Nonprofits and Social Enterprises
Leading Non Profit Organizations
In addition to employee owned companies, Deborah Groban Olson has provided legal services to several nonprofits organizations and” low profit limited liability” (L3C) companies.
Deborah Olson was a founder of and led the:
Wisconsin Committee on Occupational Safety and Health www.wiscosh.org
Michigan Employee Ownership Center, a labor-business-government collaboration providing education and technical assistance on employee ownership,
Joint Cities Development Corporation, that brought Detroiters and suburbanites together to successfully persuade ShoreBank and Wayne County to locate a development bank to Detroit’s Eastside.
Capital Ownership Group, a global on-line network and think tank on using broad ownership to address globalization challenges, operating from Kent State University, funded by the Ford Foundation, the German Marshall Fund of the US and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation; which produced “Fair Exchange: Providing citizens with equity managed by a community trust in return for government subsidies or tax breaks to businesses”, Cornell Journal of Law and Public Policy (2006) – for policy conference at George Washington University Law School
Most recently, Olson founded Detroit’s Center for Community Based Enterprise (C2BE) and served as its executive director from 2007 until her retirement in 2019. C2BE Olson provided employee ownership pre-feasibility studies for the states of Michigan, Ohio and Maryland.
Low Profit Limited Liability Company (L3C)
An L3C is a type of for-profit company with a social mission that is designed to enable social investors to invest or loan at low interest rates and favorable terms to a social enterprise; while still allowing the company to obtain market rate loans or investments from traditional investors. L3Cs also allow employees or others to have an equity stake in the company, unlike a non-profit. In such companies the social mission takes primacy over investor rights.
Deborah also founded and led IngenuityUS,L3C an Innovation Broker, which investigated numerous products it hoped to manufacture in Detroit neighborhoods.
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TESTIMONIAL
“Deb has been a national leader in worker-supporting and union-friendly employee-ownership law for decades.” -Steve Dubb, Non-Profit Quarterly
