These reports specifically recommended pass-through entities, such as S corporations, be taxed as C corporations, if the receipts of the S corporations are greater than a fixed amount. (The 2005 report the amount was just $10 million).

President Obama’s proposal also argues that S corporations should not have an advantage over C corporations.

The 2005 Report and the 2010 Report also both suggest repealing all ESOP tax benefits, most in the law since 1984.

“I find it incredulous that the President travels the country talking jobs, jobs, jobs, yet his corporate tax reform policy will stifle the best jobs sustaining program in the U.S. For example, the 2010 General Social Survey found that less than 3% of employees of companies with employee stock ownership, which include the ESOP model and other forms of employee stock ownership, were laid off in 2009-2010 compared to a 12% rate for employees without employee stock ownership,” said J. Michael Keeling, president of The ESOP Association. “My gosh, why does the Administration want to cut back on a program that creates companies that are more productive, more profitable, in the vast majority of instances, and provide sustainable jobs that are locally-controlled.”

“We look forward to making the case for ESOPs to Congress and the media in light of this proposal from the Administration,” said Keeling.

If you would like copies of the 2005 and 2010 Reports, please use the links below:

Report of the President’s Advisory Panel on Federal Tax Reform (2005 Report) – see page 129

President’s Economic Recovery Advisory Board – The Report on Tax Reform Options: Simplification, Compliance, and Corporate Taxation (2010 Report) – see page 74 – 77

If you want to download the new copies, use the links below:

2012 Advocacy Kit with new GSS info

2012 Congressional Company Visit Kit with GSS info

Also, if you’re setting up a meeting or have recently met with your member of Congress or other elected officials, drop us a note. We love to hear about these meetings.

Iowa Governor Talks ESOPs

Iowa Governor and ESOPs

We know our members in Iowa have been working with the Governor’s office and have been steadfastly promoting employee ownership in the state. When we heard that Mick Slinger, the CFO Van Meter Inc. (an ESOP Association member) sent an essay on ESOPs to The Gazette in Cedar Rapids, IA, we asked if we could reprint his essay here as a guest post.

Thanks to Mick and all our members in Iowa spreading the ESOP message.

The employee owners of Van Meter are pleased to see that Iowa lawmakers are considering a bill to encourage the creation of more Employee Stock Ownership Plans (ESOPs) in Iowa.

We clearly know from experience that ESOPs are good for the state.  They help save and create jobs.   They also help businesses be more competitive and successful, while at the same time creating a mechanism for the employee owners to share in that and accumulate significant retirement savings.  We believe this because we are an employee owned ESOP company.

Van Meter became an ESOP in 1993.  At that time, 30% of the company was sold to the employees through the use of an ESOP.   From 1993 to 2005, Van Meter continued to increase its employee ownership percentage to the point of becoming 100% employee owned in January 2005, where it still stands today.  Our goal is to stay 100% employee owned forever.   From 2005 to today, during periods of high uncertainty and through one of the worst economic downturns since the Depression, our business has grown over 8% annually.  In an industry with significant consolidation and movement of companies around the globe, the ESOP has been an effective growth and succession planning tool allowing our company and jobs to stay within Iowa.

At Van Meter, we work hard at building a culture of ownership and employee empowerment for the long-term success of our business.  The ESOP gives every employee owner a stake in that outcome.  Equity sharing is a benefit that pays for itself by putting everyone in the same boat.  We each share in the risks and rewards of being an owner, rising together as one.   Every employee owner has influence over the direction and success of our business.

We learned early on, however, that giving employees stock is not a magic pill.  Like any other thing, ownership needs to be taught.  We believe in a saying that if we capture the employees’ hearts, their minds will follow.   We invest heavily in the learning and development of our people.   At Van Meter, our company is the product, and our purpose is to create a culture where the right people come to work, stay, and achieve their potential.  We focus heavily on growth and opportunity for our people.  In doing that, our voluntary turnover is less than 4% annually, which leads to significant productivity gains.

Our culture is based on our core values, what we call our 5Ps.  People – our culture is committed to the development and well-being of our people.  We strive for 100% engagement.   Providers – take care of our customers and suppliers who provide us the opportunity to be in business.  Continuous imProvement – everyone everyday making improvements in the business;  Place – giving back to the communities where we blessed to work and live in;  Profit – we don’t run our business to make a profit, we make a profit to run our business.  In a nutshell, we are extremely committed to our employees, our communities and Iowa.

Since 2008, the beginning of the so called Great Recession, Van Meter has done just the opposite of what our competitors and what we hear many others have done and are doing.   Our motto was “why waste a good recession”.  So during this latest economic downturn, the employee owners of Van Meter committed to having no layoffs or workforce reductions.  We continued to invest and hire new people while everyone else was cutting back.  We believed that as the economy recovered we would be in a much stronger position in the long run, growing market share and providing additional job security and growth to our employee owners here in Iowa.  This has proven to be a good decision.

Not only do we invest heavily in our people, the ESOP has helped us to make significant investments in facilities across Iowa.  Since the great recession, employee ownership has allowed us to create fifty-five new jobs and add more than four million dollars in payroll, and also to invest over $8 million dollars in new inventory and $32 million in new facilities in Cedar Rapids, Iowa City and Sioux City and machinery and equipment.   This year, we have plans to build two more new facilities in Des Moines and Muscatine.

On the intangible side, we have things like an annual poster contest to help discover what employee ownership means to our people.  Outcomes have been phrases like; “Let’s pull together and brighten our future”; “The ESOP helps see our future more clearly”; “Where will you leave your footprint with employee ownership”; “Your ticket to our ESOP future – get in the game”; and “Get your two cents worth – it all adds up”.  Through the ESOP, employees recognize the opportunity they have to create financial security for themselves and for one another.

But beyond the numbers, the real success stories for Van Meter’s ESOP come from the heart.  We recently had an employee owner who retired early to pursue his real passion, going back to the family farm with his dad.   He had just turned fifty and had been with Van Meter over twenty years and participated in the ESOP since day one.  He shared the success of the Van Meter ESOP allowed him the financial freedom to retire early and he felt incredibly blessed for the opportunity to do this.   This is what makes our ESOP so special.

So if ESOPs are so great, why do we need legislation to encourage them?  In today’s credit environment, banks are hesitant to finance 100% of the ESOP transaction so sellers usually have to carry some of the debt.  The legislation creates a $1 million dollar fund to help defray some of the costs of setting up an ESOP and it would exempt business owners from capital gains tax.

We believe from what we contribute to our community in payroll and taxes that this legislation will more than pay for itself by stimulating economic growth in the state.  We became an employee owned company because we care deeply about our employees, communities and our state.  It would be devastating for our towns if locally owned businesses or profits were moved out of the state.  We need to save all the jobs and business we can.  In an ESOP company, we are dealing directly with owners who have a shared, vested interest in the long-term success of the business and community in which they live.  This legislation is a great way to promote growth, investment and job creation in Iowa.  We appeal to Iowa lawmakers: let’s keep our home grown businesses right here in Iowa.

Edmunson Scholarships

Each year, the Employee Ownership Foundation honors the memory of Charles Edmunson, a leader of the employee-ownership community, by awarding scholarships for the training of non-management employees of employee-owned companies. Charles Edmunson dedicated his life to the belief that all employees should be provided an opportunity to own a piece of the company where they work and that each employee owner should be offered the respect and dignity of an owner. Charles believed that education was the cornerstone of this vision. The Charles R. Edmunson Scholarship helps to fulfill his goal by offering non-management employees of employee owned companies the opportunity to attend motivational and education programs that promote employee ownership and educate about the rights, responsibilities, risks and rewards of employee ownership.

All applications are due by March 9, 2012. Award recipients will be selected by

April 13, 2012.

For more information, please visit the Employee Ownership Foundation website.  An application can be downloaded here.

Award Amount

Each scholarship pays $1,250 to the employee-owned company applying for the Edmunson Scholarship. The scholarship amount of $1,250 is split between two employee owners should the winning company have more than one employee-owner as winners.

Who Can Apply and How

1. Employee-owned companies may apply on behalf of their employee owner(s).
2. Each employee-owned company may nominate by application a maximum of two (2) employee owners.
3. The individuals for whom the applicants should be made should be employees who do not have a managerial role in the company.
4. Employee-owned companies must submit on behalf of their candidate(s) a fully completed application form.

How the Scholarship Can be Used

1. The scholarship can be used to defray costs incurred when attending an employee ownership educational program. This can include, but is not limited to, registration, lodging and travel.
2. The scholarship must be used within 12 months of receipt.
3. The employee-owned company must provide the Foundation evidence of its use by submission of receipts.
4. If terms and conditions can not be met after the scholarship has been awarded, the employee-owned company must refund the scholarship to the Foundation.
5. The scholarship is not transferable.

The following press release was sent out today by The ESOP Association. We wanted to share this news with readers here on the blog.

And, no, the irony of talking about divorce on Valentine’s Day was not lost on us.

 ESOP Association Welcomes Clarification of ESOP Tax Provision in President Obama’s FY 2013 Budget

February 14, 2012 (Washington, DC) – The ESOP Association welcomed a provision in the revenue section of President Obama’s FY 2013 Budget as an example of positive work by the Federal officials working in the IRS and the Office of Tax Policy of the Department of Treasury.

The proposal, set forth in summary table S-9, Mandatory and Receipt Proposals, page 224 of the “Budget of the United States Government, Fiscal Year 2013,” provides as a tax simplification measure to “clarify exception to recapture of unrecognized gain on sale of stock to an ESOP,” with no revenue impact.

“To explain,” said ESOP Association President, J. Michael Keeling, “the proposal clarifies an issue involving divorce, and since 1985, one of the most widely used tax provisions encouraging the spread of employee stock ownership, I.R.C. 1042.”

I.R.C. 1042 provides that the seller of qualified employer securities to an ESOP, that holds 30% of the privately-held company’s higher class of stock subsequent to the sale, the seller may defer payment of the capital gains tax on his/her proceeds from the sale, as long as he/she reinvests the proceeds in qualifying securities of another U.S. corporation. I.R.C. 1042 further provides, however, that if the seller disposes of his/her equities acquired from the proceeds from the sale to the ESOP, he/she will owe the capital gains tax based on the original value of the shares sold to the ESOP.

The President’s Budget notes in its explanation of the proposal ESOP law clarification that I.R.C. 1041 provides that, when pursuant to a divorce decree a spouse divorcing is given title to shares, he/she does not recognize gain and owe tax.

Currently, there is an issue of whether the I.R.C. 1042 recapture tax applies even if the shares were acquired because of a divorce decree. The clarification would be: No, the recapture tax of I.R.C. 1042 takes a backseat to the I.R.C. 1041 exclusion.

“While the ‘fix’ may not sound dramatic, it evidences the open-minded, objective implementation of our tax laws by those at Treasury and IRS tasked to be sure ESOPs comply with law,” said Keeling. “Sure, sometimes the ESOP community disagrees with the men and women of Treasury and IRS interpretation of ESOP law, but we know their interpretations are based on honest efforts to enforce laws passed by Congress, and not in some adversarial motive to ‘get’ ESOPs as ERISA plans.”

“So, in sum, this is a positive proposal clearing up a conundrum sometimes faced when a couple with 1042 stock unfortunately divorce,” stated Keeling.

The ESOP Association is the national trade association for companies with employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs) and the leading voice in America for employee ownership.  The core cause of The ESOP Association is the belief that employee ownership will improve American competitiveness, increase productivity through greater employee participation, and strengthen our free enterprise economy. More information: website – www.esopassociation.org and blog – www.esopassociationblog.org.

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The following release was sent out by the Employee Ownership Foundation. We wanted to share the news with readers here on the blog.

 For Immediate Release: February 13, 2012

For More Information: Amy Gwiazdowski, 202/293-2971, amy@esopassociation.org

 Employee Ownership Foundation Approves Funding for New Kelso Fellowships

February 13, 2012 (Washington, DC) – In 2012, the Employee Ownership Foundation will once again fund the Louis O. Kelso Fellowships which are awarded to scholars studying broadened ownership of capital in the U.S. The Fellowships are administered by the School of Management and Labor Relations (SMLR) at Rutgers University. For additional information about the Kelso Fellowship and the SMLR, please visit: http://smlr.rutgers.edu/kelso-fellows.

In 2012, the Employee Ownership Foundation’s $67,500 gift will fund five Kelso Fellows bringing the total of Kelso Fellowships awarded since 2008 to 18.

“The Employee Ownership Foundation is pleased to once again sponsor the Louis O. Kelso Fellowships program through Rutgers University’s School of Management and Labor Relations. The mission of the Foundation is to develop research and data to support employee ownership through the ESOP model and we have seen some promising work in the last few years. The Foundation is proud to support this research,” said J. Michael Keeling, president of the Employee Ownership Foundation.

The Employee Ownership Foundation is The ESOP Association’s affiliated 501 (c)(3) organization dedicated to promoting employee ownership. More information: www.employeeownershipfoundation.org.

Founded in 1978, The ESOP Association represents over 1,400 ESOP companies who believe that employee ownership will improve American competitiveness, increase productivity through greater employee participation and strengthen our free enterprise economy. More information: www.esopassociation.org and www.esopassociationblog.org.

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If you would like additional information about the 2010 General Social Survey mentioned in the letter click here. The Employee Ownership Foundation sent out a release detailing the new information earlier this week.

February 6, 2012

The Washington Post

1150 15th Street NW

Washington, DC 20071

Via email

Dear Editor:

I am writing in response to the article by Zachary B. Goldfarb, “Gene B. Sperling: Obama’s Job Creator,” which ran on February 4, 2012.

Perhaps our national leaders, of both political parties, should take note that sustaining jobs is as important, if not more important, as creating jobs in order to have acceptable levels of employment. Oddly, our policy gurus seem unaware that the recently released 2010 General Social Survey, our nation’s most comprehensive survey of the American workforce after the decennial Census, that 3% of employees with employee stock ownership, which include the ESOP model and other forms of employee ownership, were laid off in 2009-2010 compared to a 12% rate for employees without employee stock ownership.

In sum, let’s have policies that encourage more widespread ownership and expansion of these policies in order to have more Americans working.

Sincerely,

J. Michael Keeling

President

The ESOP Association

1726 M Street, NW

Suite 501

Washington, DC  20036

The following release was sent out this morning by the Employee Ownership Foundation. We wanted to share this news with readers here on the blog.

For Immediate Release: February 8, 2012

For More Information: Amy Gwiazdowski, 202/293-2971, amy@esopassociation.org

 Employee Owners’ Jobs More Stable in a Nervous Economy

 February 8, 2012 (Washington, DC) – The Employee Ownership Foundation today focused on convincing evidence from the most prestigious social survey in the U.S., the General Social Survey (GSS), that showed employees in the U.S. who had employee stock ownership were four times less likely to be laid off during the Great Recession than employees without employee stock ownership.

Specifically, the 2010 GSS, funded primarily by the National Science Foundation and conducted by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago, found that 3% of employees with employee stock ownership, which include the ESOP model and other forms of employee ownership, were laid off in 2009-2010 compared to a 12% rate for employees without employee stock ownership.

In addition, the 2010 GSS data indicated that 13% of the employees with employee stock ownership intended to leave their companies in the coming months whereas the rate was 24% for employees without employee stock ownership. This indicates significantly lower expected turnover for workers with employee stock ownership.

“These numbers confirm what observers of employee stock ownership have been saying for years,” said J. Michael Keeling, president of the Employee Ownership Foundation. “Employees with employee stock ownership, including those with ESOPs, in general, have more sustainable employment. Too bad we had to suffer a Great Recession to have the objective data to shed more light on these claims,” he added.

Additionally, the survey found that employee ownership rates remained stable since 2006 with 17.4% of individuals reporting they owned company stock. About 19 million U.S. citizens own stock in the companies in which they work.

The Employee Ownership Foundation provided significant funding for the supplemental series of questions on shared capitalism in the survey. Shared capitalism is defined as broad-based employee, current or deferred, stock compensation programs, such as ESOPs (employee stock ownership plans), stock purchases, stock options, gain sharing, profit sharing, and bonus programs. The shared capitalism series of questions were developed and analyzed by well-known employee ownership researchers, Professor Joseph Blasi and Professor Douglas Kruse (School of Management and Labor Relations at Rutgers University) who submitted an application for their inclusion in the GSS. The researchers are continuing to analyze these and other related data from the Survey to shed light on the role of employee stock ownership in the U.S. economy.

“We need policies that are job sustainers, not just policies that are job creators,” Keeling said. “Hopefully our national leaders, including the current group of those running for President, of both parties, will take note of this evidence, and understand that national policies to encourage employee stock ownership, and new policies to increase ownership among more working Americans, need to be considered as an effective way to ensure our national employment rate is where we all want it to be.”

The Employee Ownership Foundation is The ESOP Association’s affiliated 501 (c)(3) organization dedicated to promoting employee ownership. More information: www.employeeownershipfoundation.org.

Founded in 1978, The ESOP Association is the national trade association for companies with employee stock ownership plans and the leading voice for employee ownership in America. The ESOP Association represents over 1,400 ESOP companies. More information: www.esopassociation.org and www.esopassociationblog.org.

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The ESOP Association Policies and Procedures for Speakers/Presenters

On ESOP Technical and Operational Issues

Participating in National Conferences & Seminars

Approved by the Board of Directors, August 16, 2003

Amended, February 8, 2004, by Advisory Committees Chairs’ Council

Approved by the Board of Directors, May 9, 2005

Approved by the Board of Directors, May 13, 2007

Amended by the Board of Directors, August 18, 2007

Preamble

In order to ensure The ESOP Association’s educational meetings maintain the highest possible level of style and competence in a volunteer organization that values decentralized decision making with regard to the topics reviewed and as to who formally presents the topics to attendees, a Task Force of volunteers knowledgeable about the Association’s meetings and decision style has developed policies and procedures for the selection of presenters by the Chairs of the Association’s Advisory Committees at The ESOP Association’s national meetings on technical and operational topics.  These policies and procedures do not apply to speakers at Association chapter meetings nor those nominated by Association chapters for presentation at the Association Annual meeting.  These guidelines also apply to presentations by Professional members of The ESOP Association’s Advisory Committee on Ownership Culture.

It is expected that the Advisory Committee Chairs’ Council will monitor these policies and procedures, and their enforcement.  Under certain circumstances beyond the control of a chair or presenter, a policy or procedure may be waived.  Circumstances such as death, serious illness, or accidents are examples, when a waiver is justified but a presenter’s need to tend to her or his business or professional affairs would not justify a waiver.

Policies and Procedures for Presenters

             Following are all the recommendations made in this report:

1. A presenter who finds that s/he cannot, make a presentation, must notify the Advisory Committee Chair who selected him/her for the presentation as quickly as possible.  If for some reason the presenter cannot contact the Advisory Committee Chair within two working days of the Association meeting where he or she was to present, the presenter is to notify the national office of The ESOP Association.  The Advisory Committee Chair will then proceed to select someone to take that presenter’s place for the upcoming Association meeting.  Any presenter who does not honor this policy, and proceeds, on her or his own to arrange for a substitute presenter will be suspended from speaking at any national Association meeting sponsored by the national Association until after the date of the next year’s meeting which is the same one he/she was scheduled to speak.  For example, if this policy is violated with regard to the Annual Conference the suspension lasts through the dates of the next Annual Conference.

2. A presenter may not include someone in his or her formal presentation on her or his own initiative.  For example, assume an advisory committee chair has selected ESOP Association member “A” to make a presentation.  “A” does come to the meeting prepared to make a presentation at the appropriate time, but has arranged for another person to present to the attendees during her or his allocated time, as if the Advisory Committee Chair had selected that person as well.  Any presenter who does not honor this policy will be suspended from speaking at any national Association meeting through the next scheduled national Association fall or spring conference.  For example, if this policy is violated during the Vegas Conference, the suspension is through the date of the Association’s next Annual Conference.

3. A. If a presenter does not submit materials for the proceedings book for those Association meetings for which bound proceedings books, or CDs, are prepared for attendees, that person will be suspended from presenting at any national Association meeting through the dates of the next Association spring or fall conference, which ever comes first.  For example, if a person does not submit materials for the Annual Conference proceedings book, that person is suspended from making presentations through the dates of the next Vegas Conference.  If the failure to submit is for the Vegas proceeding book, the suspension is through the dates of the next Annual Conference.

B. If a presenter does not submit a copy of his or her handout for an Association meeting at which attendees are not given a proceedings book or CD, or fails to provide a handout to attendees of his or her session, that person will be suspended from presenting at any national Association meeting for the same period of time as set forth in 3.A.

C. If a presenter does not comply with Subsections A or B of this section, the Chair of the Advisory Committee that selected that person to present may ask that the Chair of the Advisory Committees Chairs’ Council to consider presenting to the Council the Committee’s Chair recommendation that the sanctions of A or B not apply to the presenter, only after the appointing Chair considers the reasons that the materials required in A or B were not submitted for inclusion in the proceedings book or for handout.  After Council discussion, the Council Chair may waive the sanctions of subsection A or B of these guidelines.

4. A Committee Chair will designate one presenter as the moderator for each session. The moderator will receive instructions and guidelines.  If a person is designated as the moderator and coordinator of a presentation panel, and there is no evidence that the person actually did anything prior to his or her session to co-ordinate the presentations of her or his panel, that person may be subject to suspension.

5. The Association and the Advisory Committees’ Chairs’ Council will provide incoming Advisory Committee Chairs with a full orientation in the policies and procedures for presenter selections, in writing, and at the first quarter Advisory Committees’ Chairs’ Council held each year.

6. A.  Advisory Committee Chairs will provide to each member of her or his committee the policies and procedures for presenter selections, in writing at least at one committee meeting a year, preferably at the May meeting, and will provide time on the committee agenda for a verbal review of the rules.

B. An Advisory Committee Chair will provide a written copy of the policies and procedures for each new member as the time that person is appointed by the chair to be a committee member.

7. The Association will periodically publish to all members the policies and procedures for presenter selections either in direct mailings, inclusion with the presenter notification forms, a newsletter article, and other means of suitable circulation that may be accessed by all members.

8. The moderator of a session has an obligation to urge attendees to fill out evaluations, and evaluations of the session should note whether anyone urged the group to fill out evaluations.  The Moderator’s Instruction at the podium for each session will include a reminder that the audience should be urged to fill out evaluations.

9. Presenters are required to fill out special “presenter” evaluations of the session in which they participated as provided by the Association’s staff.  Presenters will give their “presenter” evaluations to Association staff.

10. The Association staff is responsible for collecting evaluations of the sessions, identifying which Committee Chair appointed each presenter, and provide the evaluations of each presenter to the appropriate committee chair, and the incoming chair if known.  No person, including the Committee Chair, incoming chair, or past chair is excluded from this process of having evaluations tabulated and delivered to the appropriate Committee Chair.

11. An outgoing Advisory Committee Chair shall give the incoming chair the evaluations for presenters collected during his or her term, a list of committee members under suspension, noting when the suspension began, and share commentary about presenters from the committee with the incoming chair.

12. Association staff will become familiar with evaluations and become familiar with evaluations of individuals, and each presenter’s “ratings”.  Using discretion, the Association staff will directly communicate to an Advisory Committee Chair views that indicate that a specific individual has consistently received below average ratings on the general evaluations for two or more presentations.
13. An Advisory Committee Chair should not select a person from his or her committee who has received consistently below average ratings from evaluations as reported to him or her by Association staff.

Following are Existing Rules That Are To Be Codified

1.                  Chairs of the Associations Advisory Committees select presenters of topic on technical and operational issues for the Association’s national meetings.  They select members of their committees first, then a member of the Association if no committee member is available or qualified to present on the topic.  Although it should occur rarely, a Committee Chair may select someone to present who is not a member of the Association if no member of the Association is qualified to address the topic after consultation with the Association’s chief staff officer.

2.                  A presenter must respect the educational intent of Association programs and avoid sales pitches for particular products or services.  For example, it is permissible for a presenter to say, “I am so and so, and I am a partner/principal/shareholder/ associate, etc. with the firm of xxxxx.  Our firm provides (brief summary of services).”  Furthermore, if during a break or before or after a program session begins, an individual attendee asks the presenter about his/her firm or states that s/he would be interested in knowing more about the services, certainly the Association does not prescribe the answer, and expects the service provider will answer in a manner positive of his/her services, and possibly take the name and address of the inquirer for future communications that will directly tout the firm.  An example of impermissible touting would be “My firm sells an insurance product that can solve you repurchase obligation;” or “My firm has developed a unique S corp, LLC, family partner structure that you should contact me about”, or similar statements enticing the attendees to contact the presenter for services after the meeting.  If evaluations indicate the presenter was touting, that presenter may be suspended.  The Committees Chairs’ decision should depend on evidence that touting took place.

3.                  The Board of Directors of the Association, per the By-laws, may amend these policies and procedures.”

 The deadline for all 2012 AACE Awards entries is fast approaching. Entries must be received by AACE Awards Program Manager Pat Barnes no later than Thursday, March 1, 2012 to be considered for this year’s competition. Additional information and entry specifications can be found in the 2012 AACE Entry Brochure which was mailed to your company in mid January and is now available on The ESOP Association’s website.

2012 AACE Awards Brochure

Why should your company enter?

v     Organize Your Thoughts — Preparing an entry forces you to organize your program for review by the judges.

v     Help you review — As you put together your entry, you can get a good overview of your program.

v     Help you evaluate — Once your program is organized, you can evaluate it in the light of what the judges will look for, and what they are likely to see from other companies.

v     Generate new ideas — As you organize your program for entry, new ideas come to you for augmenting and improving it.

v     Share your ideas — Your entry will be displayed at the Annual Conference in May so that other ESOP companies can see what has worked for you.

v     Create an archive — You’ll be able to look back and determine direction, growth and results.

Want tips on how to make your entry stand out? Take a look at this guest blog post from the AACE Awards Volunteer Coordinator, Paul Horn, which appeared on the Association’s blog is January. You can read the post here.

Please consider organizing your company’s entry, packing it up, and sending it to Pat Barnes, The ESOP Association’s AACE Awards Program Manager by March 1. If you have a question, contact Pat Barnes at (304) 876-3624 or PatBarnesArt@gmail.com. The judges, who are ESOP company leaders, look forward to seeing your company’s entry!