Worker-owned cooperatives are not just a proven strategy to grow wealth for women, immigrants, people of color and other under-represented business owners, they are also a way to transfer wealth from one successful generation of BIPOC entrepreneurs to another.  FJWO played a key role in one such project recently, when we helped to assemble a $8.4 million financing package for APartnership, a leading Asian American-owned marketing agency to help the firm transition to worker ownership.

All APartnership’s 24 staff members identify as people of color, nearly 90% are immigrants, and two-thirds are women. Over 20+ years in business specializing in understanding the needs of the Asian American market, the company has built a track-record of managing large, complex accounts and a resume of producing award-winning work. Today, APartnership is arguably the most awarded Asian American agency in the country with an impressive list of clients including state and federal governmental agencies, major national banks, and Fortune 500 companies.

As new worker-owners of this profitable enterprise, APartnership’s members will enjoy a voice in the firm’s governance as well as a share in annual profits, which are expected to equal up to 20% of each members’ salary. The selling owner knew that the reputation of the company and her legacy was much more secure in the hands of the long-term partners who had helped to build that value.

As a communications firm, APartnership had little hard collateral, so putting together a deal of this size was a formidable task.  While FJWO provided only a small portion of the ultimate funding, the technical expertise brought by our sister organization, the ICA Group was invaluable to making the deal happen, while the relationships we held in the cooperative community helped attract the other funders to the deal. The APartnership conversion demonstrates FJWO’s ability to leverage its own investment capital to help much larger deals get done, with much larger impact.

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