6/15/2022 to 6/22/2022
To whom it may concern at Alter Eco,
You sell great chocolates. I just ate some. And the Alter Eco Foundation clearly is doing great work.
May I ask: is Alter Eco a steward-owned company?
If not, would you consider becoming one in the future? If you're not sure what steward ownership is, here is a good TED talk on steward ownership: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2Uy_ODDiZo.
Steward ownership is the next step up from being a B Corp or a benefit corporation. Unlike B Corps and benefit corporations, steward ownership is designed to make the beneficial orientation of the company irreversible by changing the ownership structure. For one thing, steward ownership means a company can never be sold. A steward-owned company's shareholders and stakeholders can participate to some extent in profits, but most of a steward-owned company's profits must be reinvested in the business or else donated to charities. Because of that, and because the stakeholders are permanently forbidden to sell the company and take the proceeds for themselves, steward ownership causes a company permanently to treat profit not as an end in itself but as an essential means to pursue a purpose beyond profit. Steward-owned companies grow capital for all and cannot be used, like conventional companies, to concentrate tremendous wealth in the hands of a few. Steward ownership can profoundly humanize the economy without enlarging state bureaucracies or increasing state power. And steward-owned companies can be highly innovative because investors in steward-owned companies do not have control rights and so cannot compel such companies to focus myopically on getting the share price constantly higher. So steward-owned companies can pursue research and innovation even though they may bring profits only in the longer term.
Compared to conventional companies, steward-owned companies survive longer, pay employees more, and are more trusted. Zeiss, the successful German optical instruments company, has been steward-owned for over a century. The nation with perhaps the largest number of steward-owned companies currently is Denmark. And recently, Organically Owned Company, one of the largest organic produce distributors in the U.S., became steward-owned and now also advises other companies on how to do the same. The Purpose network, formed by Armin Steuernagel, is a key resource for the formation of steward-owned companies.
Would you let everyone at Alter Eco know that a customer applauds your company and hopes you will consider moving toward steward-ownership in the future?
Best regards, _____________________
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