The chief goal of a worker self-directed enterprise is to prevent a situation in which those who produce the surplus are exploited by the business owners in order to further their own financial aspirations. As such, there cannot be outside "shareholders" in the normal sense of the word. Still, there would likely be a need for investment, for example to provide a buffer for salaries or retainers, or to purchase new equipment, in situations where the previous months' surplus is insufficient.
Some possibilities may include
- A required "entry fee", similar to union dues, whereby a new member helps contribute to the initial capital.
- A limited offer of non-voting common shares for a promise of dividends.
In many companies, shareholders may have the power to elect the board of directors and as a result the directors are beholden to those shareholders and maximizing those profits. In an agency like ours, however, the developers themselves are the directors, and the goals of the organization are to take care of its members over its investors. So if there were any case where shares were provided to non-members, they would have to be non-voting shares.
As a whole, the devlopers/directors will decide how to distribute the surplus among the organization's members as well as what rate to pay dividends to investors, if there are any. In such a case, shareholders must know at the beginning of a given period what they could expect to get out of it, and this could be decided at the beginning of the year by the developer/directors. Then at the end of the year, the directors may fulfill this expectation or exceed it, while still having the right to increase distributions to the workers themselves. By solidifying and publishing these decisions at both the beginning and the end of the year, developer/directors will have a good balance between fulfilling expectations and enjoying pleasant surprises.