Today we are increasingly seeing a movement to create cooperative enterprises. As baby boomer business owners approach retirement age many small communities are turning to worker cooperatives to sustain businesses that supported the communities. As COVID surged in 2020, the Evergreen Foundation in Cleveland acquired at pre COVID prices small businesses that closed their doors permanently to convert to worker cooperatives. This served to save employment and sustain services to communities that depended on these businesses for basic goods and services. To this end the Evergreen Cooperatives launched a fund for employee ownership. A study by project Equity reports that a vast majority of the small business owners have no succession plan in place. Cooperatives offer the opportunity to keep many of these locally owned businesses in the community for long-term positive impact.  

https://project-equity.org/communities/small-business-closure-crisis/

https://www.evgoh.com/2021/08/11/evergreen-cooperatives-helps-companies-shift-to-co-ops-share-profits-with-workers/