At its core, steward ownership is built on a deceptively simple idea: a company is not an asset to be owned for extraction, but a system to be stewarded for its purpose.

Steward ownership legally enshrines two principles:

Self-determination
Control remains with people actively connected to the company and its purpose. Unlike in conventional ownership models, control rights cannot be speculatively sold or automatically inherited. They are passed on according to established principles to those closely tied to the business.

Purpose-orientation
Profits serve the purpose of the company. The company’s value cannot be endlessly extracted by shareholders for personal gain. Profits are reinvested in the business, used to cover fair returns to investors, shared with stakeholders, or donated to charity. Profitability is good, but it is a means, not an end.

These principles are not philosophical decorations. They are legally embedded in the DNA of a company in a non-reversible way.

One of the most useful mental models is to see ownership as a bundle of rights: control (decision-making power), economic rights, and transferability (the ability to sell ownership).
When implementing these two principles (self-determination and purpose-orientation), steward ownership unbundles these rights:

• Control is held by stewards: mission-aligned, involved people (founders, employees, or the board of a foundation holding the shares)
• Economic upside is capped in terms of duration, amount, or influenceHow this looks differs per archetype: in start-ups, typically a capped investor return; in foundation-owned companies, dividends can flow indefinitely to the foundation and its purpose, not to private wealth.
• Transferability is restricted, no speculative sale

It is, in a phrase that captures something essential, “separating the money from the power” as Ben Cohen put it, after the painful lesson of Ben & Jerry’s sale to Unilever in 2000. Ben and Jerry’s are now trying to undo that sale to reclaim their purpose and independence.

“Business is the most powerful force in our society. It controls our lives as employees and customers. It controls our legislation through lobbying. It controls our elections through political donations. It controls the media through ownership. And traditionally, the narrow self-interest of business has been maximizing profit. It’s not possible for Ben & Jerry’s to live out its values if it’s owned by an entity that is not aligned with those values. And that’s why we’re now trying to free Ben and Jerry’s.”