The Point
Meet the Unlock Ownership Fund: A Plan to Hijack the Coming Historic Small Business Ownership Transfer for “Anti-Capitalist” Agenda
A network of progressive donors is using donor-advised funds to redirect the coming $5 trillion small business ownership transfer toward a self-described “anti-capitalist” agenda.
America is about to experience the largest small-business ownership transfer in history, as an estimated 6 million small and midsize businesses will transfer ownership as Baby Boomer founders retire, representing up to $5 trillion in enterprise value. For the workers who built them, and the communities that depend on them, this is an enormous opportunity that free-market employee ownership is well-positioned to capture.
However, a network of progressive activists has other plans. Under the banner of “employee ownership” and “racial equity,” a coalition of wealthy liberal donors, “impact investors,” and anti-capitalist organizers is working to intercept those successes before the free market can even get a look. Among this coalition are Brian and Katie Boland - a Washington state couple whose Delta Fund has deep ties to progressive political networks and is involved in the anti-growth tax agenda, pushing policies that would eliminate hundreds of thousands of American jobs.
Together with Amy Brakeman of Pluralize Capital and Deborah Frieze of Boston Impact Initiative, the Bolands have launched the Unlock Ownership Fund, with a straightforward strategy and serious implications.
The goal? In their own words, they’re pursuing a “radical and anti-capitalist” vision designed to “challenge the logics of white supremacy, heteropatriarchy, settler colonialism, and capitalist accumulation.”
Building Blocks
The fund’s founders have been clear about what they are building: an initiative designed to “unlock the $250 billion that sits in donor-advised funds,” capital designated for philanthropy that is now sitting in bank accounts largely shielded from public disclosure. They seek to activate that capital and direct it toward an "equitable and inclusive ‘ownership economy,’” explicitly prioritizing displacing the open market - rather than growing the overall pie for workers.
The fund has already secured $5.4 million in commitments and deployed $2.55 million in its first year. Digging deeper, the fund is housed at Impact Charitable, a Denver-based donor-advised fund provider with links to the Tides Foundation and Open Society-connected networks, the same groups that bankroll much of the left’s organized advocacy apparatus.
Manufacturing a “Market Failure”
The Unlock Ownership Fund is a campaign against traditional free-market investment. The architects complain that “for every $1 invested in employee ownership, there is $7,000 of Private Equity ‘dry powder,’” calling it a “massive market failure” that demands intervention.
By casting traditional free market capitalism as predatory, and top-down donor-advised activist funds as the savior, they justify redirecting tax-advantaged capital away from market allocation and toward their network of ideologically aligned fund managers. This results in a non-competitive process with no public accountability and no requirement to demonstrate financial results.
Who Is Actually Getting the Money
The Unlock Ownership Fund’s inaugural impact report lists the portfolio organizations funded in its first year.
- Seed Commons is a worker-lending cooperative whose co-director states the fund's purpose openly: “If we’re honest, we started this fund to try and transform the nature of capitalism itself,” and “we cannot achieve social justice unless we remake the infrastructure of finance.” This explicitly anti-capitalist enterprise is funded in part by tax-advantaged philanthropic dollars.
- Groundcover/The Guild describes its ownership model as promoting a “solidarity economy” aimed at moving beyond capitalism entirely, and its published materials describe its approach as “radical and anti-capitalist” designed to “challenge the logics of white supremacy, heteropatriarchy, settler colonialism, and capitalist accumulation.”
These are the organizations that Unlock Ownership’s ambition is meant to sustain and scale.
What Real Employee Ownership Looks Like
Successful expansion of employee ownership ought to be built on free markets, regulatory clarity, and bipartisan consensus. Congress just demonstrated how through the Retire Through Ownership Act, providing ESOPs with additional regulatory clarity and valuation safe harbors. The bill awaits President Trump’s signature.
As a recent McKinsey Institute report makes clear, ensuring they have systems and institutions to more effectively and efficiently transfer ownership to the next generation would ensure that “the Great Ownership Transfer becomes not just a handoff of assets but a blueprint for how the US economy renews itself generation after generation.”
The coming wave of small business transitions is a major opportunity to expand ownership, build worker wealth, and strengthen local economies, but only if the market is allowed to function. By contrast, the vision of the Unlock Ownership Fund is an attempt to capture that transition, redirect it, and use it to fund an anti-capitalist ideological project.