone with no reason to keep it here. Selling to the employees is a third path: the owner gets fair market value, the jobs stay, and the people who built the company get a share of what they built.

We do not broker transactions and we are not paid on them. That is the point. Owners get straight information about all three models, including the times when none of them is the right answer.

How we got here

The groundwork started well before the organization existed. In 2014 the National Center for Employee Ownership began encouraging the development of state employee ownership centers, and Anne-Claire Broughton — founder and interim executive director of NCEOC, and principal of Broughton Consulting — started building relationships with employee owned firms in North Carolina and comparing notes with other emerging state centers.

In 2015 The Industrial Commons became active in catalyzing employee ownership in western North Carolina. In 2016 the North Carolina Budget and Tax Center published Down Home Capital, which raised broad awareness of employee ownership as a way to protect jobs in the state.

In 2018 a group of partners — Broughton Consulting, the NC Justice Center, Carolina Common Enterprise, and others — formed an Employee Ownership Steering Committee, holding convenings and speaking to business groups from Durham to Asheville to Charlotte to Asheboro. Later that year Durham was one of four cities chosen for the Shared Equity in Economic Development (SEED) Fellowship, aimed at bringing employee ownership tools to historically disadvantaged business owners.

NCEOC became real in early 2019 with first funding commitments from the Employee Ownership Expansion Network and the Democracy at Work Institute, followed shortly by The Industrial Commons. The center incorporated in May 2019.

The first five years

From our founding through 2024:

  • 60 referrals and 23 one-on-one intakes with business owners
  • 6 companies successfully transitioned to employee ownership, creating 170 new employee owners
  • 5 Ambassador Program cohorts, with 82 participants — business owners, economic developers, attorneys, financial advisors, and chamber of commerce leaders
  • 979 attendees at our own educational events, virtual and in person
  • 66 speaking engagements at partner organizations' events
Employees of ShopBot Tools standing together in front of a ShopBot sign
ShopBot Tools in Durham, now owned by its employees through an Employee Ownership Trust.

Recognized for how we do it

In 2024 the Aspen Institute profiled NCEOC alongside the Employee Ownership Expansion Network, describing our equity focus as a model for other state centers. The report singled out our partnerships with local Black and Hispanic chambers of commerce and our commitment to language equity through translation services.

It also noted something that shapes everything we do: because North Carolina's economy is mostly small businesses, we built our services for companies that may fit a worker cooperative or an Employee Ownership Trust, not only the larger companies suited to an ESOP.

Three people standing together holding an award at an NCEOC event
Recognising an employee-owned company at the annual celebration.

Who funds this

None of this happens without our funders. Our thanks to the Winston-Salem Foundation, Dogwood Health Trust, the Allstate Foundation, the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation, the City of Durham, the Fehsenfeld Family Foundation, the Coastal Credit Union Foundation, the Democracy at Work Institute, Salem Fabrication Technologies Group, and the Employee Ownership Expansion Network.

Who does the work

NCEOC is run by a small staff and an active working board drawn from employee owned companies, economic development, law, finance, and community organizations across the state. You can meet them on our Who We Are page.

Support the work

We are a nonprofit, and the education we provide is free to the businesses and communities that receive it. If you would like to help keep it that way, you can make a donation or become a sponsor.