Resources by Topic: Cooperatives

Energy Democracy is a policy framework with the goal of transforming neglected and isolated communities—often poor, and often communities of color—into energy producers who contribute to the nation’s overall capacity, add clean energy to the grid, enhance their economic and political ties across the region, and supply their own energy needs. Without intervention, communities of color risk missing a transformative opportunity for a meaningful role in America’s changing energy economy. With people of color fast becoming half of the national population, this would be a loss for both communities of color and the nation. This white paper explores the challenges and opportunities communities of color face as participants in a renewable energy economy. With the right ownership models, clear and supportive tax incentives and finance policy, reformed land use and zoning policies, and equitable access to the grid, emerging technology allows communities of color to establish themselves as power producers. This white paper is focused on communityowned, small-scale renewable generators in electricity markets. Communities of color that become energy producers will transform their relationships with the larger regional economy, bringing improved infrastructure, increased wealth, and greater political interdependence between communities of color and their neighbors.

Report by the Center for Social Inclusion.

Local Bites is a podcast that tracks ideas and initiatives that resist corporate power, renew place-based economies, and preserve human and ecological well-being. Our goal is to feature the voices of activists and visionaries from all around the world who are driving creative grassroots initiatives that demonstrate the power of 'going local'.

Learn about: the worker co-op movement's development over the last few years newly-released data on successes and growth in employee ownership how the worker cooperative movement is raising money for the people and by the people, and exciting policy developments in the last year.

A podcast interview between John Farrell of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance and Amicus Solar Cooperative President Stephen Irvin.

The Movement for Black Lives released last year a comprehensive platform, including an economic plank that discusses various opportunities for the economic development of black communities. This Transform Finance Investor Network webinar is led by Cathy Albisa, Director of NESRI, and Rashad Jamal Buni of the Black Youth Project.

These eight films are just a small sample of films documenting the sharing movement. Some are short, some are feature length. They all demonstrate that the sharing movement is growing every day.

We're living in a time of economic babble, where politicians and economists throw out words like "reform," "privatize," and "austerity" to prop up corrupt capitalist opportunists. So says our guest this week, economist Michael Hudson, author of J is for Junk Economics.

Under the Trump regime, we'll certainly have to be on the defense to protect the communities most likely to be attacked -- but we'll also have to build powerful, alternative models where POC, Muslim, undocumented, disabled, and queer folks have leadership.

What role did economic cooperation play in the civil rights movement? As it turns out, a huge one. Dr. Jessica Gordon Nembhard co-founded the U.S. Federation of Worker Co-ops & helped that organization build lasting ties with prominent civil rights and cooperative organizations.

It seems counterintuitive that a conservative farming community in southeastern Iowa is home to some of the most expansive solar generation in the U.S. But that's exactly what's happening in the area served by Farmers Electric Cooperative, the rural utility whose enterprising leader, Warren McKenna, saw renewables as a gateway to economic vitality.

Where are communities taking charge of their energy future? Which states give communities the most power? ILSR's Community Power Map provides an interactive illustration of how communities are accelerating the transition toward 100% renewable energy and how policies help or hinder greater local action.

This document is the syllabus for the Center for Family Life's 6-session "Implementers" training on worker cooperative development for other community-based organizations. This syllabus generally follows the "Planners" training.

This Cooperative Curriculum Overview includes the description and objectives of fundamental trainings for worker cooperative founding members, based on the Center for Family Life's development approach.

Shortly after the economic meltdown of 2008, Korten fleshed out a vision of an alternative to the corporate Wall Street economy. He offers his analysis and guidance on mounting a grassroots campaign to bring about an economy based on shared prosperity, ecological stewardship, and citizen democracy.

Policies for Shareable Cities is the first policy handbook of its kind. It includes over 30 recommended policies for how cities should regulate the true sharing economy in the areas of food, work, housing, and transportation.

National and NYC based resources on the solidarity economy containing reports, audio recordings and podcasts, books, articles, films, how to guides, and relevant national and local groups.

A veritable choose your own adventure through the New Economy, Principles of a Pluralist Commonwealth is a book that allows multiple entries into a vision for a new system by exploring the possible building blocks for that system.

In this TEDx talk, Stacy Mitchell argues for a new phase in the local economy movement. She notes that there's been a resurgence of support for small farms, local businesses, and community banks, but argues that now: "What we really need to do is change the underlying policies that shape our economy."

We have unique CED resources - websites, publications, case studies, videos, and more - in our CED toolbox.

Based on Project Equity's interview with Dan Rosenberg, founder and current worker-owner of Real Pickles, in the summer of 2014

How a small local food business in western Massachusetts preserved its social mission through transitioning to a worker-owned cooperative and using an innovative financing strategy.

In this video, produced by Democracy Collaborative staff working with Softbox Films, Gar Alperovitz sketches the major institutions of a systemic alternative based in plural forms of democratic ownership, oriented around community at various scales—what he has called “The Pluralist Commonwealth.”

The Beautiful Solutions Gallery and Lab is an interactive space for sharing the stories, solutions and big ideas needed to build new institutional power and point the way toward a just, resilient, and democratic future.

Developed by Beautiful Solutions in partnership with This Changes Everything, this is an open-ended project that will continue to evolve based on the ideas you submit to the Lab, and the ongoing contributions of the thinkers and practitioners on the forefront of building alternatives.

It’s a once-in-a-generation opportunity: Selling to employees can yield a better price, preserve a legacy, keep jobs and profits local—and maybe even eradicate inequality. This originally appeared as part of New Economy Week 2015.

Today, the need to empower people left out of our investor-owned economy is greater than ever before, and co-ops are once again the engine of change. Electric co-ops, in whole or in part, serve over 90 percent of the poorest U.S. counties, making co-ops key to both energy democracy as well as creating an economy that works for all. (From New Economy Week 2015).

Fostering resilient communities and building wealth in today’s local economies is necessary to achieve individual, regional, and national economic security. A community wealth building strategy employs a range of forms of community ownership and asset building strategies to build wealth in low-income communities. In so doing, community wealth building bolsters the ability of communities and individuals to increase asset ownership, anchor jobs locally, expand the provision of public services, and ensure local economic stability. 

In an era of persistent urban inequality and chronic unemployment disproportionately impacting historically marginalized communities and communities of color, new alternatives to the traditional economic development strategies that have failed to bring broad and evenly distributed prosperity to America's cities are clearly needed. The Democracy Collaborative's new report, Cities Building Community Wealth, responds to this challenge by highlighting best practices in inclusive innovation from twenty cities across the country, and offering a unified vision of the underlying new paradigm of community focused economic development.

Cuba has been transforming its economic model since 2011, and re-established relations with the U.S. in 2014. By engaging in an active question and answer format this CommonBound 2014 workshop explores what these profound changes mean for a socialist economy and the challenges of protecting the social gains of the Cuban revolution while creating a more robust, efficient economy.

Community Development Credit Unions have long been working for racial justice and innovating in economic justice. Part of the larger community development finance institution (CDFI) movement, these institutions are today boldly lending to undocumented immigrants, fighting predatory lending, preserving historic Black and farmworker CUs, financing worker coops and land trusts, and building partnerships to fund the new economy. Part history lesson, part show and tell, and part participatory debate, three practitioners from the field lead a session to engage participants in how they might access, build, challenge and partner with CDFIs in their own geographies to sustain the new economy.

Planet Local is Local Futures' project to highlight and catalog the diverse examples of localization springing up all over the planet. Our examples listed range from local business and finance to local food, health, community rights, place-based education, energy, eco-communities, and more.

As the online "sharing economy" devolves into poor labor conditions and monopolistic practices, the concept of "platform cooperativism" offers a hopeful vision for a more democratic online economy. This new wave of entrepreneurs, investors, and business developers are merging offline cooperative economics with the Internet in creative ways. In this CommonBound 2016 workshop, leaders discuss how far this emergent movement has come, and explore some of the challenges it faces in the struggle for the future of the online platforms we increasingly depend on.

This panel, held at NEC's 2017 Member Gathering in Chicago, features leaders from across the country sharing how their communities have organized to simultaneously fight back far-right attacks and build powerful bottom-up solutions that model economic democracy, sustainability, and social justice as cornerstones of a new world in waiting.

Few Americans are aware of the steady build-up of innovative community wealth building strategies throughout the United States. Community-Wealth.org is a resouce library which brings together, for the first time, information about the broad range of community wealth building activity.