Over the last four years, Owners At Work has followed the development of the Crocus Fund in the Canadian province of Manitoba, just north of North Dakota. The Crocus Fund is one of two dozen labor-sponsored mutual funds which pool the Canadian equivalent of individual retirement accounts (IRAs) for local reinvestment. In addition to the IRA tax deduction, investors receive a 30% tax credit. Crocus has a preference for employee ownership, and it has pioneered Canada's development of deferred profit sharing plans into the equivalent of ESOPs.

Crocus, which is sponsored by the Manitoba Federation of Labor, anchors capital and jobs in Manitoba by investing in small and medium-sized businesses. It primarily provides capital for expansion, but it has also been involved in some start-ups and averting some shutdowns. Crocus uses a number of social criteria to determine where it invests, including good labor relations and good conditions for minorities and women.

As a labor-sponsored investment fund, Crocus proves that ordinary working people can do well financially while doing good for their neighbors by "bringing your investments home," as the Crocus slogan promises. Crocus, which has grown to assets of $90 million in 5 years, supplies four-fifths of Manitoba’s venture capital. Crocus beat the Toronto Stock Exchange index average last year with a 13.6% total return versus the TSE total return of 10.1%. And that's before the tax break for Crocus investors is taken into account. With the tax credit for investors included, Crocus has provided an impressive 125% total return for its original 1993 investors. It's no wonder that Maclean's Magazine's annual Canadian mutual fund survey ranked Crocus as one of the 63 "best in their class" funds among the 1500 Canadian mutual funds.

"Crocus investments have saved 200 jobs which would otherwise have been lost here in the province, and created another 1,500 new jobs," says Sherman Kreiner, the fund’s CEO. "That's direct job creation," emphasized Kreiner, "and doesn't include the multiplier effect. Furthermore, we've helped maintain an additional 2,100 jobs."

A quarter of these employees have already become owners and another quarter will join them when Crocus cashes its investment out. Crocus uses selling to the employees as a preferred exit strategy.

Crocus's next initiative, currently on the drawing board, is to create a $30 million fund to back development of research-based scientific and high tech companies in Manitoba; Crocus itself will invest $3 million and seek to raise the rest. While that smacks of moving Silicon Valley to North Dakota, Crocus has already done two bio-medical start-ups and has invested in the expansion of an existing pharmaceutical firm and a health care information service firm.

Maybe moving Silicon Valley to North Dakota might not seem so bizarre if North Dakota had its own Crocus Fund.