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How manufacturers, retailers, restaurants, and others are doing business the cooperative way.

1. Green Worker Cooperative’s Co-op Academy, The Bronx, N.Y.

Ideas for co-ops may flourish, but few people understand exactly how
to make theirs real. The Co-op Academy is providing answers. Founded
four years ago by Omar Freilla (who recently made Ebony magazine’s list
of the Power 100), the academy runs 16-week courses that offer intensive
mentoring, legal and financial advice, and help designing logos and
websites.
Run by the South Bronx-based Green Worker Cooperative, the
academy guides up to four teams per session through the startup process
and has graduated four organizations now thriving in New York City.
These include Caracol Interpreters, which is raising the bar on
interpreter wages, and Concrete Green, which focuses on environmentally
sound landscaping. Six more co-ops are in the pipeline.

“I’m amazed at how little knowledge and information is out there for
the average person about how co-ops function and how to start one,” says
Janvieve Williams Comrie, whose mother-owned cooperative Ginger Moon
also came out of the program.

“That’s one thing the Co-op Academy really provides, the hands-on
know-how.” Even money for tuition ($1,500 per team) gets the treatment.
Freilla is adamant that teams fundraise to cover that cost–even if they
can foot the bill themselves. “By fundraising for the registration fee,
you are promoting the vision for your cooperative, gaining supporters,
and creating a buzz before the program even starts,” he says. “That is
just the kind of support that will propel your business forward, and
while you’re doing it you’ll be getting an early opportunity to see just
how well you and your teammates work together.”

2. Red Clouds Collective, Portland, Ore.

They shared an active, outdoorsy lifestyle in the Pacific Northwest.
They shared a talent for creative work. It seemed logical for the group
of friends to leave their corporate jobs to form Red Clouds Collective, a
Portland manufacturer of handcrafted canvas and leather gear. The
worker-owner cooperative pools the talents of a variety of artists and
allows them to make a living as craftsmen beyond what any of them could
do individually. A percentage pay system benefits the original designer,
the assembler, and the collective. After one year, business is great.
What’s popular? theGOODbook, a leather wallet/iphone case/sketchbook
all in one. From left, Owen Johnson, Seth Neefus, Jason Thomas Brown,
and Casey Neefus in their garage-turned-factory.

3. Seward Community Cafe, Minneapolis

It’s one thing to run a successful cooperative business, and quite
another to lend a hand to the competition. But that’s exactly what the
Seward Cafe in Minneapolis did, loaning $10,000 to Hard Times Cafe when
the nearby worker-run restaurant was struggling through an extended
closure due to repairs. “They’re like our little sister,” says Nils
Collins, a worker at Seward, which is the oldest collectively run
restaurant in the country. “We can’t function in an environment where
everything is corporate-owned. It’s a lot more effective to have mutual
support and solidarity.” The two businesses often help each other with
tax-form preparation and even food delivery. “We call it a friendly
rivalry,” said Hard Times’ bookkeeper Rozina Doss. “A worker-run
business has its own set of difficulties, so our relationship is just a
recognition that other people have the same commitment that we do to
changing the way work is done.”

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4. Patient/Physician Co-ops, Houston

Don McCormick, a former health insurance executive, opened a free,
charity-funded clinic to better understand the problems in health care
and stumbled onto something that surprised him: Uninsured people were
willing to pay a nominal monthly fee–like $18–if it guaranteed access to
medical care. Then McCormick learned that doctors actually earned more
by billing patients directly–even at those nominal fees–than they did by
going through Medicare, Medicaid, or HMOs. With that realization,
McCormick founded the Houston-based Patient/Physician Cooperative in
2005, which now has 60 participating clinics. Members of PPC function as
a group, which allows them to purchase health care at affordable
prices. There are no co-payments or qualifications for those with
pre-existing conditions, and the model has since spread to North
Carolina and Portland, Ore. “This turned into a very practical
solution,” McCormick says, “and it’s better than what anyone else is
proposing.”

5. Community Food Forest, Providence, R.I.

The new plantings at Roger Williams Park hover around three feet
tall. But in a few years, they’ll sprout leafy greens and medicinal
herbs. All will be available to harvest for free, along with wild
mushrooms, tubers, and fiber. The edible forestry project, which broke
ground in April 2012, is a partnership between the University of Rhode
Island Master Gardeners and city officials at Roger Williams Park. The
location is no accident. More than 83 percent of nearby residents live
in a USDA-declared food desert, with little access to supermarkets
selling fresh produce. But in years to come, the edible forest, which
sits adjacent to a community garden, will provide nuts, mulch, fruit,
and fuel. Similar projects are popping up in other urban areas. The
Beacon Hill Food Forest in Seattle–funded in part with a $20,000 grant
from the city’s Department of Urban Neighborhoods–is the largest edible
forest on public land in the nation.

6. Community-Owned Mercantile, Port Townsend, Wash.

“We live here, work here, invest here. We just want to buy some socks
here,” reads the motto of Quimper Mercantile in Port Townsend, Wash.
After the town’s general store closed in 2011, residents of this
out-of-the-way town found themselves with few nearby options for buying
basic goods, and they weren’t interested in inviting Wal-Mart to move
in. Their solution? A dozen activists and business owners raised
$50,000, formed a corporation, and began selling shares to friends and
neighbors. To date, 1,008 folks have invested–a hundred-dollar share at a
time–$570,000, and Quimper Mercantile opened for business in October
2012. When the bankroll reaches $950,000 investors can start trading
their shares. “We’re a for-profit venture, not a co-op,” says Peter
Quinn, CEO. “So it’s essentially buying stock in a startup, with all the
usual possibilities and risks.” At this fledgling stage, participation
is motivated less by profit-seeking than community-building. “A much
more altruistic purpose,” Quinn says.

Photo by Ben Guss.

7. Buying land as a cooperative, “-Duvall, Wash.

Mobile homes provide a source of long-term, low-income housing but,
vulnerable to rate increases or eviction, it’s hardly stable. Last year,
in Duvall, Wash., 24 mobile-home dwellers joined to create a
cooperative and purchase their trailer park. Final price: $1.18 million.
That sounds pretty steep, but Ben Guss, a facilitator with the
Northwest Cooperative Development Center, linked the residents to
funding through ROC USA Capital, which has made loans to 125 such
communities across the country. For the Duvall project, ROC partnered
with the Washington State Housing Finance Commission, and now for $475 a
month–just $15 more than they were paying before–each member of the
newly-named Duvall Riverside Village Co-op is an owner. “It’s great to
change from having Damocles’ Sword in the air that you know can fall,”
said Stewart Davidson, who lives there and serves as board president.
“When I pass, my wife can live here and not be worried about having a
knock on the door with someone saying, “Here’s your notice, you’re
out.'”

Claudie Rowe wrote this article for How Cooperatives Are Driving the New Economy,
the Spring 2013 issue of YES! Magazine. Claudia has been an
award-winning social issues journalist for more than 20 years. Her work
has appeared in Mother Jones, The New York Times, The Seattle Times,
and The Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

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