ROCHESTER, N.Y. — Student athletes are now earning real money thanks to name, image, likeness deals — but with that opportunity comes the need for financial preparation.

Noah Collins Howard and Dayshawn Preston are two high school juniors with Division I offers on the table. Both are chasing their dreams on the field, and both are navigating something brand new off of it — their finances.

“When it comes to NIL, some people just want the money, and they just spend it immediately. Well, you’ve got to know how to take care of your money. And again, you need to know how to grow it because you don’t want to just spend it,” said Collins Howard.

Preston said the experience has already been eye-opening.

“It’s very important. Especially my first time having my own card and bank account — so that’s super exciting,” Preston said.

For many young athletes, the money comes before the knowledge. That’s where Glory2Glory Sports Agency in Rochester comes in — helping athletes prepare for life outside of sports.

“College sports is now pro sports. These kids are going from one extreme to the other financially, and it’s important for them to have the tools necessary to navigate that massive shift,” said Antoine Hyman, CEO of Glory2Glory Sports Agency.

Through their Students for Change program, athletes get access to student checking accounts, financial literacy courses and credit-building tools — all through a partnership with Advantage Federal Credit Union.

“It’s never too early to start. We have youth accounts, student checking accounts — they were all designed specifically for students and the youth,” said Diane Miller, VP of marketing and PR at Advantage Federal Credit Union.

The goal goes beyond what’s in their pocket today. It’s about building habits that will protect them for life.

“If you don’t start young, you’re always catching up. The younger you start them, the better off they’re going to be on that financial path,” added Nihada Donohew, executive vice president of Advantage Federal Credit Union.

For these athletes, having the right support system makes all the difference.

“It’s really great to have a support system around you. Help you get local deals with the local shops,” Preston added.

Collins-Howard said the program has given him a broader perspective beyond just the game.

“It gives me a better understanding of how to take care of myself and prepare myself for the future of giving back to the community,” Collins-Howard said.

“These high school kids need someone to legitimately advocate their skills, their character and help them pick the right space. Everything has changed now,” Hyman added.

NIL opened the door. Programs like this one make sure these athletes walk through it — with a plan.

With the introduction of the Employee Ownership Development Act , Illinois is poised to create the largest dedicated public investment vehicle for employee ownership in the country.

State Rep. Will Guzzardi’s bill, HB4955, would authorize the Illinois Treasury to deploy a portion of the state’s non-pension investment portfolio into employee ownership-focused investment funds. 

That would represent a substantial investment of institutional capital in building wealth for Illinois workers and seed a capital market for employee ownership in the process. And because the fund is carved out of the state investment pool, it doesn’t require a single dollar of appropriations from the legislature.

Silver tsunami 

The timing of the Employee Ownership Development Fund could not be more urgent. More than half of Illinois business owners are over 55 years old and are set to retire in the coming decade. When these owners sell their firms, financial buyers and competitors are often the default exit – if owners don’t simply close the business for lack of a buyer. 

Each of these traditional paths risks consolidation, job loss and offshoring of investment and production. These are major disruptions to the communities that have long sustained these businesses. Without a concerted strategy, business succession is an economic development risk hiding in plain sight, and one that threatens local employment, supply chain resilience, and the tax base of communities across the country.

Employee ownership offers another path. Decades of empirical research show that employee-owned firms grow faster, weather economic downturns better (with fewer layoffs and lower rates of closure), and provide better pay and retirement benefits. 

The average employee owner with an employee stock ownership plan, or ESOP, has nearly 2.5 times the retirement wealth of non-ESOP participants. That comes at no cost to the employee and is generally in addition to a diversified 401(k) retirement account.

Because businesses are selling to local employees, employee ownership transitions keep businesses rooted in their communities. This approach can support a place-based retention strategy for state economic policymakers.  

Capital gap

Despite the remarkable benefits of employee ownership and bipartisan support from policymakers, a lack of private capital has impeded the growth of employee ownership: In the past decade, new ESOP formation has averaged just 269 firms per year. 

Most ESOP transactions ask the seller to be the bank, relying heavily on sellers to finance a significant portion of the sale themselves, often waiting five to 10 years to fully realize their proceeds. Compared to financial and strategic buyers who offer sellers their liquidity upfront, employee ownership sales are structurally uncompetitive in the M&A market.

A small but growing ecosystem of specialized fund managers has begun to fill this gap. They deploy subordinated debt and equity-like capital to provide sellers the liquidity they need, while supporting newly employee-owned businesses with expertise and growth capital (see for example, “Apis & Heritage helps thousands of B and B Maintenance workers become owners”). 

This approach is a recipe for scale, but the market remains nascent and undercapitalized relative to the generational pipeline of businesses approaching succession. To mature, the market needs anchor institutional investors willing to commit capital at scale.

State treasurers and other public investment officers could be those institutional investors. Collectively managing trillions of dollars in state assets, they have the portfolio scale, time horizons and fiduciary obligation to earn market returns while advancing state economic development. 

Illinois’ blueprint

Just as federal credit programs helped catalyze the home mortgage and venture capital industries in the 20^th century, state treasurers and comptrollers now have the opportunity to help build the employee ownership capital market in the 21^st. 

Illinois shows us how. The state’s Employee Ownership Development Act is modeled on proven investment strategies previously authorized by the legislature and pioneered by State Treasurer Michael Frerichs. The Illinois Growth and Innovation Fund and the FIRST Fund each ring-fence 5% of the state investment portfolio for investments in private markets and infrastructure, respectively, deployed through professional fund managers. Both have generated competitive returns while catalyzing billions of dollars in private co-investment in Illinois. 

The Employee Ownership Development Fund would apply that same architecture to employee ownership. The Treasurer would invest indirectly by capitalizing private investment funds deploying a range of credit and equity. The funds, in turn, would invest a multiple of the state’s commitment in employee ownership transactions.

The employee ownership field has matured to a point that is ready for institutional capital. The evidence base is robust. The fund management ecosystem is growing. And the business succession pipeline is larger than it will be for generations. 

Yet the field still lacks the publicly enabled financing interventions that have historically built new markets in this country. State treasurers, city comptrollers and other public investment officers have the tools and resources at their disposal to provide that catalytic, market-rate investment to enable the employee ownership market to scale.

Julien Rosenbloom is a senior associate at the Lafayette Square Institute.

Guest posts on ImpactAlpha represent the opinions of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of ImpactAlpha.

A coalition of education stakeholders has filed suit seeking an order declaring Wisconsin’s school finance system is unconstitutional, arguing it fails to adequately fund students’ education.

Filed in Eau Claire County, the suit doesn’t specify what the education interests believe the state would need to invest in K-12 education to make the system constitutional. 

Attorney Jeff Mandell, who represents the plaintiffs, said the ultimate goal is for the courts to set the parameters for what lawmakers would need to put into the system to make it constitutional. He anticipated once the courts issued such an order, the Legislature would be given the opportunity to address it in the following two-year budget.

He also noted state aid to public schools is $2 billion less than it was in 2009 when adjusting for inflation.

“We do not have what we need for our schools to thrive,” Mandell said during a virtual news conference.

The 2025-27 state budget invested $17.4 billion in K-12 education. According to the Legislative Fiscal Bureau, that will put the state’s share of public school costs at 66.3% in the first year of the biennium and 64.5% in the second.

The plaintiffs include five school districts, four teachers unions, two education advocacy organizations and eight individuals. The defendants include the Legislature, GOP leaders and members of the Joint Finance Committee.

Assembly Speaker Robin Vos, R-Rochester, vowed to vigorously defend against the lawsuit.

“This complaint is another meritless attempt by liberal activists to defund the state’s highly successful school-voucher program and interfere with the Legislature’s authority to fund public schools,” Vos said late yesterday.

The office of Senate Majority Leader Devin LeMahieu, R-Oostburg didn’t immediately return calls seeking comment.

A split state Supreme Court in 2000 upheld the constitutionality of Wisconsin’s school finance system, concluding that it effectively equalized the tax base among districts. That ruling also rejected a challenge to the spending caps that limit what districts can spend between general state aid and property taxes.

The suit filed Monday raises six claims, including that insufficient funding in the current system denies students an equal opportunity for a sound basic education and isn’t uniform as practicable across districts. It also argues the current special education reimbursement system is deficient.

It also argues that the nearly $700 million the state put into private school vouchers in the 2025-26 school year violates a Wisconsin Supreme Court ruling that the choice program is permitted only so long as “the State is already meeting its obligations to provide for public schools.”

The suit also argues charter schools have become an alternative public school option redirecting state money to schools that are “unaccountable to taxpayers and operate outside of the constitutionally mandated school district system.”