Evergreen Cooperatives

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 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 […]

by Kevin Barry Posted at9:48 AM, Aug 11, 2021and last updated9:48 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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

(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. […]

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 […]

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 […]

(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 […]

In February 2020 BI Cooperative, a newly formed worker cooperative, received an investment from The Fund for Employee Ownership (TFEO) to acquire the assets of Berry Insulation in a move to convert the company to employee ownership. BI Cooperative recently received a follow-on investment from TFEO to complete the strategic acquisition of the assets of […]