Testing Impactful Successions at Scale

Heather Hachigian was granted Research and Professional Development for an action-research project examining succession-ready small businesses through a model of community ownership.

The pandemic, technological change and demographic aging are contributing to unprecedented closures of small businesses across North America, representing significant loss to communities. The nonprofit sector is left to fill in gaps while ensuring its own survival, often by starting a social enterprise. But social enterprise start-ups struggle to attract finance to grow and sustain. This action-research project is testing a new model to shift ownership of succession-ready small business and other assets to communities, manage these at scale and redistribute profits to community.