Summary
The opportunity to convert businesses to worker cooperatives is increasingly becoming recognized as a strategy for strengthening our local economies. The need—and opportunity—for lenders and other capital providers to participate in these sales transactions is expected to grow significantly in the coming years. But only a handful of lenders in the U.S. specialize in lending to worker coops. This primer on lending in the context of worker coop conversions aims to address basic questions and serve as an introduction that begins to demystify what it means to lend to worker cooperatives.