Welcome to the third post and second conversation in our series about the book, “Assets in Common”, featuring interviews with the authors. In this episode, our host Neal Gorenflo interviews authors Chelsea Robinson, Charity May and Jay Standish. 

The authors explore case studies showcasing successful shared services and steward ownership models. Key examples include Sardex, a complementary currency system in Italy, and CarpetOne, a cooperative of independent flooring stores. The discussion highlights how these models promote resilience, competitiveness, and community benefits through collaboration and shared assets.

Grab the book at: assetsincommon.org

Learn about Common Trust at: common-trust.com

Chelsea Robinson is a serial founder and builder of impact organizations, a movement organizer, facilitator, and program designer. Convening for collaboration and innovation/accelerator programs are her specialties. Chelsea has worked with philanthropies, nonprofits, governments, and startups for over 12 years. Most recently Chelsea was the Co-Executive Director at Open Lunar Foundation, leading an international network of cross disciplinary experts to build open infrastructure projects for the Moon. Good governance and stakeholder decision making is a lifelong passion and focus for Chelsea, having studied and practiced in the field of governance design for companies and countries alike. Chelsea has been involved in Purpose informally since its founding, and has direct experience as a member of worker-coops and shareholding in commons holding companies, having written about these topics in books such as Better Work Together.

Charity May is the Founder and Principal of Sacred Futures, an advisory practice that guides partners in the reimagining, designing and implementing of governance, leadership and ownership models, sustainable growth strategies, and financing vehicles to cultivate renewal and reciprocity between human and more-than-human Worlds. She has directed the investment, structure and development of over $575 million for education facilities, conducted the underwriting, analysis, origination and structuring for over $3.8 billion of leveraged finance transactions, and managed a portfolio of middle-market companies totaling $134 million in debt commitments. Charity is a systems designer, writer and advisor, supporting the governance and strategic development of funds, projects and businesses committed to building towards a regenerative economy.

Jay Standish is an entrepreneur and creative with a background in community and real estate. The last company he founded, OpenDoor Coliving, ran for 10 years and operated over 400 units of community housing across three states with over $70M in AUM. Jay wore many hats – raising capital, acquiring + developing real estate, implementing community programs, hiring a team and building an automated marketing platform. Prior to OpenDoor, Jay co-founded Impact Hub Seattle, a coworking space for social entrepreneurship part of a global network. Jay has an MBA in Sustainable Systems and also has a skillset in design and visual arts. Jay has wilderness experience including a 75-day expedition in Western Australia.

The post Assets in Common: Shared services and B2B currencies appeared first on Shareable.

Disclaimer: Nothing in this guide should be misconstrued as legal advice. For guidance on your particular circumstances, please consult a lawyer.

Taxpayers in the United States paid an average federal income tax rate of 14.9 percent—nearly $2.2 trillion altogether—in 2021, the latest year for which information is available from the Internal Revenue Service, according to the Tax Foundation. That tax levy arrived amid real wages stagnating since the 1970s, per the World Economic Forum, and military spending reaching record heights—more than $916 billion, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. 

It should therefore come as no surprise that some taxpayers, spurred by economics, politics or both, choose to avoid paying taxes altogether. Here’s how they attempt it—both legally and illegally.

Legally: By lowering your taxable income

The only technically legal way to avoid taxes is to intentionally lower your income below the taxable threshold, which varies by age and filing status—that is, whether you are single, married or the head of the household, meaning you have dependents such as children or relatives other than your spouse whom you support financially.

If you are unmarried, younger than 65 years of age and have no dependents, the threshold at which you must file an annual tax return is $12,950, according to the IRS. In other words, if you earn less than $12,950 a year, you don’t have to file a return and therefore pay further income tax. That threshold increases to $14,700 if you’re older than 65, or $19,400 if you’re the head of the household, or $25,900 if you’re married and filing your return jointly with your spouse.

You can also increase the threshold for income taxes by contributing to tax-exempt accounts for specific benefits, like retirement and health care. According to the IRS, up to $6,500—$7,500 if you’re over the age of 50—can be contributed to an Individual Retirement Arrangement (IRA) without incurring federal income taxes. Similarly, up to $3,850—$7,750 for families—can be contributed to Health Savings Accounts (HSA), per the agency. If you’re unmarried, under the age of 50, have no dependents and make the maximum contributions to IRA and HSA accounts, that means your income tax threshold is $23,300.

But annual tax returns are only one method of taxation. If you’re a full- or part-time employee, rather than a business owner or freelancer, federal and state governments also deduct taxes from each of your paychecks. Per the IRS, you can minimize these “payroll taxes” by updating your filing status, increasing the number of dependents and/or making other adjustments to your Form W-4, which helps your employer calculate the amount of tax dollars that should be withheld from your paychecks.

Illegally: By refusing to pay—or lying

Avoiding taxes due to political considerations is often described as “tax resistance” and framed as a form of civil disobedience. Typically, tax resistance involves the open and deliberate withholding of all or a portion of your taxes due. For example: You may complete your annual tax return and submit it to the IRS with a letter explaining your refusal to pay. In such cases, tax resisters may also donate the withheld taxes to causes more in line with their beliefs, such as the Church Peace Tax Fund from the Mennonite Church USA, or reserve the money to pay potential fines for non-payment of taxes from the IRS. Such fines, including penalties and interest, may accrue on overdue tax debt for up to 10 years, when the statute of limitations expires. The National War Tax Resistance Coordinating Committee maintains a War Tax Resisters Penalty Fund to help tax resisters meet such burdens. According to the NWTRCC, it is extremely rare for tax resisters to be imprisoned.

The other illegal method of tax avoidance is simply lying. This can be as sophisticated as reporting complex losses of income on your annual tax return or as straightforward as adding nonexistent dependents to your W-4. Either way, be aware that knowingly attempting to mislead the IRS may be considered fraud and result in jail time.

Life After Taxes

In 2003, David M. Gross decided to legally avoid paying taxes by intentionally lowering his income. As a form of tax resistance in response to the US invasion of Iraq, he requested a 75 percent pay cut and, nine years later, reported having a richer life for it.

After becoming self-employed, Gross had to get creative to meet his new budget. Maximizing his contributions to tax-exempt benefits, his income tax threshold was about $36,000 a year, but $14,000 needed to be invested in retirement and health care accounts. The prospect of surviving on the remaining $20,000 in the notoriously expensive San Francisco Bay Area initially seemed daunting, yet Gross found that wasn’t the case at all. Aside from fixed expenses like rent, he minimized his variable expenses like food and transportation through a do-it-yourself ethic with cooking and biking. By taking advantage of other free or low-cost resources like libraries, public transit and Craigslists’ “free stuff” section, he even managed to save enough for backpacking trips in Mexico.

That said, Gross admitted that his choices would not serve everyone as well. He had professional skills that translated well to a self-employed, work-from-home job, which helped to minimize his expenses, and had no children, who typically cost more than the deductions they afford. Still, Gross’ fundamental concern applies to every taxpayer: Wouldn’t you rather be living more, even if it meant earning less?

Read more about Gross’ rationale for, and experience with, intentionally lowering his taxable income below.

Note that this account was first published by Shareable on April 17, 2012, and is reproduced below without update.

How to Not Pay Taxes

by David M. Gross

Nine years ago, I started living a more bountiful life by working less, earning less, and spending less.

I started by going to my employer’s human resources department to ask if I might take a significant pay cut. “How significant?” they asked. I said, “I’m not sure yet; maybe 75 percent?”

As you can imagine, this was not the sort of request they were used to, but they gave it their best shot. How did I come to make such a strange request? A little over nine years ago, the war on Iraq began. Along with many other people, I was horrified at the magnitude of the suffering the U.S. would inflict with its “shock and awe” campaign, and also at the increasingly blind, ignorant, and bloodthirsty war fever that dominated our country. But I also knew that as a taxpayer I was a small but vital part of the monster we were unleashing, and that no matter how much I protested, as long as I continued to pay taxes, I was — in a practical, bottom-line sense — a war supporter. I had a hard time getting to sleep at night and looking myself in the mirror in the morning. I knew I had to stop supporting the war, if only for my own peace of mind.

But how? My major financial contribution to the war was from the federal income tax which was automatically withheld from each paycheck before I even saw it. If I were to stop this withholding by filing a new W-4 form with more allowances, this would just delay the inevitable. Come April, the IRS would realize they’d been underfed and would come after me or my employer to seize the rest. I decided instead to get “under the tax line,” reasoning that the best way not to pay income tax is not to owe any to begin with. So that’s why I visited my H.R. department. But they said they couldn’t help me — such a radical pay cut might look suspicious to auditors and cause problems of some sort for the company.

So I quit my job where I’d been earning roughly $100k, and now I’m self-employed doing contract work and writing books. When I started, I didn’t know where the “tax line” was. I assumed it was somewhere in the vicinity of the “poverty line” (which didn’t sound encouraging). I found some stories about war tax resisters who use the “under the tax line” method (one among many methods of war tax resistance) and these seemed to suggest that the “tax line” was somewhere around $3,000 to $8,000 a year.

So I started thinking “hmmm… I could buy bulk rice and pick dandelions for vitamins” . . . “you can do a lot with top ramen!” . . . “maybe I could work as a fire-spotter to avoid paying rent” . . . that sort of thing. I started to resign myself to a path of deprivation, sacrifice, and renunciation in the service of my values.

There are things to be said for sacrifice in the service of values, but my path took another turn entirely.

I researched tax regulations to find out more precisely where the “tax line” is and just how much of a budget I had to work with. What I found was a great relief. Today in the United States, about 40 percent of households that file tax returns are already under the federal income tax line — that is to say, two in five of these American households pay no federal income tax. So I didn’t have to live in a cave and eat grubs and berries, all I had to do was join the income-tax-free 40 percent.

There really is no single “tax line.” The threshold is different for everyone. It’s based on things like your family structure, your age, how you make your income, and what you do with your money. For me, the tax line is about $36,000 this year. By using deductions for tax-deferred retirement accounts, and for health savings accounts and health insurance — entirely legally and by-the-book — I’m able to owe no federal income tax.

To do this, I have to put about $14,000 into these retirement and health savings accounts (almost 40 percent of my income). Subtracting Social Security taxes, that leaves me about $20,000 to live on during the year. That seems like very little to many people, especially in the expensive San Francisco Bay Area where I live, but it’s more than enough for me.

For one thing, it’s a real $20,000, not a $20k salary that then gets whittled down by income tax. My yearly expenses — rent, food, transportation, health insurance, and the like — come to less than $18,000. What’s left over is a rainy-day, emergency, or vacation fund. I often use it for a south-of-the-border backpack-and-hostels style adventure. And note that I’m also saving a healthy $14,000 a year for retirement and for health expenses.

Here are some of the techniques I’ve adopted to lower my expenses:

• I cook my meals from scratch rather than eating out or eating expensive packaged food.
• I brew my own beer, because I like the good stuff (and because I want to avoid the federal excise tax on alcoholic beverages).
• I’ve traded English tutoring for Spanish tutoring, and web programming for training in DIY skills like meat curing and urban foraging, rather than paying for classes.
• I use the public library for research and recreational reading rather than buying books.
• I don’t own a car, but instead use public transit, bicycling, Greyhound, Amtrak, and such.
• I try to find used stuff on freecycle or craigslist rather than buying new — for instance: a pot rack, a Foreman grill, a vacuum cleaner, a back door that I could cut a cat door in without risking our security deposit, a bread machine, speakers, a living room couch, some lectures on video, a food processor and blender, and a carboy I use for brewing.
• I gravitate toward social events that highlight generosity and participation rather than commerce and spectatorship.

How has my life changed now that I’ve gone from a $100k urban playboy lifestyle to living on $20k?

When Money Magazine profiled me a few years ago for an article they put out on how to avoid taxes, they wrote that their readers wouldn’t enjoy the “ascetic lifestyle” that comes along with my technique. Well, if this is “asceticism,”asceticism is very underrated. The life I’m leading now is fuller and more enjoyable than ever. I have less anxiety and feel more integrity, and I’m genuinely living a bountiful life. By being willing to take in less income, I can work fewer hours. Those now-free hours are much more valuable to me than the money I’d been trading them for.

It seems that many things people give up to pursue their careers are more valuable than the money they gain in the trade. And many are not for sale at any price: health, youth, and the time we need to pursue our dreams, learn new skills, volunteer for good causes, strengthen relationships with our family and friends and communities, or just to read those books we’ve been meaning to get around to.

Money is at best a means to various ends. It is these ends, and not the money itself, that define abundance. While money is a useful means to some ends, it is hopeless for others and inefficient for many.

For example: I love good food. When I was making the big bucks I used to go out to eat all the time since there are so many great restaurants in the Bay Area. But for the cost of one restaurant meal I could eat fantastic food all week — if only I had the time to look up the recipes, shop for the ingredients, prepare the food, and clean up the kitchen afterwards. Now I have that time, and so I eat great food just about every day for a fraction of what I used to spend. And along the way I’ve learned a thing or two about the art of cooking, which helps me share good food with others.

One measure of abundance is this: What percentage of your time and energy can you devote to your passions, and what percentage are you forced to spend on priorities that contradict and oppose them? By “your passions” I don’t just mean “your selfish whims” but your values, the things you think are worthwhile and important.

If a percentage of your paycheck is being sucked up by Uncle Sam, you’re spending that percent of every working day — spending your energy and time, your life — to promote the Pentagon’s priorities and political pork projects, war and empire, bank bailouts and mass imprisonment. You can serve your values and your community much better by redirecting that time and energy in more positive directions.

What worked for me won’t work for everyone: Some people, for good reasons, have higher expenses than I do (for instance children, though they are good tax deductions, can be an expensive hobby – I don’t have kids). Not everyone has job skills that translate well to a part-time, freelance, work-from-home style job. Many people have to work full-time jobs, year-round to earn as much as I earn. Many still earn less. I don’t have a one-size-fits-all strategy, but there are some lessons I learned along the way that many of us can use to make our lives more bountiful, whatever our situation.

Take stock of your own vision of a rewarding, generous life, and look closely at which components of it are best served by earning money and which components are best served in more direct ways. Look also for ways in which your career may interfere with such a life. And look at how the government, by means of the tax system, is forcing you to expend your time and energy on priorities that contradict your values. Consider the possibility that the most bountiful and generous life you could be living may be one in which you are earning and spending less but living and sharing more.

If you like this article, read Comprehensive Disobedience: Occupying the Sharing Economy in Spain, also by David Gross.

The post How to not pay taxes appeared first on Shareable.

Drive through almost any town in America and you’ll see the same glossy plastic signs. Chain restaurants, chain hardware stores, big box grocery stores, and corporate gas stations. Anytown, USA, Population 341,814,420. These large corporations dominate our economy. Old main streets, on the other hand, are rows of vacant skeletons where small businesses once served their neighbors. Meanwhile, profits are shipped off to tax havens to be pumped into shareholder pockets, and the people who work in these companies are left to fend for themselves.

These circumstances can’t go on forever. There has to be another way. We need creative solutions for small businesses to take back Main Street. We’re all too familiar with the problems, and we hear them repeated constantly. But we don’t hear enough viable, creative solutions.

So, the Infrastructure for Shared Ownership research team set out to scout for examples of what was already working. We talked to entrepreneurs, activists, lawyers, finance experts, and small business owners. What we discovered is extraordinary and hopeful. We’ve assembled it all into a book called “Assets in Common” (which you can find at https://www.assetsincommon.org).

This plight of small businesses isn’t the only problem we considered. We also care about who and what reaps the benefits in our economy. We want to see a world where more people live decently and share in the value they produce at work. Employee ownership and worker-owned cooperatives offer some glimmers of hope, but can we go even farther?

Sharing value is great, but if we just re-rationed the profits of our current economy, we would still be barreling toward climate disaster. We also need to update the physical operations of our economy, but how do we do that at scale? Policy changes are a long-game and may not take root enough to chart a different pathway. What can be done with the solutions that exist right now to reimagine our legal and financial infrastructure for good? 

The changes we need in our world must happen quickly. We can’t wait for change to happen one company at a time, so we hunted for models that promise to shift multiple companies and organizations and marshall resources collectively. 

A flower in the cracks of Main Street

We researched dozens of organizations, projects, finance tools and legal structures looking for fruits of hope. What we discovered surprised us. We found major common threads across the most successful solutions. While we outline fourteen distinct success factors in the book, we’ll share just a few here.

Internal Cooperation for External Competition

A majority of promising solutions used internal cooperation to make the overall group more resilient to the outside world. For example, CarpetOne appears to be a national chain of flooring stores. But under the hood, it’s actually a cooperative of independently-owned small businesses that together co-own their national brand. The group emerged from a coalition of small stores that were having trouble competing with the low prices of the big box stores. So they banded together and pooled their purchasing power so they could buy flooring at the same bulk prices as the big guys. This group of over 4,000 stores uses deep, intensive cooperation to compete with big business.

It’s not just CarpetOne. This concept is called a Shared Services Cooperative, and we’ve written multiple chapters about what they are and how to start them. 

Shared Economic Destiny

When different stakeholders have fates that are inextricably linked, we might say they have a shared economic destiny. Rather than singularly pursuing financial gains for a few, the aim is to create value that benefits the entire ecosystem over the long run. This manifests in practices like employee ownership, distributed governance and decision-making, and shared balance sheets. It can also mean leveraging resources cooperatively. An example is a group in North Carolina called The Industrial Commons, which is focused on keeping the textile industry alive. Their nonprofit arm leverages its strong balance sheet to buy expensive sewing equipment that it then provides to for-profit worker co-ops. These small co-ops wouldn’t otherwise be able to get financing for industrial equipment, so their existence is made possible by another entity lending its power.

Conscious Consolidation

“Consolidation” refers to businesses merging or acquiring one another into fewer, larger companies. Rather than corporate conglomerates taking over companies solely to maximize profits for shareholders, an alternative approach is emerging: conscious consolidation. This involves consolidating assets not for the benefit of a few shareholders, but to preserve local businesses as permanent community fixtures. Companies structured as holding companies or multi-stakeholder cooperatives are acquiring or integrating locally-rooted small and medium enterprises, then transitioning ownership to models like employee trusts, perpetual purpose trusts, or co-ops. 

In Montana, a group called Goodworks Evergreen has acquired seven small rural hardware stores, which are now run collectively as a group. These small businesses were on the brink of going out of business when Goodworks stepped in to buy them, keeping a local institution alive while investing resources to improve operations. This ensures wealth stays embedded in local economies instead of being extracted. It safeguards jobs, fosters shared ownership cultures, and allows for more self-determination within communities.

Upgraded Legal + Financial Structures

The current economic system isn’t an accident. It is held together by a massive amount of legal code and specifically-designed financial structures. This legal + financial infrastructure is mainly intended to protect and promote private wealth accumulation. So there is a great opportunity to build legal + financial infrastructure to advance pro-social outcomes like shared ownership and responsible stewardship.

Fortunately, a range of updated structures are already emerging to make this paradigm shift possible. One of these is the steward-ownership model, which separates economic interests from governance. A company’s shares are placed into a perpetual purpose trust or foundation, preserving its mission and values rather than privatizing the profits. This ensures an enduring, independent focus on stakeholders instead of extractive profit motives.

When combined with shared ownership models like employee ownership trusts (EOTs), a powerful symbiosis is achieved. Assets and businesses are protected for the long term, with financial incentives aligned to continuously reinvest for mission impact rather than wealth stripping. In turn, this sustainable value creation builds broad-based ownership among all stakeholders.

One of the first groups to combine steward-ownership with employee ownership is an auto repair group in Utah. Clegg Auto has four shops, and with the help of Common Trust, transitioned ownership of its shops to employees through a steward-ownership trust model. This allowed Clegg Auto to secure its legacy while sharing the roadmap with others. One important aspect of the Clegg steward-ownership trust is that it decrees that the company can never be sold, protecting their independence in perpetuity. Many steward-owned companies include this clause to further protect their mission and stakeholders from the allure of acquisition. This presents a major departure from the exit-driven business logic of the Silicon Valley-style startup and introduces questions of how early-stage investment will work in a steward-owned context. 

Money itself is also up for redesign. In Sardinia, a mutual credit system called Sardex was launched, allowing SMEs to directly trade goods and services with each other using Sardex units as a complementary currency. Rather than the traditional money markets, they created new grassroots markets governed by different rules and member-driven economic participation. This allows value to recirculate inside the local economy, and gives businesses an incentive to trade and collaborate with their neighbors. By making credit less scarce, it also helps to grow the economy without the artificial ceiling that happens when cash flow is slow but a business otherwise still has the ability and desire to trade.

Revitalizing Main Street

From reforming corporate governance codes to restructuring money itself, the possibilities for new legal forms and financial arrangements are vast. The path will be iterative, but each new example helps shield assets from extraction and creates value for their stakeholder ecosystems. Perhaps if we can rewrite the source code at the core of business, we might have a chance at turning the tide on the massive crises facing us today.

The post Assets in Common: Will Anytown, USA become a ghost town? appeared first on Shareable.

So elating, in fact, that residents of downtown Seattle looked concerned as four grown adults let out shouts of joy outside a perfectly average post office after doing a seemingly simple task. But the task was anything but simple—and we had done it together. 

Like an untold number of ideas throughout human history, the nuts and bolts of what would become Salish Sea Cooperative Finance (SSCoFi)—a cooperative built to address the student debt crisis—were hammered out over nachos and beer. 

Over the past decade, SSCoFi has grown from an idea between friends to a fully functional financial cooperative based in Washington state, which collectivizes members’ resources in order to provide debt relief for our community. We refinance the loans of members who have high-interest student loans and provide an avenue for values-aligned investment for members with capital. We’re proud to have put hundreds of thousands of dollars to work while building community and educating about economic justice along the way. 

A lending cooperative like ours serves three primary functions:

• To take money out of Wall Street and big banks and reinvest it locally, thereby creating a means of financial empowerment at the local level;
• To keep more money in local communities, allowing us to realign our finances with people and projects committed to supporting a thriving planet full of life rather than with institutions of extraction and exploitation; and
• To participate in catalyzing the cooperative economy as a real alternative to the extractive capitalist economy. We believe that democracy in the workplace and in finance is essential to creating an economy that works for all.

Community cooperative lending has been, and can be, used to tackle many different issues—from student loans to medical debt, prison debt, or even the financing of projects for a green economy. We hope that any community facing a shared financial burden can find our model useful. 

Based on the Guide to Cooperative Community Lending, which SSCoFi published in 2022, this How-to will break down some of the main steps involved in building a debt cooperative—from defining the community to setting up governance to dealing with all paperwork to closing that first loan. 

How to build a cooperative to tackle student debt in your community

We’ve broken down the basics into five primary considerations. Each section goes into further depth in the guidebook and has a matching appendix with relevant documents and forms we created. We hope you can use this to empower your people to tackle debt in your community. 

1. GATHERING

The process of starting a co-op is both iterative and nonlinear. No matter what, it begins with gathering together, getting on the same page, and building relationships. We started by creating a community and determining what we wanted to do together. 

Define your community

Who are you organizing with? We began with a loosely held core team of people who self-selected as being passionate about this project because they had deep, personal experience and trauma related to debt or finance. Our community could be described as including members of the following broad groups: 

• People living in the Salish Sea—from Seattle to Whidbey Island to Cortes Island. 
• Millennials and Gen-Zers, people whose potential to be powerful actors for social change and community well-being, are being stymied by runaway student debt. 
• Gen-Xers and Baby Boomers and others with financial capital looking for safe, local investment opportunities. 

You may want to focus on a neighborhood or city, a support group, or other constituency. 

Activate your core volunteers

Staying committed, organized, and building your collective capacity to get a new organization started takes time. It requires relationships built on trust, a shared understanding of our unjust economic system, and a capacity to make shared decisions and work out conflicts quickly.

As a cooperative, everyone in the organization has a say, but ultimately it’s critical to build a core group of volunteers for the organization. SSCoFi was able to build this trust and collaboration within our core organizing team through biweekly evening meetings.

Create space for sharing stories and identify your community’s needs

A key part of forming our community was a series of intergenerational conversations across the Salish Sea to collect stories and testimonies about people’s experiences with student debt.

People lived in stress and anxiety over calls from lenders but rarely spoke about the debt to family and friends. It provoked shame. Many hadn’t even tried to refinance or deal with growing interest rates on debts that had gone “delinquent” because of how inaccessible help seemed and how anonymous they felt. Hearing these stories shared out loud was powerful and reaffirmed the key organizers’ belief that a collective solution was needed to address this debt crisis.

From these testimonies, three primary needs emerged:

1. The need to alleviate the financial and psychological burden of high-interest student debt among Millennials and Gen-Zers in our community; 
2. The need for values-aligned investment opportunities for individuals and especially baby boomers with capital; and
3. The need for more financial-empowerment training, education, and mentorship on issues that connect personal financial empowerment to collective systemic change to address equity.

These became the guiding lights for how we have addressed many questions about how to organize, operate, and run SSCoFi. 

Define your community’s privilege and position

Student debt is an issue that, like most forms of debt, disproportionately impacts individuals of color. In 2018, 78% of black students borrowed federal student loans for school, compared to only 57% of white students. Half of these black students defaulted at some point during their student loan repayment process, compared to 22% of white students. Recognizing that generations of white supremacy and racial oppression against people of color are the underlying reasons for this disparity must inform all work to address economic injustice. 

SSCoFi has worked to educate our membership about this history and to take it into account when deciding which loans we refinance and in what order. We chose to tackle student debt because it is a widespread issue (after mortgages, it is the second-largest category of debt owned by American consumers) and one that all of the initial project organizers had direct ties to. It’s also a form of debt that felt particularly generationally defined and one that tackling had substantial long-term systemic benefits in addressing. 

2. GOVERNANCE & CULTURE

Once you’ve gathered, you have to figure out how to govern. The governance decisions discussed here assume that you are also constructing a cooperative structure, not a corporate or nonprofit one. 

While a 501(c)3 could have offered us certain benefits, such as access to more grant opportunities and the ability to accept donations, we chose a cooperative structure. For us, it was about embodying values of cooperativism, bringing together all stakeholders under one “roof,” sharing profits with our members, and so we could have member engagement at the level of voting on different resolutions, changes to the bylaws, etc.

Co-op governance is built around the core Cooperative Principles and structurally relies on by-laws, membership structure, and a cooperative culture. 

Debt Cooperative By-laws

By-laws are the written framework for how your organization works. They are required for cooperative registration and codify how decisions are made and even the organization’s lifespan (if you choose to specify). There are many great resources on by-laws, but we recommend starting with the International Cooperative Association (ICA) bylaw template.

Your membership is the bedrock of your organization. For us, members are Washington-state residents who have chosen to engage with debt inequality in their community through refinancing their own loans or assisting others to do so. They are active at quarterly member meetings and vote on by-law changes and new board members. They are engaged with their own and their community’s financial empowerment, health, and social justice. 

In addition to our member-owners, we have a working board of eight individuals meeting biweekly to handle the day-to-day running of the business, such as accounting and event planning, and prepare big questions for the broad member meetings. Not everyone needs to know how to do everything—but it’s helpful that everyone knows who can do what. Regular meetings ensure that decision-making remains clear and that relationships stay strong. 

Culture

As a volunteer-run cooperative, one thing to prepare for is the ever-shifting capacity of active volunteers. People are giving their time and labor to a collective effort and likely for free. This means that your organization needs to be able to move with the flow of capacity of the individuals doing the work and honor that people’s lives will change. It also means that, as an organization, you need to consider what the cooperative is giving back to its members to sustain them and make them feel excited to be there. 

Two big things we have done for culture building over the last few years:

Peer mentorship

Peer mentorship was baked into many of our early conversations in the cooperative. Different members would be able to support each other on their career and financial paths in unique ways. This has happened formally and informally. 

Co-working parties and “check-in” culture

Managing SSCoFi has happened in a culture of co-working. Co-working creates accountability for the work at hand, reaching beyond the boundaries of just the work of the co-op. It’s a way of creating spaces for solidarity and support that transcends the “productivity mindset.” In meetings, we begin with check-ins, where people can share how they are doing, emotionally or personally, before the work begins. 

How to share: 300 guides to help your community thrive

3. LEGAL

In addition to bylaws, membership, and culture building, you’ll have to legally formalize your organization and its structure. It is an important and often intimidating step in deciding on the exact model you want to create. Your chosen business structure ends up creating certain constraints (or lack thereof) on growth, protocols for meetings, operations, etc. 

There are two main legal requirements for a community-lending model: incorporation and lending regulation. While our own example is laid out in the guidebook, this is definitely somewhere you’ll want to make sure you’ve looked at both state and federal laws that may apply to your organization (especially on local lending regulations, which may be more obscure than incorporation). 

At SSCoFi, we are formally incorporated as a federal C-Corp and a Washington state nonprofit cooperative. On the second question of lending regulation, we worked with a local nonprofit law firm that analyzed local laws and provided written guidance that our model does not require lending or securities regulation. For both questions, we recommend you work with local experts to determine the right form of incorporation, any requirements for local lending, and any other local legal requirements.

4. FINANCIALS & ACCOUNTING

While Wall Street works to make lending and finance seem like a dark art, it’s actually much more straightforward than they would have you believe. The number one rule is that there is no perfect solution to the question of how to structure your lending and finances. The decision of how to set up the details of the loans depends on the needs of the borrowers, the investors, and the overall member community. 

While your particular solution will be unique to your community’s situation and resources, the key questions and factors to consider when trying to create a financially sustainable community lending model will be the same. First, how much will your borrowers have to pay, and how long will they have to pay you back? Second, where will you get your lending money, and what will you have to pay investors? Third, how much (if anything) will it cost to run the organization? Our guidebook provides our solution, but don’t be afraid to iterate and experiment to find what works for your community.

You’ll also need to make sure you are properly accounting for all your loans and financial transactions. While it’s natural for folks to shy away from accounting as too dry, it is essential to maintaining the trust of your community and keeping the organization moving forward in a responsible and transparent way.

Broadly speaking, your top priorities should be opening a bank account for your organization, setting up software to track accounts, and managing how to file your taxes each year. We recommend going with a local bank or credit union to make sure you are keeping money local. For software, many use Intuit Quickbooks, but we use an open-source accounting software called GnuCash. While simpler than Quickbooks, it is more than enough for our organization and a better fit than something with more bells and whistles. Finally, we have members with enough accounting experience to file our taxes, but we did have a local social justice-oriented accounting firm complete our first tax filing so we could learn from them and have the first year as guidance for the future.

5. LENDING PROCESS

Finally comes the actual lending. It took us about two years to get to this point, so give yourself a nice pat on the back for reading this far! 

Our loan process came from a combination of member experience in the lending industry and documents we received through collaboration with a local nonprofit lender. While it can be tempting to try and create an elaborate process to cover every data point and possibility, we highly recommend keeping the process of collecting information and evaluating potential borrowers as simple as possible—and even the best attempts to keep a process simple can create inequalities by adding barriers for folks.

Getting comfortable with this isn’t easy. It can feel very intimidating, and some of the most empowering moments of our work has been collectively tackling these issues and getting comfortable with debt. While most lenders keep their details locked away, we believe that greater shared understanding is critical for shared success, so we’ve included templates for all of these in our guidebook here.

In conclusion

Debt is a psychological weight that shifts the imagination from thoughts of possibility and empowerment to thoughts of crisis and necessity. Our modern capitalist system is meant to perpetuate those thoughts and push individuals to think of themselves first above all else. After almost a half-decade of work, the team at SSCoFi has sought to challenge the underpinnings of this framework and instead begin to imagine a different world: one where communities of mutual support lift each other up. 

We started as a group of organizers around shared plates at potlucks, wondering how we could do something, anything, to help tackle the student debt crisis all around us. Along the way, we also became friends who supported each other through challenging life changes that expanded far beyond the reach of the student debt crisis. 

Our lending, and this guidebook, are the result of pushing through more false starts and dead-ends than we can remember. It hasn’t been easy—but it has been humane, which is to say, human-scale and relationship-centered. We taught each other and sought help from experts for the big stuff. 

If a bunch of randos meeting around a plate of tater tots every other week can figure out how to make this work, you can too. 

The post How to create a debt co-op to take back your student loans appeared first on Shareable.

Here’s a look back at our year through stories, featuring our top 22 articles of 2022.

1. This Tiny House Trailblazer is helping to build a more inclusive movement

Tucked away on a farm outside of Charlotte, North Carolina, Jewel Pearson is living her dream — one that has been in the making for more than two decades. In 2015, she downsized her life into a less than 500-square-foot tiny house on wheels. Pearson launched Tiny House Trailblazers in 2016 to advocate and create a safe space for other Black tiny home owners – and inspire Black and Brown people to pursue and achieve their own tiny living dreams.

2. Vancouver’s Indigenous communities are reimagining housing & urban development

In Vancouver a new type of Indigenous community is emerging — one that builds resilience, health, creativity, and culture through shared housing and local, Indigenous leadership.

Innovative, Indigenous-led housing can build resilience, wellness, and provide opportunities for cultural revitalization and effective stewardship of land resources. It can also be delivered in a way that creates a validating experience, allowing a person to feel seen, reach their full potential and contribute to society with their basic needs met.

3. How communities are reimagining LA’s vacant lots

Across Los Angeles, tens of thousands of empty lots sit vacant. They’ve been there since the Watts Riots of 1965, and have become dumping grounds for trash, makeshift tent sites for the homeless, and are often vandalized.

Now, a growing array of citizens, contractors and community activists are reimagining the ways the lots can be utilized—with solutions ranging from temporary housing sites to plots for shared gardens.

4. These queer-led groups are securing housing for LGBTQ+ youth and elders

In 29 of our 50 states, LGBTQ+ people still lack comprehensive legal protections against discrimination in housing, healthcare, and employment. Lack of safe, affordable housing is particularly evident in our country’s queer youth population, who face a risk of homelessness that is 120 times that of their straight counterparts.

Across the country, there are many organizations working tirelessly to transform this stark reality by offering safe spaces, long-term housing, and other resources to LGBTQ+ youth and otherwise marginalized communities.

5. The Human Library connects people by tackling stigma and isolation

Established in 2000 by Abergel, his brother Dany, and colleagues Asma Mouna and Christoffer Erichsen, the Human Library is a global initiative that merges curiosity, understanding, and acceptance among people with a traditional library framework. In any Human Library depot (or, currently, during organized virtual events) average people (“readers”) can request to have a conversation with (“read”) someone who identifies in a particular way. Readers “check out” these “human books” for a “loan period of 30 minutes.

6. Market Box delivers food—and solidarity—to the people

The COVID-19 pandemic saw an influx in the number of mutual aid groups popping up across the country. Now, as the world trepidatiously welcomes a “new normal”, communities are reassessing their needs and capacities. Many newly-laid networks of mutual aid have been forced to adapt, reassess, and reimagine their role in protecting and providing for the communities.

Such is the case in Chicago. During the pandemic, approximately 40 mutual aid groups sprang forward to address the growing numbers of citizens who were or were becoming food insecure. Market Box (a volunteer-led direct-to-consumer food delivery provider) was one of them.

7. Boxville and beyond: Shipping container marketplaces are revitalizing city centers and BIPOC businesses

Over the last 20 years, builders have been utilizing shipping containers as affordable, environmentally friendly alternatives to traditional constructions. These days, it is not uncommon to see homes, schools, hospitals, and even swimming pools constructed from shipping containers.

Armed with this knowledge, urban planners and community developers have joined the movement, using shipping containers to construct temporary and permanent shopping malls that empower Black and Brown entrepreneurs, help fledgling businesses, and revive downtown areas in disenfranchised neighborhoods.

8. Co-ops for freelancers? Guilded challenges the idea of “starving artists”

Art is labor and the fruits of that labor are what make society worth living in, so artists and cultural workers should get paid fairly, should have access to benefits like healthcare, and should have ownership over their work and process.

This is the foundational belief of the new worker co-op, Guilded. Launched as a pilot project about eighteen months ago, Guilded aims to provide benefits, administrative support, employee ownership, and equity to freelancer artists and other contract workers.

9. NC’s Industrial Commons creates thriving new communities from the ashes of old industries

In the foothills of western North Carolina, the small town of Morganton is home to a growing co-op movement that’s reinvigorating the region’s once-struggling textile and furniture manufacturing industries, and refashioning them around egalitarianism and localism.

This expanding collective of frontline workers and artists is changing the way people there view industry and the nature of work.

10. Sri Lanka’s untold story of resilience: Sarvodaya’s pathway can work anywhere

Beyond the headlines, though, there is an untold story of how the people of Sri Lanka have managed during this crisis, a story that offers a pathway to resilience and “thrival” that can be adopted (and adapted) by any country, bioregion, or neighborhood. Quietly and behind the scenes, a unique non-government organization called Sarvodaya has mobilized a national network of thousands of self-sufficient villages to do what “official” organizations could not.

11. The slums of Mumbai are a wellspring of innovation — and injustice

Roughly 60% of Mumbai’s residents live in slums, and for most of them, leaving means losing their livelihood and facing insurmountable living expenses. Yet despite the cramped quarters, poor sanitation, and hazardous working conditions, Dharavi represents the only chance for its residents, many from disadvantaged rural backgrounds, to make a better life for themselves and their children.

With about 10,000 skilled craftsmen from many diverse backgrounds and upwards of 15,000 factories, Dharavi has become something of a self-organized special economic zone, with its own parallel economy.

12. A brief history of Black cooperatives in the U.S.

For as long as there have been Africans in America, there have been examples of Black social, cultural and economic solidarity. Often formed in response to systemic exclusion and economic stagnation, examples range from mutual aid networks, to freedom farms and grocery cooperatives.

Dr. Jessica Gordon Nembhard is a political economist specializing in economic development policy, Black political economy, and popular economic literacy. In an interview with writer Mira Luna, Dr. Gordon Nembhard talked about her research on African American cooperative economics, which she further detailed in her 2014 book.

13. When decolonization meets post-capitalism: the third annual post-capitalism conference

During this 3-day virtual summit (anchored by the Wiyot Tribe, Cooperation Humboldt, Cal Poly Humboldt faculty, and a number of different sponsors — including Shareable) community members and practitioners gathered to share information and experiences, strengthen alliances and networks, explore decolonial strategies, and uplift practical solutions to healing the land and people.

14. Survival before sustainability: How vegan reforestation in Haiti got stuck

Haiti has been subjected to centuries of environmental shocks, exploitation, and extraction — often at the hands of foreign powers. Though the lasting impacts of colonialism and exploitation are evident in Haiti, a sanguine spirit of mutual aid exists there. Could transporting an environmental solution that worked in southern India to eastern Haiti be benefits for local residents?

In this moving personal account of a reforestation effort gone “awry”, Aaron Fernando gets to the heart of the idea that solutions need to be community-driven and tailored to local needs and conditions.

15. The Response: Wartime Mutual Aid in Ukraine

In February, after a months-long prelude that many never believed would come to fruition, Russian troops landed in Mariupol and Odessa along the Azov and Black sea coasts, and Russian tanks rolled in through the Belarussian border crossing of Senkivka in the north. The Russian invasion of Ukraine had officially begun.

In this episode of The Response, we highlight stories of Ukrainian resistance and solidarity. A small but significant glimpse into how the Ukrainian people have come together to survive the war, to strengthen their communities, and to fight for each other and their autonomy.

16. The Response: Abortion Access and Reproductive Justice in a Post-Roe Landscape

In the face of trigger laws banning and criminalizing abortion in many states — as well as state-sanctioned harassment and targeted campaigns against people seeking abortions — the centuries-old movement for reproductive rights and justice has only grown and strengthened.

This episode of The Response takes a deep dive into how communities are responding to the growing abortion access crisis in the United States, sharing the stories of those impacted and highlighting a number of radical grassroots, mutual aid, and solidaristic efforts aimed at helping people access abortion in the places where it’s currently outlawed or restricted.

17. More than crisis care: Mutual aid for the pandemic and beyond

Emerging from the Covid-19 pandemic, The UK — like many global communities — remains an economically-precarious and socially-traumatised place. Adding insult to injury, we are now facing a cost-of-living crisis. A growing number of people are requiring help to secure adequate housing, food and shelter. Now more than ever, the mutual aid groups that acted so vitally during the pandemic continue to be needed.

From Below is a feature length documentary film that showcases the human, emotional stories of the mutual aid phenomena. The film also highlights the ways mutual aid can continue to be used as a force for change in a post-pandemic future.

18. Places of Togetherness: The social everyday life of Nikea’s shared courtyards

Nikea is a municipality in the greater area of Athens with an extensive network of such transitional spaces. The historic center of Nikea includes 134 building blocks with internal shared courtyards or alleys at their heart.

In part one of our editorial series with the School of Architecture of the National Technical University of Athens, we introduce readers to Places of Togetherness, a research project investigating the relationship between urban space and social cohesion. Moreover, the project aims to work with local people to re-imagine and co-design what the courtyards could look like in the near future and what impact a transformation like this could have in their neighborhood and community.

19. Can ‘Cathonomics’ produce a just and sustainable world?

The common good is an old idea and one that Pope Francis insisted on bringing up repeatedly after his arrival in the Vatican in 2013, in the lingering aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis. Echoing Francis, former International Monetary Fund economist Tony Annett’s new book, Cathonomics, argues that our economy has become deadly to many people, precisely because it so often defeats our efforts to work for a common good. He also offers an alternative framework, grounded in the spiritual principles of Catholic social teaching.

During an interview for Shareable, Annett sat down with Ownership Matters’ Elias Crim to discuss the book’s key focus.

20. Meet the Seattle artist creating community connections at The Library

Artist C. Davida Ingram is the public engagement programs manager for The Seattle Public Library. Since she landed the role, she’s made it her mission to create space for artists of color to pursue and hone their gifts through the lens of social justice.

During the pandemic, she collaborating with an extensive group of community partners and local artists to produce a series of artistic and educational events—all part of a focus on public health amid the pandemic. She’s also worked with community partners to launch BLOOM Food Justice Initiative, a BIPOC-led community garden initiative and youth fellowship addressing pandemic-era food insecurity.

21. How equitable strategies in harm reduction are keeping communities safe

Coss Marte founded his company CONBODY to help formerly incarcerated people integrate back into society. His one is just one example of one of the multifaceted aims of harm reduction—a practice aimed at minimizing the negative health, social, and legal impacts associated with drug use. Examples include creating safe spaces for drug users, clean needle and syringe programs to reduce the spread of illness, sealing criminal records to make employment easier, and housing initiatives that aren’t contingent on sobriety.

Experts in harm reduction envision a future where cutting-edge strategies transform a system that also disproportionately targets Black Americans.

22. The making of La BOM: Montreuil’s new Library of Things and Sharing Hub

Last but certainly not least, we’re ending the year by celebrating the opening of LaBOM. Inspired by Shareable’s coverage of the sharing economy, Bibliothèque D’Objets De Montreuil, also known as La BOM, opened its doors as a Library of Things in April 2022 in the Parisian suburb of Montreuil. La BOM was conceived in 2019 and has enjoyed support from the community as well as foundations, regional government, and Montreuil Mayor Patrice Bessac.

La BOM’s community is centered on its 600-square-meter building, which offers photography, music, sewing, textile studios, a wood shop, a repair shop, and an alkaline (disposable) battery exchange to the greater Montreuil area.

Help us keep this work going!

None of these stories could exist without our extraordinary team of writers and editors and readers like you. In 2023, we’re deepening our work, bringing Shareable solutions, staff and support directly to communities like yours.

As we shift our focus from inspiration to action, we’ll remain committed to providing high quality content that connects with, emboldens and inspires our readers. You can plant the seeds that help us grow the sharing revolution — and keep this publication ad-free and independent — by becoming a monthly contributor or giving a one-time donation today.

The post Best of Shareable 2022 | Reader’s Digest appeared first on Shareable.

When it comes to climate policy, it probably won’t come as a surprise to most that the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022 is one of the weakest bills that has ever been passed. Not only does the bill actually lock us into more fossil fuel production — it’s really just more weak neoliberal policy that will lead to more inequality. The bill is also an incredibly anti-democratic piece of legislation. It provides tax breaks to businesses to incentivize renewable infrastructure — but it says nothing about if, when, where, or how this will happen.

How about Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s Green New Deal? Although it’s been relegated to the purgatorial graveyard of left-leaning policy — its framework is still our best bet out of this mess, right? Well not exactly. We’ll explore the benefits of AOC’s Green New Deal vision but also explain its limitations and outline exactly where it falls short.

So, then, what would truly just climate policy look like? In this episode — the second in our 2-part series on the Green Transition — we’re going to take a look at what a just transition could look like. We’ll explore policy proposals, international campaigns, people’s climate agreements, manifestos, and the dreams, visions, and actions of those who are actually serious about equitably achieving the rapid systemic transformations that the climate emergency requires.​

You can listen to the full Upstream Documentary below to dive deeper into this topic.

You can check out Part 1 of this series here.

The post The Green Transition Part 2: A Green Deal for the People appeared first on Shareable.

The building of epistemic democracy, the deepening of community, the practice of non-violence, and shared investment in local economies — these are some of the fundamental components that guide the concept of “oneness’ which is seamed through the work of Dr. Vandana Shiva — an activist and tireless advocate for food sovereignty and for farmers’, peasants’, and women’s rights.

Dr. Vandana Shiva is a world-renowned ecofeminist, anti-globalization thinker and scholar, a Right Livelihood Award Laureate; and the author of several books including Reclaiming the Commons, Earth Democracy, Oneness vs. the 1%, Stolen Harvest, and most recently a memoir, Terra Viva: My Life in a Biodiversity of Movements which will be available on October 27th.

In this conversation, Dr. Vandana Shiva weaves together stories of her life with a critical examination of our current economic system along with inspiring stories of non-violent grassroots actions to protect and preserve the health and wellbeing of people and the planet.

How can we reject the spread of hierarchy and division and begin reclaiming our right to live free, think free, breathe free, and eat free? How can we go upstream to decolonize all the spheres of our lives and focus on strengthening and revitalizing the commons? These are just some of the questions explored in this Upstream Conversation.

The post Terra Viva with Dr. Vandana Shiva appeared first on Shareable.

It’s clear that we need to decarbonize our economy as quickly as possible in order to avoid the worst of climate change — but carbon isn’t the only problem we’re facing. As the world moves towards renewables and away from fossil fuels as an energy source, we can’t forget that the technology and minerals behind this green transition need to come from somewhere — and that somewhere is primarily countries in the Global South.

The supply chains which carry the lithium, copper, cobalt, and other minerals essential for renewable technology from the peripheries to the imperial cores — from places like Chile and Bolivia to places like the United States and Europe — are built upon a foundation of colonialism, imperialism, hyper-exploitation, and ecocide: all essential components of our current economic system —  capitalism.

In part one of this two-part series on the green transition, Upstream explores what happens when we simply paint capitalism green without addressing its fundamental global operating principles and processes. What is the dark side of the energy transition — particularly for the Global South and Indigenous communities?

In part two they will dive deeper into some solutions, but in this episode, Upstream starts their journey in the Atacama desert of Chile and ends all the way in the Arctic Circle, exploring the global extractive machine and the communities that exist on its frontiers.

You can listen to the full Upstream Documentary below to dive deeper into this topic.

The post The Green Transition Part 1: The Problem with Green Capitalism appeared first on Shareable.

The cooperative model serves as an alternative to traditional capitalism and has the potential to open doors for individuals and communities who may have historically been excluded from opportunities to generate wealth. Research suggests cooperatives may indeed be the key to building a more equitable, sustainable economy. But how can new co-ops get the support they need to get off the ground, grow, and thrive? One organization is working to answer that question.

Meet Start.coop

Formally known as Cooperatives for a Better World, Start.coop was designed with cooperatives — and their members — in mind. Start.coop’s mission is to “cultivate the next generation of cooperative businesses at scale…” To do this, the organization has three primary programs: an incubator program, an accelerator program, and design and coaching services. 

To this end, Start.coop has also established a sister organization, The Equitable Economy Fund. A pilot fund of $2 million, The EEF was designed to match angel investors to co-ops to ensure said co-ops have the capital they need to succeed within the shared ownership model. 

Co-directors Greg Brodksy and Jessica Mason are the driving forces behind both Start.coop and The Equitable Economy Fund. Brodsky is a seasoned start-up and co-op strategist and founder and co-director of the accelerator program. He also runs the Equitable Economy Fund. Prior to his current role, he founded the Bike Cooperative and helped launch the nation’s first purchasing co-op for craft breweries. 

Like Brodsky, Mason’s work centers on helping co-ops address the challenges associated with shared ownership head on. An angel investor herself, she previously was the founder of The Social Impact Studio. In addition to her work with Start.coop, Mason is on the faculty of Foster America (an organization that sponsors a fellowship program to equip the next generation of child welfare leaders) and is a board member of the artist-owned cooperative Ampled, which previously benefited from the resources offered by Start.coop’s accelerator program.

The programs in action

The Equitable Economy Fund is a pooled investment fund exempt from registration with the SEC. As such, only accredited investors are able to invest in the Fund. Investors have access to a diversified portfolio that contains several different cooperatives, as well as other shared-ownership companies — all of whom are graduates of Start.coop’s accelerator program. If a cooperative or shared ownership company shows exceptional potential, then accredited investors have the option to invest more in a subsequent round (known as follow-on capital). 

Start.coop’s annual accelerator program is based around a cohort model. Over the course of 16 weeks, the virtual program offers coaching, mentorship, platform service access, and an investment of $10,000 per team. Graduates who are considered high-performing are eligible to apply for $50,000 in follow-up funding. Eight companies were selected as part of the most recent 2022 accelerator program:

• Freelancer Guilded Cooperative provides contract management, tax preparation, and healthcare for freelance artists. 
• The first breast milk bank owned by nursing mothers, Mother’s Milk Cooperative provides breast milk to premature babies in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU). 
• A joint venture between Navajo Power and Iluméxico (which provides affordable solar energy in Mexico), Navajo Power Home provides solar power to homes on Navajo and Hopi lands that were previously without electricity. 
• More than just a creative writing software program, Novlr also allows writers to make money from their writing. 
• Montreal-based Radish Cooperative is an online food delivery service owned by restaurants, consumers, and couriers. 
• SMAT provides tools for journalists to analyze hate and disinformation online. 
• Owned by its members, StyleCrush is an online resale market offering sustainable fashion curated into “mini-collections.”
• Based in Southwest Atlanta, The Guild is dedicated to building affordable mixed-use real estate for community members and activists as a way to “build a pathway to ownership for Black and Brown people.”
• The Nearness is a digital cooperative fostering “small-group rituals and soulful conversations” through a spiritual community.

Addressing pervasive inequities in funding

In putting forth its mission, Start.coop recognizes that “only a tiny fraction of the 30,000 co-ops in the United States are Black-owned”. With its focus on funding cooperatives owned by women and people of color, Start.coop is dedicated to ensuring that these often-excluded cooperatives have the resources they need to thrive. Funding recipients’ missions often address pressing issues that are often overlooked by traditional accelerator programs, but can have real implications for marginalized people and communities. These include the rise of the gig economy, the exploitation of workers in fast fashion, the rise of fake news, and the skyrocketing cost of housing.

In 2020, Y Combinator (a well-known American technology startup accelerator who Start.coop has been compared to) released data on the diversity of the companies it funded. Of the nearly 200 companies hosted in their summer 2020 cohort, only 16 percent o had a woman founder and only 9 percent had a Black founder. 

With the Equitable Economy Fund, Start.coop hopes to paint a different picture for the future of funding. Noting in its mission that historical inequities in access and capital have stifled marginalized communities’ ability to thrive in traditional (and cooperative) economic spaces, Sart.coop says it is working “to address systemic racism and the root causes of inequality.” 

Success stories and long term vision 

Several startups have benefited from both Start.coop’s accelerator program and the Equitable Economy Fund. Two “alumni” include Obran Cooperative and UPROOT Homes. Obran Cooperative is a worker-owned staffing company with a focus on empowering people of color, including formerly incarcerated individuals. One of its two brands is Core Staffing, a staffing agency for returning citizens (people who are returning to society after being released from prison). Employees work in various industries,including food processing, light manufacturing, and warehouse operations. 

UPROOT Homes, recognizing that 650,000 military families relocate every year, is dedicated to helping these families access homeownership and its financial benefits. UPROOT allows a succession of short-term homeowners to pay down a mortgage together and all access the long-term benefits of having a paid-off home. 

Speaking to The Rework Podcast, Start.coop’s co-director Greg Brodsky says, “…a lot of our business curriculum might look like Y Combinator, or 500 Startups. But the two pieces that look really different are the governance aspect, and then the fundraising aspect. [When you invest in cooperatives] the goal is to create long term ownership within that community, whether that community is workers or consumers or farmers or musicians.” 

In this way, Start.coop and its Equitable Economy Fund are determined to help cooperatives,and the often-marginalized communities they serve,hone their potential and find their footing. Brodsky continues, “We’re not trying to sell the company; we’re trying to bring that company wealth and voice.”

Check out these related articles:

• ‘Solidarity investing’ club helps plant a new crop of co-ops in Vermont
• Racism in finance has sparked a grassroots response. Meet the Boston Ujima Project.
• Acquisition-conversion: the promising new strategy for scaling worker ownership

The post Co-ops meet capital with Start.coop’s Equitable Economy Fund appeared first on Shareable.

Is the growing ascendance of digital money simply an organic evolution away from the purported inconveniences of physical cash? Or is this transition actually a nefarious, corporate-engineered, neo-enclosure of money by Big Finance and Big Tech?

In his latest book, Cloudmoney: Cash, Cards, Crypto, and the War for Our Wallets, author, journalist, and financial hacker Brett Scott lays out an extremely compelling case arguing that corporations are engineering an enclosure of money — transforming it into a completely digital form which they alone will control.

In this Conversation, Upstream takes a deep dive beneath the surface of the global financial system to explore the technical and political differences between various forms of money, why corporations are attacking physical cash and plotting to completely replace it with digital money, who will really benefit from a cashless society, and why the fight for ownership of our digital footprints is one of the most pressing battles of our time.

You can listen to the full Upstream Conversation below to dive deeper into this topic.

The post The War on Cash: Cash, Cards, Crypto, and the War for Our Wallets appeared first on Shareable.