FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
June 24th, 2026
Contact: Anna Evans-Goldstein, anna@baltimoreroundtable.org, 443-386-6795
Baltimore City Budget Advances Worker Cooperative Conversion as Strategy to Preserve Legacy Businesses and Build Community Wealth
BALTIMORE, MD — On June 24th, Baltimore’s final fiscal year 2027 budget was approved by City Council—including, for the first time, money designated to support the conversion of businesses to worker cooperatives when the owners of those businesses wish to retire or sell. The city’s $250,000 commitment will enable an expansion of the work of Baltimore Roundtable for Economic Democracy to facilitate cooperative conversions to retain jobs, empower workers, avert commercial vacancies, and preserve locally-owned businesses.
Worker cooperatives—businesses owned and governed by their workers—are on the rise in Baltimore. Much of the growth in the sector has been driven by Baltimore Roundtable for Economic Democracy (BRED), a nonprofit organization founded ten years ago to advance worker ownership through education, cooperative development, and non-extractive financing. Since its work starting in 2016 to help Taharka Brothers Ice Cream convert from a social enterprise to a business owned by its youth workers, BRED has invested over $5 million in worker cooperative conversions in Baltimore, preserving 149 jobs and facilitating the creation of more than 50 jobs post-conversion, in businesses like The Wine Source, Common Ground Coffee, EnviroCollab, and Appalachian Field Services.
Now, with support from Baltimore City, BRED will be able to accelerate and expand these efforts, helping more business owners preserve their legacy through worker cooperative conversion as a succession strategy. With over half the owners of all privately held employers in the US already over age 55, cooperative conversion represents an important opportunity to help business owners keep the jobs they created in communities like Baltimore, while creating broadly held wealth that stays rooted locally.
As City Council President Zeke Cohen, says “Cooperative ownership is one of the most powerful tools we have for keeping beloved Baltimore businesses open and locally owned, especially when an owner is ready to retire or sell. This $250,000 investment in the Baltimore Roundtable for Economic Democracy reflects this Council’s commitment to keeping local businesses local. BRED has the experience and track record to help business owners transition successfully to cooperative models, and that means more Baltimoreans have a real shot at entrepreneurship and ownership in their own communities.”
For Christa Daring, Executive Director of Baltimore Roundtable for Economic Democracy, “This commitment from the City of Baltimore represents an opportunity to scale a proven model, building on BRED’s decade of experience with worker cooperative conversions, and the more than $25 million in non-extractive investment we have channeled to worker and community owned businesses in the Baltimore area.”
According to Kate Khatib, BRED Senior Fellow and Executive Co-Director of Seed Commons, the national cooperatively-governed CDFI which has invested more than $25 million in Baltimore cooperatives since 2016, “Baltimore has one of the fastest growing worker cooperative ecosystems in the country, thanks in large part to BRED’s work. This support from the city underscores the impact BRED’s cooperative conversion program has already made to improve the lives of Baltimore’s workers and the health of their communities, and will help make the next chapter of that work to advance democratic ownership bigger and bolder.”
For Vinny Green, who joined Taharka Brothers as a high school freshman in 2010 and became one of its first worker-owners as result of its BRED-supported conversion to worker ownership, “What makes Taharka Brothers different isn’t just the ice cream. It’s the way we do business—together, as a cooperative.”
JoAnne Huey of The Wine Source explains “When the opportunity arose to purchase The Wine Source from its retiring owner, a group of ‘soon-to-be unemployed’ employees came together to form a worker-owned cooperative in partnership with BRED. This unique transition preserved local ownership, protected employee benefits, and provided ownership opportunities for all employees. None of this would have been possible without the partnership, support and guidance BRED provided throughout our process.”
The commitment in Baltimore City’s 2027 budget will help BRED expand its existing support for worker cooperative conversions, with more dedicated capacity for the intensive technical support and education needed to help owners and workers achieve a successful transition to democratic ownership. It will also help grow a broad and diverse pipeline of cooperative conversions across the city by funding dedicated outreach capacity and partnerships with community and neighborhood organizations, and will help these conversions succeed by helping owners and workers cover necessary costs for specialized legal and accounting services.
Baltimore Roundtable for Economic Democracy advances worker and community ownership in Baltimore and beyond through hands-on technical support, grassroots outreach, and in-depth cooperative education, paired with business development support and non-extractive lending. Learn more at https://baltimoreroundtable.org/.
BRED is a member of Seed Commons, a cooperatively-governed community development financial institution that has deployed over $128 million of investment in worker and community owned enterprises through its 39 local member organizations since 2012. Learn more at https://seedcommons.org.
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