(Cleveland, April 7, 2023). Evergreen Cooperatives, a nonprofit focused on revitalizing urban neighborhoods by preserving jobs that build middle-class wealth, has added to its growing portfolio of employee-owned businesses with the asset purchase of LEFCO Worthington LLC, an industry-leading manufacturer of engineered custom wood crates and heavy-duty skids for international shipping. The deal represents the […]
Green City Growers acquired by Local Roots Cleveland
June 16, 2022 in Uncategorized
The Evergreen Cooperative Corporation (ECC) and Green City Growers (GCG) boards recently sold GCG to Local Roots Cleveland, a company headquartered in Fort Wayne, Ind. The GCG board, comprised of employee-owners and independent board consultants, voted to approve this transaction, and Local Roots Cleveland assumed ownership on May 19, 2022. Local Roots has offered jobs […]
Evergreen Signs New Five-Year Contract with the Cleveland Clinic
September 29, 2021 in Blog, Evergreen Cooperative Laundry
Evergreen Cooperative Laundry (ECL) has extended its wide-ranging relationship with the Cleveland Clinic by signing a new five-year agreement to provide laundry and linen services for approximately 200 Clinic locations in Northeast Ohio. The new contract extends the original three-year service agreement ECL had with the Clinic, an Evergreen anchor partner since its inception in […]
Evergreen Cooperatives helps companies shift to co-ops, share profits with workers
August 11, 2021 in Uncategorized
by Kevin Barry Posted at 9:48 AM, Aug 11, 2021 and last updated 9:48 AM, Aug 11, 2021 CLEVELAND — The idea of a career and work day has changed a lot since the pandemic started in March 2020 and that’s already making many employees rethink what they want and need from an employer. Long before that disruption, Evergreen […]
Hosting a School Group Gave Green City Growers a Chance to Talk About Our Mission
July 22, 2021 in Blog, Green City Growers
The coronavirus pandemic has forced inner-city school districts to improvise learning tactics like nothing else has in decades. Green City Growers also had to make adjustments, from providing produce largely for now-shuttered restaurants in the community to finding more retail outlets for its fresh food. So, a recent greenhouse visit by a Cleveland public schools […]
Employee Ownership: A Partial Answer to the Crisis of Lagging Interest in Work
June 22, 2021 in Blog
As the country begins emerging from the worst of the Covid-19 pandemic and demand for goods and services picks up again, one dissonant note is marring the economic optimism. Everywhere the complaint is heard among employers with job vacancies going unfilled: No one wants to work anymore. At last count there are more than eight […]
Evergreen Cooperatives’ Fund Acquires Assets of LED Accessory Producer Intellitronix
May 18, 2021 in Evergreen Cooperatives, Fund for Employee Ownership, News
(Cleveland, May 17, 2021). Evergreen Cooperatives, an internationally recognized nonprofit focused on revitalizing urban neighborhoods by preserving jobs that build middle-class wealth, has added to its growing portfolio of employee-owned businesses with the asset purchase of Intellitronix, an industry-leading producer of LED automotive aftermarket digital and analog gauges. Terms of the deal were not released. […]
Evergreen Cooperatives’ First Retiree Looks Back with a Sense of Accomplishment
April 13, 2021 in Blog, Evergreen Cooperative Laundry
It all started in a back room, with 15 employees. Charles Cowlin ran a blanket machine in the industrial laundry. An Army veteran, Charles later worked for 18 years at aluminum giant Alcoa, where he was a well-paid unionized employee who enjoyed his work. “But life happens, and I got terminated.” At age 53, he […]
Employee Ownership Conversions, New Opportunity for Impact Investors
March 17, 2021 in Evergreen Cooperatives, Fund for Employee Ownership, News
New report includes Evergreen Cooperatives’ Fund for Employee Ownership as a part of a dozen funds pursuing innovative impact strategy A promising yet little used new avenue for high impact — offering returns ranging from a healthy 2 percent to as much as 15 percent — is opening to impact investors through new funds focused […]
Local Coffee Shop Employees Take Ownership With Evergreen’s Impact Investment
October 27, 2020 in Evergreen Cooperatives, News
(Cleveland, Oct. 27, 2020) Nationally recognized Evergreen Cooperatives, building on more than a decade of impact investing to build wealth in local communities, has once more made a strategic investment that will allow a company—this time a Northeast Ohio coffeehouse chain—to transition to employee ownership. The Fund for Employee Ownership (TFEO), an Evergreen initiative, has […]
