A Positive Look at Perpetual Purpose Trusts, Three Years In
A regenerative path toward healthy, enduring organizational futures
In her Sunday morning Substack, British-Turkish author Elif Shafak reflected—as so many of us are trying to do—on the uncertain state of the world. In her efforts to center herself, Shafak draws on the work of German-born American psychologist Erich Fromm. I’ve long found Fromm’s writing a helpful guide to what we’re living through. His insights into what was unfolding in his native Germany in the 1930s, as the Nazis rose to power—most notably in his 1941 book Escape from Freedom—have been especially clarifying for me as I try to make sense of what’s been happening here in the U.S. over the last decade. Shafak, who has lived through authoritarian rule in her native Turkey and fought hard for the right to make her literary art, concludes:
Art is how we tell the truth. … These days we need to remember this perhaps more profoundly than ever before as the world around us unravels with a bewildering speed and we seem to sink into some sort of collective madness. There is such a thing, after all.
… [Erich] Fromm observed that particularly in an anxiety-ridden age marked by uncertainty, insecurity and constant upheaval, individuals tend to surrender their independent judgement and their ability of critical reflection, succumbing to collective narcissism.
The world we live in is becoming increasingly more uncertain, worrying and difficult. We turn to art for light, to literature for wisdom, to nature for humility and to each other for strength.
The essay that follows is, indeed, about a form of art—in this case, an artistic approach to succession planning that has shaped how we think about the future of our organization here at Zingerman’s. If there is, as Shafak says, “collective madness,” this work could be said to be about “collective creativity.” It’s a long-term model for business ownership that calls up humility, images of nature, and the importance of collaboration and connection to community. Rather than retreating into the kind of “collective narcissism” that Erich Fromm wrote about, the Perpetual Purpose Trust (PPT) invites a collective coming together in a spirit of generosity—looking to the long-term health of the whole instead of the short-term enrichment of the few.
Seen through this lens, I believe PPTs fit well with the second of historian Timothy Snyder’s 20 tips for pushing back against autocracy in his book On Tyranny:
Defend institutions. It is institutions that help us to preserve decency. They need our help as well. Do not speak of “our institutions” unless you make them yours by acting on their behalf. Institutions do not protect themselves. So choose an institution you care about and take its side.
In this case, the institution in question would be the one you might have started, or that, perhaps, you play an integral and influential role in. When it comes to succession planning, PPTs protect high-quality local companies rooted in the community and help to defend them from getting sold off to bigger businesses for financial considerations that can seem “too good to pass up.” Every healthy local business that’s maintained is, after all, one less company that’s getting rolled up into the books of giant corporations run by far-away oligarchs with little connection to the community. And as economist Michael Shuman has demonstrated in The Local Economy Solution, strong local economies are foundational to quality of life in every direction. PPTs are one practical way to help make that happen.
Perpetual Purpose Trusts are not a new topic for me. We have, happily, had one in place for three years now—I wrote about what we were doing with ours back when we formally rolled it out in January of 2023. Having just spent two inspiring days at the Purpose Trust Ownership Conference in Austin at the end of last week, I was reminded that while the idea feels familiar to us here in the Zingerman’s Community of Businesses (ZCoB), it remains largely unknown in much of the broader business world. What we almost take for granted is still new to many modern-day business owners. I’m not suggesting a PPT is right for everyone. I do believe, though, that it’s a deeply holistic and healthy option for organizations that want to stay locally owned and closely connected to the people who work in the business and to the community around them. Three years in, we remain very happy that we chose this path.
What is a Perpetual Purpose Trust? It’s an ownership model that allows an organization to create healthy succession beyond its founders while keeping the company local and grounded in its essence. In a PPT, the organization’s purpose plays a meaningful legal role. The trust becomes an owner (in our case, a partial owner) and has a serious fiduciary responsibility to safeguard that purpose over time. Unlike a person, a purpose trust does not retire, relocate, or pass away. It can serve as an owner in perpetuity, helping protect the business from being sold off to outside buyers whose interests may not align with the organization’s long-term reason for being. It’s one thoughtful option to consider for anyone approaching succession in a spirit of generosity and stewardship. And it’s worth remembering that living with purpose brings a whole host of benefits. University of Michigan professor of public health Vic Strecher details many of those upsides in his book Life on Purpose: How Living for What Matters Most Changes Everything, and in this podcast from this past summer.
I first read about what we have come to call PPTs about 10 years ago in E.F. Schumacher’s amazing Small is Beautiful. While it’s not the main focus of the 1973 book, Schumacher does share the story of the Scott Bader Commonwealth in England, which started a program something like this about 75 years ago.
The idea of placing a business into a trust for the benefit of large numbers of people rests on a fundamentally different set of beliefs than the more common approach, where owners aim to extract as much value as possible and then exit at the peak by selling to a larger, cash-rich corporation. In fact, the PPT model is grounded in assumptions that are nearly the exact opposite. Schumacher framed his views on the issue:
Private enterprise claims that its profits are being earned by its own efforts, and that a substantial part of them is then taxed away by public authorities. This is not a correct reflection of the truth—generally speaking. The truth is that a large part of the costs of private enterprise has been borne by the public authorities—because they pay for the infrastructure—and that the profits of private enterprise therefore greatly overstate its achievement.
What Schumacher is saying is also aligned with what Paul’s grandfather told him (and then Paul told me) when we got going at the Deli in the early ’80s: “Half of what you earn rightly belongs to the community and the people who helped you get to where you’ve gotten.”
In his closing keynote at the end of the conference, Mark Clayton Hand—one of the country’s leading scholars on Perpetual Purpose Trusts and democratic practice in the workplace—beautifully wove together the significance of PPTs with the work of Native American writer and wisdom-keeper Steven Charleston. I knew a fair bit about PPTs, but nothing about Charleston. I’ve been studying his insightful work ever since.
Charleston, who just turned 77 on the 15th of February, was born into the Choctaw tribe in Duncan, Oklahoma, in the winter of 1949. He studied religion at college and received both undergraduate and graduate degrees in the subject before taking a position in the Anglican ministry. He has worked as both a professor and a minister ever since, and he currently serves as the Bishop of the Episcopal Church in Alaska. Charleston has written many books over the course of his career, the most recent of which is We Survived the End of the World: Lessons from Native America on Apocalypse and Hope. In it, Charleston reminds readers of the horror of the apocalyptic experience that Native American people underwent when Europeans arrived in the Americas. The resilience that helped his ancestors survive that painful apocalypse, Charleston believes, offers good, grounded lessons that can help anyone interested navigate our current national challenges.
The idea of a Perpetual Purpose Trust—to hold something important in a community collectively, so it stays rooted and works for the benefit of the whole rather than just a few—is very much in line with Native American philosophies. In that sense, Steven Charleston helped me see PPTs in a new light. Yes, PPTs are still fairly new in the U.S.—there are only about 50 in the country. But the principle behind them—the idea of giving back to the community, of keeping a company that really matters to the town, sharing profits and decision-making more widely rather than concentrating them in just a couple of hands—is far from new.
In today’s business climate, where extraction and consolidation often seem like the “norm,” a PPT feels radical. Yet in older, Indigenous traditions, something like a PPT simply makes sense, and while few have done it, anyone could. Seen through the lens Charleston provides, it’s actually the more common modern practice—extract and exit—that seems out of step. Which makes me realize it is far less extraordinary than I originally imagined. Instead, it seems more aligned with what I wrote last week about the “unordinary”—it’s actually a very natural way to pursue succession, but in our current socio-economic construct, few do. It is my hope and belief that in the coming years, PPTs will become quite common. Natalie Reitman-White, who’s been instrumental in getting the national work on PPTs to where it is, envisions 1000 of them in the U.S. by the year 2040.
Perpetual Purpose Trusts are a positive step in a sustainable, community-oriented direction—a direction that feels well-aligned with Indigenous insight Steven Charleston shared in a recent interview:
So many people are worried and anxious and fearful these days. I mean, we really are at a global turning point. And I don’t know if my books will help people … but if they can help at all, it’s incumbent upon me to speak up and try and offer something to help people through this difficult time and to reassure them, we’ll make it. We can do this. And … the spirit is with us. We don’t have to be afraid. We don’t ever have to be afraid. We need to stand up and be counted. Now’s our moment. We’re here for a reason. There’s a purpose for this. It’s not by accident. We didn’t ask to be born into interesting times like this. We didn’t ask to be at a hinge point of history, but we’re there and we’re there because the spirit wants us to do something collectively.
One way, I believe, that we can take the collective action Charleston is suggesting is to lean into the idea of Perpetual Purpose Trusts. For anyone focused on healthy, positive, regenerative ways to design ownership succession in your organization— as we have been here in the ZCoB for a number of years now—give some thought to creating a Perpetual Purpose Trust. As Steven Charleston says, “Celebrating what we hope for together is better than fighting over what we believe separately.”
FJ Intelligence is a progressive design firm based in the Eixample neighborhood of València. In a 2023 piece entitled “Everyone looks to the future: emerging technologies and disruptive innovation,” they share,
When we talk about emerging technologies, we often focus on specific terms such as artificial intelligence, blockchain, or the Internet of Things. But what truly matters is not the technology itself. What matters is the way these innovations can reshape how societies function, how value is created, and how resources are managed.
Disruptive innovation is structural. It affects business models, employment, regulation, infrastructure, and even how trust is built in digital environments.
And while some changes are already visible, others are only beginning to take shape.
…
The future is not predicted: it is built.
Emerging technologies and disruptive innovation will continue to reshape the world in ways we are only beginning to understand. The coming years will not only be defined by new breakthroughs, but by how societies and organizations respond to them.
Those who will lead this transformation will not necessarily be the ones who adopt technologies first, but the ones who understand them best. Those who can anticipate their impact, govern them responsibly, and integrate innovation into a long-term strategic vision. Because in a world driven by disruption, the future does not simply happen. It is built.
I wouldn’t have typically thought of a PPT as a “technology,” but upon further reflection, I realized it absolutely is. Merriam-Webster says technology is simply “the practical application of scientific knowledge especially in a particular area.” So, sure enough, the Perpetual Purpose Trust is a technology that can help reshape our world in positive ways. Six or seven years ago, after exploring any number of other options, both Paul and I agreed that it met our desire to keep what we had started together 44 years ago in March of 1982, when we opened the Deli, grounded in the community. We did not, we knew, want to watch it follow the path so many other great local businesses have taken—oft-told stories in which a much-loved local institution ends up owned and run by people who do not carry the spirit of its founding forward, with decision-making power and profits moving further and further afield. The name and the logo remain, but the essence that made the organization so special evaporates.
Those sorts of stories are, I’m sorry to say, all too common. I heard one such experience while I was at the Perpetual Purpose Trust conference: Joe Rogoff spent most of his career working in natural foods stores out west in California, places whose work he believed in and where he felt like he had the freedom and dignity to make a meaningfully positive difference. All that changed when the small chain he was working at was sold to a much bigger company. Sometimes those sales can work out well, but more often than not, the experience is more akin to what Joe describes. At first, things went fairly well, but soon enough, finances overran philosophy, and the people now in charge dictated a different direction:
The financial results were not making the shareholders happy, despite maintaining excellent results for a grocery chain. Cuts to labor restricted training and service. … Where we had once been encouraged to “run it like you own it,” we were now reminded that we were owned by money managers and shareholders who were most certainly not stewards. So the culture changed, doing business in any way with the company changed, and the experience of working there was changed so that the pride in the company, how it was positively impacting the world, and in the job itself evaporated …
It’s why my after-career (I’m too busy to call it retirement) has been focused on steward ownership [another name for Perpetual Purpose Trusts]. I serve on boards for co-ops, employee-owned businesses and purpose trusts because they seem the most reliable models for workplace equity and preservation of shared stakeholder values. They tend to be non-extractive and non-exploitive, and while it’s not necessarily required, also tend to be intent on doing something good for the world.
For us, the PPT is a way to do the opposite of what Joe witnessed as the grocery store to which he had devoted himself for so many years was sold. In the current national climate of uncertainty, it is a positive statement about the future, an overt commitment to community, to the belief that we are all in this together, and that founding owners (like Paul and me) can exit with grace while also giving the organization an opportunity to stay rooted in place for decades to come. I won’t be there, but the implementation of the PPT in 2021 has had me thinking regularly about the 100th anniversary of the ZCoB in 2082!
Mark Clayton Hand shared his learnings from Steven Charleston, who offers four approaches to help get through any apocalypse, including what we are currently experiencing:
“Radical change demands a radical response—turning the culture upside down.”
“The crumbling of the world we know demands that we build prototypes, or ‘lighthouses,’ that can show people an alternative potential future. ”
“It is imperative that we take into consideration the stakeholders that have historically had no voice or power in our economies.”
“The future can only be built together–co-created. We can’t do that without you, but with you, we are confident that we can co-create that better, alternative future.”
As Mark pointed out, the Perpetual Purpose Trust model does all four of these. It represents a significant shift in business culture—moving from “me first, me forever” toward an approach in which everyone can benefit, and the organization stays rooted in its community for the long term. It is absolutely an alternative model—a lighthouse, as Mark put it—showing what’s possible. It brings front-line staff and the broader community more meaningfully into the conversation. And finally, as Mark emphasized in his fourth point, it’s all about collaborative co-creation. Rather than taking out ever-increasing profits, trusts are designed to enhance purpose. Steven Charleston expresses this in a beautifully positive, community-centered way. While he wasn’t writing specifically about Perpetual Purpose Trusts, it’s clear from his reflections that his thinking aligns closely with what this model seeks to support:
Here is one way to look at yourself through spiritual eyes: you are a message. When you wonder what existence is all about, when you ask about your purpose in life, or when you feel small in comparison to the troubles of the world: remember that you are a message sent by the Spirit into creation. What you say, what you do, how you think and feel: your whole life is a long and sustained message for others to encounter, experience and receive. You are a living message: sent to touch more lives than you can imagine.
This is, I believe, with ever greater strength, what a Perpetual Purpose Trust can make possible—it’s our message to the future, our legacy, what we leave behind, a gift that we hope can keep on giving to the people who are part of it and the community it is in for years to come. As Charleston says, touching more lives than we can imagine.
In the Introduction to his new book, Founder to Future, John Abrams offers a perspective that is more explicitly grounded in business practice while still reflecting the same spirit shown in Steven Charleston’s insightful and inspiring comments:
Small businesses can be living systems that work for all the right reasons: to make people’s lives more meaningful and satisfying, to spread wealth more equitably, to treat the planet and each other better, and to protect mission and purpose. Making work that matters. This book is about reshaping tomorrow’s workplace for both individual fulfillment and the common good. Business can be at the heart of the great civilizational shift that we need today.
At the conference in Austin last week, about 150 others were in attendance, all at different stages of implementing versions of Perpetual Purpose Trusts in their own organizations. The range of attendees was wide—auto repair shops, assisted living facilities, manufacturers, a few fellow food businesses, as well as financial and legal service firms that support this work. I am not here to say that Perpetual Purpose Trusts are the right path for everyone. But I believe they are, as FJ Intelligence writes, an example of how “innovations can reshape how societies function, how value is created, and how resources are managed. … And while some changes are already visible, others are only beginning to take shape.” The PPT is a bit of both. As the sold-out conference—with a waiting list—would suggest, the model is already visible. And at the same time, I would argue that its broader impact is only just beginning to be seen. PPTs can work for everything from large manufacturing firms to independent musicians looking for a way to protect their legacy.
From our perspective, here’s what we hope and believe that the Zingerman’s Perpetual Purpose Trust (ZPPT) will make happen:
- Over the coming years, this program will make the Zingerman’s “intellectual property,” or “brand,” self-owned. ZPPT will ensure that Zingerman’s WILL NOT be sold to any outside company! No going public, no franchising, no selling the business to some big company that wants to buy us! It empowers and authorizes our “Purpose” (Mission, Guiding Principles, Beliefs) so that it takes precedence over profit. Profit is good too, of course, but NOT at the expense of values.
- Through this program, we will be paying out more and more of the profit from the intellectual property to Community Share owners—the Zingerman’s staff members who own a share in the business. Right now, there are over 300 of them! Over the next 20 years, that will gradually increase so that over half of the profit from our intellectual property will go to Community Share owners!
- ZPPT will help to make a sustainable, thoughtful, planned transition possible for Paul and me.
- This program will share ownership more and more widely. As Potawatomi botanist and author Robin Wall Kimmerer says, “the more something is shared, the greater its value becomes.”
- Make the ZCoB a more and more attractive place to come and work!
- Create a metaphorical “old-growth forest” that will continue to benefit the community of which we’re a part and the people in the ZCoB for decades to come. Forester, author, and professor Suzanne Simard says, An old growth forest “is a vast, ancient and intricate society. There is conflict in a forest, but there is also negotiation, reciprocity and perhaps even selflessness. The trees, understory plants, fungi and microbes in a forest are so thoroughly connected, communicative and codependent that some scientists have described them as superorganisms.
By doing this, we can keep Zingerman’s whole, healthy, and integrated into the community for decades to come, rather than sell it off—which can lead to transfer of wealth and power and influence outside the organization and outside the community. There’s much more to Ann Arbor, of course, than Zingerman’s. But over the last 40-plus years, we have grown to become a reasonably important part of this ecosystem. We are who we are, and have made it as far as we have, in great part because of that ecosystem. This is a way to keep that relationship going long after any one individual who may be part of the ZCoB is present.
I will say from experience that trying to plan organizational succession can be a lonely and sometimes scary path. Very few of us had a clear sense, early on, of what we’d want to do with our businesses many years down the road. Of those who did, in my anecdotal conversational experience, their vision was often to flip the business for a lot of money and “retire early.” There’s nothing inherently wrong with that vision, but it wasn’t the one many people—Paul and me included—had. We may not have been fully clear about what we did want to happen decades later, but we were clear that it wasn’t selling the business to some big company for a pile of cash.
As I wrote last week, the amazing Arab Israeli hip hop band System Ali sings about their belief that they can begin to create a new, more caring, more inclusive, more community-focused country. As they put in their song “Voyna,” they are “building the house anew.” The Perpetual Purpose Trust is, I believe, one of the ways I know to do that here—to seed a society which, per Steven Charleston, E.F. Schumacher, and Mark Clayton Hand’s teachings, would be grounded in community in ways that individuals can do well, and that also benefit the greater ecosystems of which they are a part at the same time. As Steven Charleston shares,
In the darkness, in the valley of shadow, we can feel isolated and afraid. But once we have the light of hope, we begin to see just how many people share in our struggle. The first step toward community is recognizing our common humanity. Instead of seeing strangers in the dark, we recognize fellow climbers in the light.
Hope booster
P.S. On March 25 and 26, I will be co-teaching with my good friend Gareth Higgins! Gareth authored the amazing How Not to Be Afraid and also co-wrote The Seventh Story with Brian McLaren. This will be the third straight year we’re doing this special two-day ZingTrain seminar, “Reframing Your Leadership Stories and Beliefs.” It is a rare opportunity to learn from Gareth’s great work on the power of storytelling in our lives and blend it with deep work on beliefs—the kind I detailed extensively in The Power of Beliefs in Business. Both Gareth and I speak and teach regularly around the world, but this is the only time we do it together. Telling better stories is a powerful way to support the start of what you want to create in your organization.
