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Worker Voice
We put workers at the center of key decisions to create institutions that are responsive to workers’ needs.
Worker Wealth
We believe that all workers deserve access to assets, opportunities, and social and political capital.
Worker Power
We partner with communities to build worker power, transform businesses, and interrupt systemic oppression.
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Envisioning a New Economy
ICA seeks to change the nature of work by advancing businesses and institutions that center worker voice, grow worker wealth, and build worker power. We seek to create, promote, and support jobs, while collaborating with workers to define a truly entrepreneurial, democratic, and community-minded economy.
ICA’s Program Areas
Business Conversions
Supporting business owners with a suite of tools designed for understanding employee ownership including governance structures, operations, succession planning, and expansion.
Child Care
Increasing the financial resilience of businesses and improving job quality with industry-focused resources and consulting, cooperative conversions, and worker-centered purchasing cooperatives.
Home Care
Strengthening and scaling employee ownership in the home care industry with strategic planning, business consulting, and cooperative conversions.
Alternative
Staffing
Improving the quality and dignity of temporary work by connecting employment social enterprises, developing best practices, and providing technical assistance.
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National Reach
The ICA Group is a leading expert on worker ownership and the oldest national organization dedicated to the development of worker cooperatives.
We are a mission-driven nonprofit organized as a worker cooperative and are dedicated to bringing strategic analysis and industry-focused supports to the worker ownership sector. Our business expertise is bolstered by a deep understanding of worker ownership and other worker-centered structures and a commitment to serving low-wage workers and communities of color.
Since 1977, ICA has launched dozens of worker-owned cooperatives and social enterprises, helped dozens of companies convert to worker ownership, and created and preserved over 10,000 jobs.
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Current Initiatives
ICA has developed worker ownership networks in the home care and child care sectors and built two state-based ownership opportunities programs that focus on preserving firms whose owners are looking to exit the business. We have honed our technical assistance tools and procedures, built partnerships with critical community and industry groups, and identified owners and leaders of successfully converted firms who serve as champions and advocates for worker ownership.
Keep the Doors Open Business Resilience Program
Designed for business owners facing an unprecedented risk of closure during the COVID-19 pandemic, Keep the Doors Open helps business owners determine whether sharing or transferring ownership to their employees could save the business.
Massachusetts Center for Employee Ownership
Created by an act of the Massachusetts Legislature in 2017, MassCEO advocates employee ownership through education and outreach to business owners across the Commonwealth. MassCEO is administered by Working Wealth and the ICA Group.
Alternative Staffing Alliance
The ICA Group launched the Alternative Staffing Alliance in 2007 to create a national network that would foster peer learning, provide tools and resources to strengthen practitioners’ effectiveness, and expand the sector by supporting others interested in launching Alternative Staffing Organizations. Today the Alliance is a dynamic community of nearly 50 organizations across the U.S.
NYC Department of Small Business Services
In 2015, the ICA Group began work with the City of New York’s Department of Small Business Services with the goal of fighting income inequality across the five boroughs. ICA is a part of the Worker Cooperative Business Development Initiative (WCBDI), a network of ten organizations charged with supporting the creation and development of worker cooperatives in NYC.
Employee Ownership NYC
Employee Ownership NYC includes the Owner to Owners Business Transition Hotline, a support line for small business owners staffed by the ICA Group and other NYC-based partners: the Democracy at Work Institute, the Working World, and the Business Outreach Center (BOC) Network.
The Fund for Jobs Worth Owning
By designing solutions for employee-owned businesses and financing transitions to employee ownership, the Fund supports the growth and development of employee-owned businesses. These innovative solutions create and sustain jobs worth owning.
CoRise Cooperative
CoRise is a cooperative of home-based child care providers in Illinois. Developed in partnership with the Service Employees International Union, this social enterprise launched in Fall of 2018 following extensive market research and provider engagement.
Family Child Care Coalition
The Family Child Care Coalition (Fc3) is a group of family child care providers seeking to unify, empower, and advocate for the family child care provider community in the greater Philadelphia area.
The Trust for Workers
The Trust for Workers promotes good working conditions, economic security for workers, and worker voice and agency in the home care industry. The Trust ensures mission-alignment of large-scale home care programs through program impact monitoring and measurement, consulting on best practices, and advocacy for better standards in the home care industry.
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Support our work to advance businesses and institutions that center worker voice, grow worker wealth, and build worker power.
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