I’m thrilled to share that Certified Employee-Owned just welcomed our 700th Member! We’re excited to pass this major milestone a few months shy of our seven-year anniversary. Our growing member network represents progress towards our vision and demonstrates the value of certification. By helping our Members unlock the competitive advantages of employee ownership, we are strengthening the companies that turn the idea of employee ownership into action.
Our continued success can be traced back to a single decision made in the early days of Certified Employee-Owned: the choice to be 100% Member funded. This guidepost has kept 100% focused on providing value to our Members and ensures that we are we are always striving to grow the employee ownership community. This post gives background on that decision and how it has influenced our growth over the years.
Why Be 100% Member Funded?
The decision to be 100% Member funded dates back to our beginning. Kramer and I launched Certified Employee-Owned in 2017 because we loved the idea of employee ownership, but we were struck by the lack of awareness and understanding among the general public. When we learned that there were over 6,400 employee-owned companies in America, all we could think was, “why haven’t we heard of this before?”
Our vision was to combine the reach of employee-owned companies, create national recognition of the model, and turn employee ownership into a major advantage in terms of hiring, retention, engagement, and customer acquisition. It was clear to us that a major lever for scale was to help companies share their ownership story.
But we also knew that there would be any challenges along the road. How could we ensure that our new organization would stay focused on it’s mission? Every business person knows that growth comes with challenges and potential distractions, so it was critical for us to stay focused on our Members. We also understood the power of incentives, so we started to think about our revenue model and how we could link that to our mission. We realized that a commitment to generate 100% of our revenue from employee-owned companies would hardcode our mission into our DNA.
100% Member Focused
Being 100% Member funded means that we have always had an intense focus on creating value for our Members. We have no other choice. Every dollar we make comes from employee-owned companies, and they only pay us if certification provides them more value than it costs. Focusing on our Members is more than just an ideal for us, its a way of life.
Member focus has been behind many of our best decisions. After our launch in 2017 we received a ton of positive feedback about the idea of a big network amplifying the voice of employee ownership, but not everyone saw the value of the network because we only had a few dozen Members. We needed to create a strong direct incentive to get certified, so we set up conversations with our founding Members who helped understand an immediate need: sharing their ownership story with current employee-owners. With that direction we set out to create the tools and playbook that would help companies save time and increase engagement, which has turned into our most popular service today.
Members have been instrumental in providing the ideas and insights that have fueled our growth. Their feedback and suggestions have helped us grow our template library to over 100 pieces of content. Member feedback on hiring led us to create EO Jobs, the first and only job board for employee-owned companies. Members have joined our webinars to share their insights with the network, and have provided hundreds of examples that have made their way into our case studies and best practice library.
The decision to be 100% Member funded has also helped us decide what not to do. With over 700 Members, we’ve built a valuable source of information about the community. Perhaps there might be a way for us to package our data and insights into something useful for service providers? While we love the community of companies that support employee-owned businesses, that would divide our focus and our attention. We prefer to stay 100% Member focused.
100% Aligned on Growing Employee Ownership
The commitment to be 100% Member funded also keeps us focused on growing the employee ownership community. At the end of the day, there are two ways to grow the number of employee-owners: you can create a new employee-owned company or you can make an existing employee-owned company more successful. By focusing 100% on our Members, we’re growing the community by making employee-owned companies stronger.
Here’s how it works. Members love supporting our work to promote employee ownership, but the decision to get and stay certified is made like any other business decision. Members maintain their certification if the benefits outweigh the costs. By creating surplus value for our Members, we’re providing them a direct financial benefit that increases their growth and profitability. Through 100% Member focus, we’re directly growing the employee ownership community.
While we’re thrilled to have 700 Members, we still feel like we’re at the beginning. We will continue to grow our network and exponentially increase the value we provide to our Members. The future of employee ownership is bright, and we’re proud to be a part of making that future happen. Everything we want to accomplish happens through our Members, and that’s why we are so happy to be 100% Member funded.
