Resources

Exciting Actors in the Collective Wealth Building Space

1.National Center for Employee Ownership

The National Center for Employee Ownership (NCEO) is a nonprofit membership and research organization, established in 1981, whose mission is to provide practical resources and objective, reliable information about employee ownership to businesses, employees, and the public. Today, we have over 3,000 members, ranging from employee ownership companies to consultants to academics. (Learn about membership here.)

They are the main publisher in the field, with over 50 titles ranging from issue briefs to lengthy books. We conduct weekly webinars and hold in-person meetings around the U.S., plus a large annual conference. We provide training, speaking, and introductory consulting, conduct surveys and other research, and have extensive contacts with the press, where we are regularly quoted.

NCEO maintains extensive public information on our main website, www.nceo.org, and a companion website with more generally accessible information, such as infographics, interactive maps, and videos at www.esopinfo.org. 

Website: https://www.nceo.org/

2. United States Federation of Worker Cooperatives

The United States Federation of Worker Cooperatives (USFWC) is the national grassroots membership organization for worker cooperatives. Our mission is to build a thriving cooperative movement of stable, empowering jobs through worker-ownership. We advance worker-owned, -managed, and -governed workplaces through cooperative education, advocacy and development.

The Federation includes more than 350 business and organizational members.  We represent the 1,000 estimated worker co-ops and their 10,000 workers across the country. We organize through local cooperative networks while building power with national and international partners to advance an agenda for economic justice rooted in community-based, shared ownership.

Website: https://www.usworker.coop/home/

3. East Bay Permanent Real Estate Cooperative

East Bay Permanent Real Estate Cooperative EB PREC aligns the technical, financial, and organizational inputs to support Black, Indigenous, People of Color, and allied communities to cooperatively organize, finance, purchase, and steward mixed-use and residential property in the East Bay.

They buy and preserve real estate to keep tenants of color in our community, to remove housing from the speculative market, and to address the root problems associated with poverty concentration and neighborhood disinvestment.

EB PREC facilitate BIPOC and allied communities to cooperatively organize, finance, purchase, occupy, and steward properties, taking them permanently off the speculative market, creating community controlled assets, and empowering our communities to cooperatively lead a just transition from an extractive capitalist system into one where communities are ecologically, emotionally, spiritually, culturally, and economically restorative and regenerative.

Website: https://ebprec.org/about-us

4. Boston Ujima Project (Boston) 

Boston Ujima Project is, first and foremost, an experiment in developing liberatory economic practices. These ambitious practices — be it material, spatial, or operational — run counter to the historical failures in the design, construction, and management of our cities. Boston Ujima Project is building upon the legacies of experimentation, organizing, and victories of BIPoC communities that worked to transfigure hostile environments for abundance and protection.

The Boston Ujima Project build with the contemporary reconstruction movements happening across the U.S. to collaboratively (re)shape a sustainable future, delinked from extractive economies and racialized exploitation. 

The Ujima Good Business Alliance (UGBA) unites local businesses, provides multi-faceted support, and incentivizes accountability to shared values. The UGBA is a network of community-based businesses that are eligible for investment from the Ujima Fund and other supportive programs. 

Website: https://www.ujimaboston.com/  
Email: info@ujimaboston.com  

5. Seed Commons 

Seed Commons is a national network of locally rooted, non-extractive loan funds that brings the power of big finance under community control. By taking guidance from the grassroots and sharing capital and resources to support local cooperative businesses, Seed Commons is building the infrastructure necessary for a truly just, democratic and sustainable new economy. 

Seed Commons takes in investment as a single fund, then shares that capital for local deployment by and for communities, lowering risk while increasing impact. Seed Commons also shares backend services and a comprehensive, peer-based learning system to give each member the tools necessary to succeed accessing capital like market players, yet deploying it using local community relationships. 

The funds in the Seed Commons cooperative provide financing for cooperatively owned and community-controlled enterprises around the country. Read about the principles used to drive lending, and if your project qualifies, see if there is a fund in your region!

Website: https://seedcommons.org/  
 

6.WORC

The Worker-Owned Recovery California (WORC) Coalition was formed to advance a comprehensive state policy agenda that addresses the dual crises of the COVID-19 economic crisis and the Silver Tsunami of retirement-age Baby Boomer business owners. In addition to discrete campaigns to influence the state budget, create state-backed cooperative conversion loans, and educate and engage the Governor’s Business and Jobs Recovery Task Force, we are also building toward the introduction of bold state legislation in 2022. 

Members of the WORC Coalition include: Sustainable Economies Law Center, US Federation of Worker Cooperatives, Democracy at Work Institute, SEIU-UHW, California Center for Cooperative Development, Project Equity, Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights of SF Bay Area, Certified Employee-Owned, and the worker cooperative A Slice of New York.

Website: https://www.theselc.org/worc_coalition 

7. Project Equity

Project Equity is a national leader in the movement to harness employee ownership to maintain thriving local business communities, honor selling owners’ legacies, and address income and wealth inequality. Headquartered in the San Francisco Bay Area, Project Equity works with partners around the country to raise awareness about employee ownership as an exit strategy for business owners, and as an important approach for increasing employee engagement and wellbeing. We also provide hands on consulting and support to companies that want to transition to employee ownership, as well as to the new employee-owners to ensure that they, and their businesses, thrive after the transition.



Website: https://project-equity.org

8. People Power Solar Cooperative

People Power Solar Cooperative was established as a movement cooperative in 2018 to create pathways for communities to participate in the energy transition despite the lack of viable community solar policies. Over the past years, we have identified substantial technical, financial, and legal barriers that make building community-owned energy projects in California inaccessible. Rather than waiting for private utilities or corporations to do it for us, People Power organizes energy projects that showcase that communities WANT TO and CAN own and shape our energy systems.

Today, People Power continues to advance the energy democracy movement to build grassroots-led and community-governed energy. Ultimately, we are fostering a culture of cooperation to activate the people power that dismantles PG&E and other private utilities by building the future beyond them!

People Power Solar Cooperative invests in community-led projects that create alternatives to PG&E and other private utilities by decentralizing, democratizing, distributing, and diversifying the energy system. Ensuring that power to live can be accessed by all without compromising the health and safety of any community, today and for generations to come.

Website: https://www.peoplepowersolar.org/about

9. Democracy at Work Institute

The Democracy at Work Institute was created by the U.S. Federation of Worker Cooperatives (USFWC) to ensure that worker cooperative development in economically and socially marginalized communities is adequately supported, effective, and strategically directed. 

It is the only national organization dedicated to building the field of worker cooperative development. Through research, education and relationship-building, it meets the need for coordination of: existing resources; development of standards and leaders; critical discussion of models and best practices; and advocacy for worker cooperatives as a community economic development strategy. 

The Institute brings both a birds-eye view of the national stage and an experiential on-the-ground understanding of cooperative business, making sure that our growing worker cooperative movement is both rooted in worker cooperatives themselves and branches out to reach new communities of worker-owners.

Website: https://institute.coop

10. Cutting Edge Capital

Cutting Edge Capital works to build an economy that works for everyone and provides opportunities for everyone to participate, thrive, and build wealth. They design and implement community capital offerings, and help clients raise capital from their own communities in alignment with their values and goals. In addition to helping social ventures raise capital, they also work to create and develop the capital markets tools, such as secondary markets, markets for the regulation of resource use, financial markets for investment in local food systems, and tools for aggregating community capital, needed to shape a truly resilient economic ecosystem.

They seek to work with clients and to use vendors who meet these criteria;

Local and/or Community Ownership — the client or vendor is privately or worker-owned with a majority of the owners actively participating in the company, or is wholly or partly community owned or funded.
Authenticity — the vendor’s or client’s values and mission are aligned with CEC’s mission and focus, including a commitment to inclusiveness and diversity.
Social Responsibility — the vendor or client’s social and financial practices and policies are designed to ensure optimal benefit to their employees, to the local community and the local economy.
Environmental Stewardship — the vendor or client’s environmental practices, policies, services and products are designed to minimize environmental impact and resource use, and thereby minimize the extractive nature of their operations.

Website: https://www.cuttingedgecapital.com/
Email: info@cuttingedgecapital.com
Phone: (510) 834-4530