Despite the building blocks of our legacy energy system often being located in Indigenous territories, “Native American communities have higher rates of energy insecurity, while paying higher prices for the energy that is provided to our communities,” says Nicole Donaghy, the executive director of North Dakota Native Vote (NDNV).

NDNV educates and activates Native communities to get more engaged in democratic processes and gets out the Indigenous vote. NDNV was founded in 2018 to push against a voter ID law that disproportionally disenfranchised Native voters. And their work and tribal traditions are the subject of “Spirit Lake”, a new short documentary from The Story of Stuff Project, Rural Power Coalition (RPC), and Shareable.

As Shareable has extensively covered, democratic governance is not limited to government alone—a wide range of institutions can be democratic, governed by elected representatives.

Rural electric cooperatives—also known as electric membership corporations—are institutions of this sort, with great democratic potential at their core. For those serviced by an electric co-op, ratepayers are members who collectively own their utility, and who can be elected to serve on the board of these utilities.

Although these co-ops are democratic on paper, in reality, they often fall short of expectations. “A lot of our community members that we surveyed did not know that they could vote for the governing board,” says Donaghy. “We believe it is by design, by the [rural electric cooperative] so they can maintain levels of power.”

Only one out of fifty-five seats on the governing board of the local energy co-op is Native American, according to Donaghy, despite all tribal lands in North Dakota being served by electric co-ops.

But that may be changing. “We’ve created a task force that is sitting around 125 members that are interested in rewriting the narrative as to what energy production in North Dakota should be,” says Donaghy. “Including getting involved in the governance structure of rural electric cooperatives.”

“Spirit Lake” documents how North Dakota Native Vote is mobilizing Native communities to better represent Indigenous voices in co-op utilities, and to re-democratize these electric cooperatives.

You can also watch and share it on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and LinkedIn.

Take Action

At the time of writing, rural communities are facing significant threats from those who represent them in Congress— with the Senate considering a bill that would undermine the health and well-being of rural residents.

North Dakota Native Vote has a timely call to action here:

https://secure.everyaction.com/1Z60dr83u0i4rh03eGr1aQ2

If you’re interested in following the fight to secure a resilient, modern energy future for rural America, visit the Rural Power Coalition (of which NDNV is a member) and find ways to make your voice heard by telling the Senate to defend key energy programs.

The post WATCH: Getting out the Native Vote to indigenize energy sovereignty appeared first on Shareable.

With the current administration ideologically committed to toxic and inefficient forms of energy of the past—fossil fuels and fossil fuel infrastructure—even thinking about the energy system might feel dispiriting.

That is, until you realize that most of the United States’ landmass is covered by cooperative utilities that are just waiting for residents to get activated and get involved. Not only do rural electric cooperatives cover a majority of the US, serving 42 million people while powering over 20 million homes, farms, and businesses, but they also are, in fact, cooperatives.

This means that member-owners can get involved in the governance of rural electric cooperatives and shape their local energy ecosystem.

To deepen the understanding of how to do that, Shareable and the Rural Power Coalition are launching the Rural Electric Cooperative Co-lab at the beginning of March 2025.

The stakes couldn’t be higher. A total investment of $40 billion in the Just Transition hangs in the balance!

What gives us hope is that the funding for electric co-ops is actually something that could be successfully defended.

But it will take a lot more people, organizations, and rural farms and businesses to get involved—and quickly.

The Co-lab will commence on Tuesday, March 4th, with an Introduction to Rural Electric Cooperatives. This first session will explain the basics of what electric co-ops are, a little bit of their history, and how they offer enormous potential to increase democracy in our energy system, and can use the cooperative decision-making power of the people to supercharge the energy transition.

The following seven sessions in this learning series will explore topics like grid reliability, funding sources and financing mechanisms, governance and elections, engaging policymakers, community benefits, and much more.

Each session will be led by multiple issue-area experts. The sessions will take place on Tuesdays at 1pm PT/4pm ET for eight weeks. The full list of sessions is listed below.

For more information about the series, electric co-ops, and the Rural Power Coalition, visit: www.ruralpower.us/colab

The Co-lab is free, and participants can choose to attend all sessions or drop in for specific topics of interest. Registration is open to anyone who wishes to learn more about how electric co-ops work and how to engage with them.

Register Now

Co-lab Schedule

March 4: Introduction to Rural Electric Cooperatives

In this first co-lab session held on Tuesday, March 4th, presenters will explain the basics of what Rural Electric Cooperatives are, a little bit of their history, and how they offer enormous potential to increase democracy in our energy system and supercharge a Just Transition.

Presenters:

• Erik Hatlestad- Director of Rural Cooperative Energy, CURE
• Bri Kinsley- Director of Public Power Campaigns, Appalachian Voices

March 11: REC Governance and Scorecards

In this second session, held on Tuesday, March 11th, presenters will discuss how Rural Electric Cooperatives are governed (and how to participate) and how they can be transparently assessed and benchmarked.

Presenters:

• Chris Woolery- Energy Projects Coordinator, Mountain Association
• Erik Hatlestad- Director of Rural Cooperative Energy, CURE
• Kyle Crider- Program and Policy Director, Alabama Interfaith Power & Light and The People’s Justice Council

March 18: Sustainability, Affordability, and Reliability

This third session will explore topics of sustainability, affordability, and reliability in energy generation and distribution including virtual power plants, agrivoltaics, battery storage, and more.

Presenters:

• Philip Fracica- Director of Programs, Renew Missouri
• Liz Veazey- Policy & Rural Energy Director, Solar United Neighbors
• Rob Davis- Chief Growth Officer for M-RETS, North America

March 25: Inclusive Utility Investments

In this fourth session, presenters will explore inclusive utility investments, an equitable financing mechanism that enables a broader portion of the population to reap the benefits of energy efficiency upgrades and clean energy.

Presenters:

• Kai Palmer-Dunning- Senior Associate of Building Decarbonization, Clean Energy Works
• Camille Minns- Senior Associate of Just Energy Transition, Clean Energy Works

April 1: Engaging REC Member-Owners

In this fifth session, presenters will focus on how to increase democratic participation in the energy system, drawing from their work and experiences in this realm.

Presenters:

• Dr. Catherine Robinson- Program Director, One Voice
• Deborah Opie- Campaign Manager, Campaign Manager
• Basil Williams- Sr. Mgr, Member Services, Roanoke Cooperative

April 8: REC Elections

In this sixth session presenters will dive into how democratic Rural Electric Cooperative elections are run and how to get engaged in them.

Presenters:

• Rachel Christensen- Organizer, Multiple Campaigns
• Alex Petkanas- Climate & Clean Energy Program Manager, The Alaska Center
• David Stokley- SW MO Policy & Outreach Organizer, Renew Missouri

April 15: Public Funding and Engaging Policymakers

This seventh session will focus on how to acquire and retain public funding for Rural Electric Cooperatives and how to engage with policymakers to do so, drawing from the years of experience and success that presenters have in this area.

Presenters:

• Lloyd Ritter- Founder and Managing Partner, Green Capitol, LLC.
• Erik Hatlestad- Director of Rural Cooperative Energy, CURE
• Chris Woolery- Energy Projects Coordinator, Mountain Association

April 22: Community Benefits Plans

In this eighth and final session of the Rural Electric Cooperative Co-lab, presenters and a panel of experienced campaigners and advocates will discuss how to ensure local communities reap the benefits of funding and projects focused on modernizing energy efficiency and energy infrastructure.

Presenters & Panelists:

• Erik Hatlestad- Director of Rural Cooperative Energy, CURE
• Vonda McDaniel- President, Central Labor Council in Nashville/Middle TN
• Tara Greiman- Director of Conservation & Stewardship, Wisconsin Farmers Union

The post Building a just energy future together: Join the REC Co-lab this March appeared first on Shareable.

For working people, the imminent need for a clean energy transition might seem like it has to take a backseat because of financial concerns at the household level. Yet, with a relatively simple financing mechanism—one that can be put in place by power utilities anywhere—the opposite can be the case. It is possible to address both affordability and climate crises at once. Programs known as inclusive utility investments (IUIs) make it feasible to accelerate the rate of the energy transition that’s already underway, while ensuring that the most cost-burdened households can benefit from that transition.

In fact, this financing mechanism is already in place in many communities, enabling cost-burdened residents to cut down on their energy bills while also facilitating a transition to healthier energy sources, and less resource use.

Energy Unaffordability 

Depending on where you live and your paycheck, you may or may not regard energy bills as a regular financial stressor. For rural households in the United States, the energy burden—or the percentage of household income that goes toward energy bills—is significantly higher as a proportion of income than it is for those who live in metropolitan areas. And renters, elderly residents, or people of color, the costs associated with energy are even higher. 

A 2018 report by the nonprofit research organization, The American Council for and Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE), found that “the median rural household energy burden is 42% greater than the median metropolitan household energy burden.”

The report also found that more vulnerable populations face significantly higher energy burdens. For example, renters in rural areas face a median energy burden 29% higher than homeowners, rural elderly households face an energy burden 44% higher than non-elderly households, and non-white rural residents have a median energy burden that is 19% higher than their white counterparts. Beyond just rural communities, a 2024 report from ACEEE found that a quarter of all low-income households in the United States spend an average of 15% of their income on energy. 

Many of the households that could benefit the most from weatherization or energy upgrades like heat pumps and rooftop solar are also those who might not be able to afford it, due to lack of access to credit, loans, or savings that would pay for the upgrades.

Inclusive Utility Investments

One of the ways to benefit residents while transitioning to a cleaner and more efficient energy system comes in the form of a financing mechanism known as inclusive utility investments. These programs are also referred to as on-bill financing programs, tariffed on-bill investment programs, or pay-as-you-save (PAYS) programs.

Inclusive utility investment programs begin with a contractor assessing the energy savings potential of a building or unit on behalf of a utility. Then, based on the assessment, the utility offers the household some options that could increase the home’s energy efficiency. These options might include installing better insulation, weatherizing a basement, installing an induction stove, switching the heating and cooling system to more efficient heat pumps, or installing on-site solar.

Once the household chooses the improvements it wants, the upgrades are made, and the household pays the utility a surcharge over the years (also called an “on-bill tariff”) to cover improvement costs over time. 

When done well, although the household will be paying a surcharge, this can lead to a lower energy bill because of reduced energy costs. In cases where weatherization makes a significant impact, or the customer gets a heat pump and moves away from baseboard heating, these upgrades from IUI programs can also lower strain on the grid.

Since the utility finances the upgrade and then earns it back via a surcharge, the household does not need to take on any type of bank debt. In the absence of an IUI program, the need to take on debt can be an insurmountable hurdle for many households.

Taken together, IUIs can result in lower overall bills for customers, more energy-efficient homes, and significantly lower energy usage. When replicated neighborhood by neighborhood, city by city, IUI programs can make a big difference in both household finances, as well as the broader energy ecosystem.

IUIs In Action

IUI programs are already in operation around the United States, especially in rural areas and among rural electric cooperatives, serving millions of customers in at least ten US states. Some examples include the HELP PAYS program out of the Ouachita Electric Cooperative in Arkansas, Vividly Brighter out of the Rappahannock Electric Cooperative in Virginia, and Upgrade to $ave out of the Roanoke Electric Cooperative in North Carolina.

A 2024 report by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, sponsored by and prepared for the Department of Energy, found that these programs significantly reduced energy consumption, effectively reached a wide range of households, and resulted in savings for about half the households in a specific program.

Looking at one program from Midwest Energy, researchers found an average reduction of 15% in household electricity use, and a reduction of 26% in gas use. The researchers also found that, in part because of how the surcharge is calculated, “among Midwest Energy program participants, about half appear to reduce their energy costs enough to offset the tariffed charge, saving money in a normal weather year, while about half do not appear to generate enough energy cost savings to offset the tariffed charge.” Yet the report also concludes that “ the average project comes very close to breaking even” and noted that a change in how the surcharge was calculated would mean that even more customers would come out ahead, financially.

Taken together, there is a need for energy upgrades and programs that are inclusive to all residents—urban and rural, renters and homeowners, of all ages and ethnic backgrounds. Inclusive utility investments are already in place around the United States, reaching a wide range of households. By expanding the prevalence of IUI programs, and making sure the specifics of these programs are tailored to the benefit of working people, it is possible to effectively tackle both the climate crisis and affordability crisis at once.

More rural energy solutions like IUI’s are available form Shareable’s partner, Rural Power Coalition. 

Resources

• https://www.aceee.org/press/2018/07/rural-households-spend-much-more
• https://www.aceee.org/sites/default/files/publications/researchreports/u1806.pdf

Useful report:

• https://emp.lbl.gov/news/berkeley-lab-reviews-participant-outcomes-pay-you-saver-paysr-programs 

List of programs:

• https://www.localcleanenergy.org/State%20On-Bill%20Financing 
• https://ilsr.org/articles/report-inclusive-energy-financing/ 
• https://www.energystar.gov/products/inclusive_utility_investment 
• https://techcleanca.com/pilots/tariffed-on-bill-pilot/ 
• https://www.cleanenergyworks.org/2023/05/24/epa-distinguishes-inclusive-utility-investment-from-loan-programs/ 

The post How Inclusive Utility Investments bring the energy transition to rural residents appeared first on Shareable.

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What are Agrivoltaics?

Simply put, agrivoltaics are the integration of solar energy production into land used for agriculture. In practice, this typically looks like ground-mounted solar panel arrays with pastured livestock grazing alongside those panels. In many cases, vegetable and fruit crops can be grown underneath, between, and around solar arrays. Some agrivoltaic setups may also incorporate pollinator habitats and native ecologies between the arrays; this variation is sometimes called ecovoltaics.

How do farmers and landowners benefit?

According to the USDA’s Economic Research Service, farm incomes have declined in the past years, and once the numbers come in, further declines are expected for 2024, as well. Before the pandemic (between 2018 and 2020,) more than half the farms in the country experienced financial risk.

The issue of financial viability in our agricultural system is multifaceted, but agrivoltaics offers a way for farms to add a source of diversified low-maintenance income for farmers and landowners. Once financed and installed, solar panels require little maintenance and catch sunlight, which gets converted into energy and turned into a steady income stream.

For certain crops, the full or partial shade of solar panels can also benefit production and profitability. For example, a 2019 University of Arizona study found that “Plants in high-light environments tend to have smaller leaves – an adaptation for not capturing too much sunlight and overwhelming the photosynthesis system. Plants in low-light environments grow larger leaves to spread out the light-capturing chlorophyll that let plants change light to energy. The researchers are seeing that in their trials: basil plants produce larger leaves, kale leaves are longer and wider, and chard leaves are larger.”

With proper site development and decommissioning planning, agrivoltaics leave open the potential for a site to return to purely agricultural uses in the future. By alleviating financial pressures, landowners are less likely to have to convert agricultural land to be used for something else. They are also less likely to be forced to sell the land off entirely.

How does the environment benefit?

Agrivoltaic systems provide an array of benefits to farmers and landowners, rural communities, and the environment. They can provide habitat for pollinators, reduce the need for herbicides and labor-intensive vegetation management on site, and contribute to stormwater absorption capabilities of the soil by reducing the amount of land converted to impervious surfaces.

Sheep, goats, cows, and other livestock can be grazed among solar panels to maximize land-use outcomes on a single site. Integrating livestock and solar systems provides forage for the animals, who in turn maintain vegetation and minimize site upkeep. In addition to producing clean energy, solar panels cast shade for the animals to shelter under on hot and sunny days.

What to consider when setting up an agrivoltaic system

Setting up a system that optimally integrates agriculture and solar production requires time and planning up-front. When done well, this will improve the long-term benefits for health and production, as well as the pocketbook.

The farmer or land manager must work with the solar developer to find a solution that works best for both parties. Livestock farmers must ensure their animals’ food, water, and shelter needs are incorporated into the site plan, and the panels are protected. For example, sheep tend towards docility, but goats require more protective measures around the panels and any associated infrastructure. Cattle require more space between rows of panels and for the panels to be mounted much higher off the ground. Crop farmers require the appropriate panel height and spacing for the intended crop.

Agrivoltaics in the real world

At a site in Haskell County, Texas, one company estimates that it saved $115,000 in mowing costs in the first seven months just by having sheep graze along the arrays, keeping the panels optimally productive. At one site in Southern Illinois, semi-transparent solar panels and moving tracker panels allow enough light for plants in a vineyard to thrive while also producing solar energy. In Longmont, Colorado, an agrivoltaics farm that grows 15 crops provides enough solar energy to power about 300 homes. These are just a few examples. At the time of writing, there are almost 600 agrivoltaic sites in operation around the United States, according to the InSPIRE Research Project, which maintains a database, an interactive map, and informational resources on agrivoltaics. Although there has been a directed effort by fossil fuel companies to keep rural and agricultural communities pitted against renewable energy, there are clear benefits of agrivoltaics to farmers, their communities, solar developers, and the general public—who will enjoy cleaner air, soil, and water. The benefits of agrivoltaics are already being embraced by agricultural communities, with many more projects to come.

Shareable produced this video with the Rural Power Coalition and The Story of Stuff Project. Learn more about Rural Electric Cooperatives by reading additional articles in this series.

The post Agrivoltaics: Harvesting the sun to benefit farmers, crops, and livestock appeared first on Shareable.

While many people were able to work from home, others—compelled by the nature of their employment—were given three choices: Put their lives on the line, be financially crushed, or both.

While the dominant U.S. economic system operates on this principle of persistent financial coercion, there is (and always have been) an alternative way to organize individuals into collectives providing essential services, without the need for coercion: mutual aid networks.

At its core, a mutual aid network is a volunteer system of people helping people and communities helping communities.

Although the pandemic brought it top-of-mind for many, mutual aid is not new. Systemically oppressed communities, especially Black communities in the U.S., have continuously used mutual aid networks to share essential services.

Scholar Jessica Gordon Nembhard says in her book, Collective Courage: A History of African American Cooperative Economic Thought and Practice, that mutual aid societies were a cornerstone of African-American communities. A notable one is the Free African Society, formed in Philadelphia a decade after the signing of the Declaration of Independence. By 1830, more than a hundred mutual aid societies existed in Philadelphia alone.

So drawing from existing knowledge instead of reinventing the wheel, this article is a guide to starting or increasing the capacity of, a mutual aid network.

Start small and start anywhere with a core team

It’s OK to not have a grand plan to save the world when starting a mutual aid network. In fact, it’s better if you don’t—mutual aid is a complex, emergent process where each member’s abilities and ideas are respected. It also operates on a local scale. Not knowing all the answers—and being able to admit that—is a good start.

Effective organizing is first and foremost about people and the strong relationships among them. The first thing to do is to develop a core team. Organizing requires spending a lot of time together, so think about people you trust and who are committed to showing up.

In March 2020, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez hosted a conversation with activist and mutual aid organizer Mariame Kaba on how to start a network like this. The resources discussed in this training were compiled into a very useful and concise Mutual Aid 101 Toolkit, accessible to anyone for free. This toolkit advises that if you don’t know what to do at first, start by asking someone close to you to help brainstorm and make connections that will help you understand community needs. After that, reach out and try to form a small group of five to 20 people.

A common tool to use to think about who to reach out to is a pod map. A pod map is a simple way of visualizing the people in your life that you’re already connected to—people who can provide for your basic needs and who, in turn, you can provide for. Pod mapping also allows you to visualize the individuals and organizations that you could get in contact with and deepen relationships with.

There’s a great pod mapping resource created by Rebel Sidney Black, adapted in an open-source spirit from a tool developed by the Bay Area Transformative Justice Collective to deal with harm in communities.

Make local connections

The Mutual Aid 101 Toolkit suggests clearly identifying the support area and to start making connections.

Madison-based organizer Stephanie Rearick is a co-founder of the HUMANs (Humans United in Mutual Aid Networks) global network of mutual aid groups. She says, “We are about making the longer-term systemic change… any time we can build more of a commons and pull things out of a need to be transactional, we think that’s the way to find the most abundance,” said Rearick. “We all have value, everyone deserves to have their needs met, and we all have something to provide.”

To make connections, the toolkit suggests questions that can help discover the needs and abilities of neighbors, like: “What are your hobbies and interests?” and “What are your needs?” “What are you afraid of losing?” “What do you need help with?” It also has some useful suggestions about how to handle larger groups.

Build on existing networks

Reach out to existing organizations serving underrepresented and vulnerable populations in your community. These groups may have the capacity to offer services or could help by tapping into their existing community connections. Mutual Aid Hub has a searchable map to find groups near you.

Taking the time to seek out these groups is vital. Likely, there are already groups near you.

Maintain regular, deep communication

Once your network has grown to connect people, organizations, and communities, one-on-one communication will remain important. Although social media, email lists, and blog posts can spread messages far and wide, it is wise to also maintain the practice of deepening connections through one-on-one conversation.

This type of communication has better outcomes when mobilizing people, seeking information about needs and resources, and spreading a specific message. It also reinforces the cohesion of the network.

Phone trees are often employed so conversations can happen quickly and efficiently while dividing effort among members. The toolkit links to a resource on how to build a phone tree, which should be established and used regularly.

Adapt to community needs

A mutual aid group should be an adaptive organism, designed to be responsive to community needs. “One of the things that I’m pretty proud that we’ve done is be[ing] really responsive to community needs and figur[ing] out how to respond to those needs in a really quick way and not being bogged down in systems,” said Juliana Garcia, a facilitator of Mutual Aid Tompkins around Ithaca, New York.

Their network began as an information clearinghouse and then grew into a hub for making connections. “I think our role has largely been networking and collecting resources,” said Josh Dolan, who is also a facilitator with Mutual Aid Tompkins. Dolan said community members often self-organize using Mutual Aid Tompkins’ Facebook pages. “All the physical work is being done by volunteers.”

Not only should the activities of the group be adaptive but so should the very structure of the group. From groups of mask-makers to cabinet-builders to an older adults working group, many of the collectives and network programs developed organically.

“The mask-makers are a really good example of that,” Dolan said, referring to the Tompkins Mask Makers, a collective in Tompkins County that sold handmade masks for the region and using their profits to provide masks for those in need. “I know we were kind of working on that initially but then people that have sewing skills and entrepreneurial skills kinda came together and it kind of took off organically… I think it was so successful because at that point, people just wanted to figure out how to help and that was something that people could do at home with the skills that they already have.”

Tap into community resources

Since mutual aid is such a timeless principle, there are ample free resources available that can make starting your own network easier. In addition to the tools mentioned above, another resource for ideas and inspiration is Big Door Brigade. Offering legal support and bail funds, housing, and childcare, the Seattle-based group has links to organizations across a wide range of community providers.

Mutual Aid Networks also has resources, including legal, social, and financial frameworks to help build and maintain networks. The final page of the Mutual Aid 101 Toolkit has an additional list.

If you want to take your mutual aid network to the next level, check out how STL Mutual Aid Fund made it easier for neighbors to help one another and what they’ve learned along the way.

This article was originally published on July 7th, 2020, and was significantly updated by Jennifer Foley in January 2024.

The post How to start a mutual aid network appeared first on Shareable.

In the context of a dominant economy that demands faster production, cheaper labor, and lower quality — all for the sake of channeling wealth upward to shareholders who have little to do with the real-world value created by a business — it is understandable that people may feel cynical about any type of retail organization.

This is a story of how the makers who create a living off their hard-earned skills, banded together to challenge this dominant business ethic, and about the cooperative they built that’s just now getting off the ground. It is a venture that aims to grow at the speed of trust to serve the makers, the customers, and the staff who run it.

#EtsyStrike and the Artisans Cooperative

In February 2022, many artists and craftspeople who operated shops on Etsy were feeling the pain caused by the profit-first ethos. Etsy, which became a publicly traded company on Wall Street in 2015, had announced record profits in 2021. But in the same breath — in the same quarterly earnings report — Etsy also announced a 30% increase in transaction fees, which would eat into sellers’ profits.

“The human reaction to that is being upset,” said Valerie Schafer Franklin, a leather worker and writer, “that they were both more profitable than ever, and they were going to raise fees on sellers by a lot.”

In response, thousands of Etsy shops banded together for a strike in April 2022. The strike lasted a week, but Etsy did not change anything as a result. It didn’t change its fees or offer concessions. It didn’t respond to the strike at all.

“After the strike, there was sort of a moment of, what do we do next?” said Schafer Franklin, who had taken part in it. “We didn’t want to ‘bang our head against the Wall Street.’ That’s not a good way to spend our limited energy as busy, working, small business owners and crafters. We decided to make a go of trying to make our own alternative that would be owned and managed by the people who use and love it, as a cooperative.”

That platform, Artisans Cooperative, just launched its marketplace in October 2023, ahead of the holiday season. It is a place where artists and makers can list and sell their goods, and collectively run a business. It is a place where customers can browse and find actually-unique items that they can trust are made with care and skill.

What is “handmade” really?

To ensure that the marketplace does not get filled with goods that aren’t truly handmade, Artisans Cooperative uses unique criteria. One of the three criteria is that the goods sold on the platform must be crafted with “the workmanship of risk”. The idea comes from the artisan David Pye, and according to the Artisans Cooperative website, “In essence, it means that at some point in the process, the artisan could ruin the work.”

“Our definition was crafted after reading several different theories about craft theory and art theory,” said Shafer Franklin. “The workmanship of risk really resonated with artisans. Anybody who we told it to was like, ‘Yes! That’s it!’”

Are 3D-printed goods allowed on the platform? Perhaps surprisingly, yes. It’s the same with crafts made with laser engravers or power drills. Tools are allowed, even if there is a degree of automation to them. “The question is: Are you making something original, authentic under the workmanship of risk?” said Shafer Franklin. “And we’re relying on the 3D printers on our site to be like, ‘Oh, I know that’s not original, [or] authentic because that’s a standard template or whatever.’”

Artisans themselves review and certify new sellers who offer similar skills or crafts to their own, and are paid for that time in points that contribute to their member-ownership. This review process also kicks into effect to review sellers who have been repeatedly reported for offering goods that may violate the handmade policy.

The multi-stakeholder co-op model

Since it’s a co-op, artisans are member-owners. This means they have decision-making power, as well as receive dividends when the platform turns a profit. This also means becoming a member-owner requires putting something into the co-op. Artisans Cooperative uses a point system, where one point is equivalent to one U.S. dollar, and it costs 1000 points to become a member-owner.

“I [thought], this is a really awesome idea, but we don’t have that kind of money to invest right now,“ said Miya Kressin, who runs a business called Pixie Wolf with her husband. Kressin writes books and makes resin items, and her husband makes items out of pewter and glass.

That’s when she found out that there are other ways to earn points toward member-ownership, making it more accessible to those who cannot afford a $1000 expenditure.

This is referred to as sweat equity, where artisans earn 25 points per hour by contributing their skills to the co-op. Kressin said she had spoken with co-op staff recently about contributing her skills in this way, to work toward member-ownership. “I’m a stay-at-home mom, [and] mostly disabled. I can put in a couple hours a week helping out with bookkeeping and social media.”

There is a schedule of other actions that earn points toward member-ownership, which include sales on, and referrals to, the platform.

Another key element of Artisans Cooperative is that it is a multi-stakeholder cooperative. While readers may be familiar with businesses that are run as worker co-ops, and might even be members of consumer co-ops (like grocery co-ops and credit unions), multi-stakeholder co-ops are a little less common and combine these two models. They can also offer other types of stakeholders a voice and a vote regarding how the organization is run. 

Currently, Artisans Cooperative has about 300 artisan stakeholders and supporter (customer) stakeholders, with plans to expand it to include staff stakeholders, once the co-op is able to hire paid staff.

At this time, artisans can only sell on the platform if they are in the process of becoming a member-owner, but there are plans to change this in the future. Once any remaining kinks have been addressed on the new platform, the co-op says it will enable artisans to sell on it even if they do not initially intend to work toward member-ownership, and there is a waitlist for this.

Supporters are another important membership class for Artisans Cooperative. A supporter-member “… could be a shopper, could be a nonprofit, a collective, an organization, or a values-aligned agency that wants to support this option for artisans,” explained Shafer Franklin. “It’s a very free, flexible category just to allow people who are stakeholders in an artisan marketplace to be able to be involved.”

Supporter-members get a say in the decision-making process in the co-op and get to share in the profits of the platform. Supporters also get more access to community discussions than regular shoppers.

“With a co-op, it’s very simple: one member, one vote,” explained Shafer Franklin, illustrating how the model is more equitable to those who have less financial wealth. “Whereas in a typical business, if I, as the founder, had put in 20% of the startup capital, I would have a vote worth 20% instead of one.”

In addition, Artisans Cooperative is actually incorporated as a cooperative, which is less common in the United States. To do this, many steps were involved, including guidance from the U.S. Federation of Worker Cooperatives, and support and funding for legal fees to incorporate from the co-op accelerator Start.coop.

Since policies are designed and enforced by those who actually make things, this seems to have made the platform more welcoming to those who haven’t turned their skills into a business yet and for artists who cannot work as fast as a machine, for various reasons.

“I was really, really afraid to go on Etsy because I knew things [about it] like you have to respond to messages in a certain time frame,” said Lee Cattarin — a trans, queer, and disabled artist living outside of Seattle with his wife — citing negative impacts on mental health that Etsy’s policy of requiring sellers to always respond to messages in 24 hours. . 

“I print shirts,” explained Cattarin. “I don’t have enough demand to pre-stock those shirts, and I print a wide variety of designs on a wide variety of styles. So when I get an order, I let a few orders build up. I order those blank shirts, I print them, and then I ship them out. And that timeline, coupled with ink drying time — the ink I use needs to sit for a week to fully set… Etsy would hate that. Etsy would penalize me to bits.”

Artisans Cooperative’s Discord server shows a stark difference between the sense of kindness and community that permeates the co-op and that of Etsy.

“I’ve made some friends. I’ve done a lot of networking. It’s been really, really good for getting more engaged with the artistic community, and learning skills and helping others,” said Cattarin, who is also enthusiastic about getting more involved in co-ops in his hometown. “I really like anything that tries to put power in the hands of the people who actually get the work done.”

The post Artisans Cooperative: An Etsy alternative, owned and run by artists and makers appeared first on Shareable.

The disparate impacts of historical emissions on Global South communities show us that pushing waste, emissions, and externalities out of sight isn’t only unjust, it’s unsustainable. And while these problems continue to unfold on a global scale, each country, city, and locality’s role in perpetuating them — or helping to craft solutions — has been brought to center stage. 

Portland’s emerging circular economy

Sustainable waste reduction requires a transition from a linear economy — one where goods get used for a short period and then wind up in a landfill — to a circular one that prioritizes sharing, repairing, reuse, and creative upcycling.

In the United States, the city of Portland, Oregon offers some leadership in terms of what this might look like in action. The city boasts a lively network of partnerships between nonprofits, businesses, civilians, and different bureaus and layers of government.

Lauren Gross founded and runs the nonprofit Repair PDX. “The mission of Repair PDX is to spread repair culture,” explained Gross. “For the last nine years, that looks like holding repair cafes, which are repair events where volunteers fix people’s broken household items for free.”

But Gross knows better than to try to revolutionize Portland alone. She’s partnered with tool libraries and the City of Portland’s Fix-It Fairs so that Repair PDX can host pop-up repair cafes with the support of those who have resources, staff, or communications. Gross’ mutually-beneficial relationship with the City of Portland helps promote and increase attendance at her pop-up cafes.

What was nice about partnering with the City of Portland was that they do paper outreach. And that meant that they could reach a whole lot of people that we wouldn’t have access to. So it was a very diverse group of folks from all of the different communities that would come and attend those cafes. — Lauren Gross, Repair PDX founder

Gross’s Repair PDX works closely with six other nonprofits that call themselves, as a group, the Reuse Collective. This group includes a bike repair shop, a furniture bank, a reuse center, a creative reuse center, an electronics reuse and repair center, and an organization that diverts reusable materials from going to landfills.

Pooling resources makes it easier for these organizations to sustain themselves while expanding their reach and impact, so the Reuse Collective is focused on growing together. “Everybody needs a lot of space right now,’ explained Gross. “We’re all working on potentially finding space together to create a reuse depot.”

The role of government and municipal power

Recently, there has been more effort from the City of Portland to assist reuse-focused nonprofits like Repair PDX with resources, research, and public education. Specifically, Portland’s Bureau of Planning and Sustainability (BPS) has been getting ready to scale up its collaborations with nonprofits and businesses in the area.

The mere existence of BPS is something of an innovation in how the government thinks about sustainable development: starting in 2009, the City of Portland started merging its city planning efforts with its sustainable development efforts under the guidance of former mayor Sam Adams, who understood that they were two sides of the same coin. 

[Former mayor Sam Adams] saw a nexus between planning and sustainability, especially in terms of climate change and climate action. Because good land use planning is also good climate action, reducing carbon emissions. — Eden Dabbs of Portland’s Bureau of Planning and Sustainability (BPS)

Since then, many informal (and some formal) collaborations have occurred between nonprofits, businesses, neighborhoods, and the government. In the past couple of years, there has been a more intensive focus on understanding what needs to be done to really ramp up the circular economy in Portland and the surrounding area.

To gain this deeper understanding, BPS commissioned a needs assessment to understand how local government can better serve the reuse and repair community. It found that “five major needs emerged as threads throughout these conversations: space and location; racial and climate justice; communications and marketing; capacity building and staffing support; and grants and funding.”

The City’s provision of marketing support and physical space for Repair PDX is a good start, but the scale of needs is still much greater. Resourceful PDX, a program of BPS, aims to maximize impact by prioritizing public education around reuse and connecting residents, nonprofits, and businesses with the resources they need to participate in a circular economy. 

“These nonprofits need support from government,” says Alicia Polacok, Sustainable Communities Program Coordinator at BPS. “And something that we could do that was in our wheelhouse at BPS is the communications piece, the marketing or campaigns. Utilizing Resourceful PDX is kind of the way to do that.”

Metro funding & research

In the bigger picture, Portland is a part of something unusual in the United States: an integrated regional government. This regional government, known as Metro, sits between the city and state levels. Metro encompasses three counties and twenty-four cities and provides infrastructure and shared services that localities might not otherwise be able to provide well for themselves.

Metro gets its funds from taxes, bonds, and fees collected from bottles and when people drop their garbage off at the transfer stations, which is why it funds reuse and repair projects. “Ultimately, we’re saving the government money [by] keeping things out of the trash,” says Gross.

The transfer stations (dumps and recycling dropoffs) for twenty-four Oregon cities (including Portland) are operated by Metro. Much of the research funding and program deployment around circular economy and sustainable consumption comes from this localized governing body. Repair PDX and others in the Reuse Collective have even received grant funding from Metro to do their work.

“Metro’s a huge funder through grants,” explained Polacok. “The State of Oregon’s Department of Environmental Quality (or DEQ) also has a materials management grant statewide,” she added.

Similar to the BPS study but larger in scale, Metro is conducting its own reuse study for the region to better understand needs and how to fill them. 

Obstacles & setbacks

Creating a mindset of sustainability among the public is not easy work, nor does it happen very quickly. Cultivating a society-wide practice of sustainable consumption and development amidst a larger economy that prioritizes speed, novelty, and disposability is equally time-consuming.

The pandemic posed significant problems and setbacks for Portland’s government, nonprofits, and communities focused on sustainable consumption and a circular economy.

The necessity and proliferation of single-use items like masks and other rapidly manufactured PPE made sustainability workers question if the greater public would forget about one massive problem (waste) because of the threat posed by another (public health). The lack of physical social proximity also posed a problem for reuse and repair initiatives, which operate mostly as in-person support services. 

Outsides of the effects of the pandemic, Repair PDX, and others in the Reuse Collective have pressing financial and material needs. “Folks are already using the Community Warehouse and ReBuilding Center, but they’re at their max capacity now,” said Gross. “We need more space, we need more infrastructure, we need support from government.”

Growing the circular economy — in Portland and beyond

Despite these challenges, Portland is still leading the way in developing a thriving circular economy. In fact, it has often led the way in sustainable consumption and reuse. Over 50 years ago, Oregon was the first state to pass a bottle bill, which mandated that a redeemable deposit gets paid on each bottle, incentivizing recycling and reuse. Portland also launched the first deconstruction policy in the United States, ensuring that materials are carefully taken apart and reused rather than smashed and taken to a landfill.

In recent years, many other sustainability initiatives have been initiated by people, nonprofits, and public-sector entities. A notable example is that of Clackamas County, which is part of the Metro area. The county recently integrated libraries of things into all branches of its public libraries, so residents can borrow more household items instead of buying them.

When asked about why Portland might be in some ways special for its inroads into expanding sustainable consumption, reuse, and sharing, and a circular economy in general, Polacok and Dabbs had some ideas. For one, the City itself takes an active role in fostering robust civic life. 

“[Portland] had been known in the past for our large neighborhood network. explained Polacok. “We have ninety-plus neighborhood associations in the City of Portland. They are city-funded, volunteer run.”

Dabbs explained further: “That whole system of neighborhood associations and coalitions began in the ‘60s with people banding together to protest what was called the Mount Hood freeway… they didn’t want a freeway cutting through their neighborhoods and coming into downtown. So they banded together, and they won. And what replaced the freeway was the light rail system.”

What’s apparent from conversations with Polacok, Dabbs, and Gross is that all these efforts have been in the works for some time, demonstrating that building a better community, city, and Metro area involves sustained efforts over the course of many years, sometimes many decades.

Certainly, nurturing the social values that get people to think about and behave differently around consumption and waste takes time and multilevel action. Maybe your locality is far along in this process. Maybe it’s not. But as the saying goes, “The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago. The second best time is now.”

Check out these related articles:

• Project Zero incubator program is propelling Victoria’s circular economy forward
• This Vancouver-based initiative is rethinking recovery and just transitions
• These 3 organizations are creating a circular economy through waste-reduction schemes
• How Libraries of Things build resilience, fight climate change, and bring communities together

The post Portland’s circular economy is primed for success. Can it offer a blueprint for the rest of us? appeared first on Shareable.

I chose the Haiti location because I wanted to understand if a small-scale project in such a challenging place could actually improve environmental, financial, and social conditions locally. The only real way to gain that true understanding was to actually experience it for myself.

Haiti has received $13 billion in aid over the past decade—but it is clear that the aid industry has not altered the underlying economic dynamics. Haiti is still the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere. With less than 1% of its original forest remaining, it is also one of the most deforested places on the planet, and one of the most food insecure, with about a quarter of the population undernourished, according to U.N. World Food Program.

By the time I arrived, in January 2022, Haiti had been further isolated by a series of cataclysms and misfortunes. The previous July, Haitian President Jovenel Moïse was assassinated in his home. There had also been a large number of kidnappings, a tropical storm and an earthquake had destroyed lives and infrastructure, and then a couple of days before I arrived, there was an attempt on the life of the prime minister.

All this instability meant that for about half my time at Sadhana Forest, there were only a few international volunteers there: two Israelis and a woman from Germany, who stayed for just a couple of weeks. For the rest of my stay, it was just me, Krichna and Patrick — two long-term Haitian volunteers — and Nixon, the Sadhana Forest Haiti project manager.

Unlike the original project in India, where trees are planted around the forest itself, the reforestation work in Haiti involves planting trees in or close to people’s property. This is because in Haiti trees themselves are commodities, and must be planted where they can be protected. When Haitians are short on cash, some will chop down trees to make charcoal to sell.

This affected which trees we planted. The vast majority were called bwa blanc, the Haitian Creole term for “white wood.” Sometimes people wanted mango or orange, but mostly they wanted bwa blanc. 

Importantly, bwa blanc is not a fruit-bearing tree. Rather, it grows quickly, and the wood from it can be used as building materials.

This confounded me. The project aspired to reforestation and food security, but we were spending our mornings planting trees that would likely get cut down. Yes, carbon still gets sequestered in the wood, but it doesn’t exactly reforest a space in the long-term.

After asking around, I found that this was because people actually didn’t seem to want the fruit and nut trees that the Sadhana Forest website promotes. One species, in particular, Maya Nut, is supposed to be very good for providing all the proteins and nutrients that you would need if you did not consume any animal proteins and fats. 

However, it appeared that virtually no one actually wanted this tree planted near their house or in their fields.

It turns out that Maya Nut is just not part of Haitian culture or cuisine. And even though Sadhana Forest as an organization is vegan, none of the Haitians I met was vegan—or even vegetarian. A couple of times a week, we would go into the village of Ansapit and buy a meal that included fried chicken or fish. 

Veganism also hadn’t caught on because—like so many places in the world—it is not easy in Haiti to get adequate nutrition without eating animals — unlike the original Sadhana Forest in Southern India, where most people are vegetarian already.

This gets to the heart of the idea that solutions need to be community-driven and tailored to local needs and conditions. Transporting a solution that worked in southern India to eastern Haiti didn’t always result in success.

This isn’t to say that Sadhana Forest was not providing valuable services in Haiti. It’s just that from my five weeks there, I saw that the most valuable thing that the organization provided was not trees or a vegan lifestyle—it was clean water.

The tropical storm I mentioned above destroyed both the electrical grid and the water system in Ansapit. So villagers did not have drinkable water or electricity unless they had a well or a generator. Most used rechargeable battery packs, flashlights, and purchased drinkable water in plastic bags.

But Sadhana Forest Haiti has water tanks with solar-powered pumps, and a spigot where dozens of villagers would fill up their buckets and jugs of water each day. Mostly, it was young girls coming after school or while their parents and older siblings were working, struggling to balance five-gallon buckets of water in their arms. Men and women on motorcycles (or the occasional donkey) would come by too.

Sadhana Forest wants to improve the pumps and the batteries so that water can be available at all times of day, but I also found out that the Haiti location already costs more than donations bring in—unlike the India location—so there’s not enough money for this upgrade.

Likewise, residents of Ansapit who could afford them would purchase solar panels to charge devices and run things like wells. But the ground is rocky, and drilling a well is not easy or cheap. 

Not many people have wells.

Most roads in Ansapit are unpaved and rocky. When I was there, only two had street lamps. There was no mail; if you wanted something from a store, you had to cross the border, take an overnight boat, or travel on dangerous mountain roads. The only way to access the internet was through smartphones. The hospital lacked resources to provide care during emergencies, and people died as a result. 

I spent a lot of my free time with Krichna, a 22 year-old Haitian who lives with four family members just outside Sadhana Forest in a tiny two-room structure patched together out of cloth, rope, plastic, and scrap metal. Playful and good-natured, Krichna was great company and generous enough to introduce me to his friends and family. His mother made me coffee—real coffee, which was rare for me there—one morning by heating the water over coals. In the evenings, we would visit his friends, walking and conversing in darkened houses and streets, because electric lighting wasn’t common.

Krichna asked me questions about how to get an education, how to access economic opportunities, how to help improve his family’s housing situation—questions I found difficult to answer. As we looked into options, it became apparent that international systems are pitted against Haitians. Even a visa — which would allow him to legally cross the border into the Dominican Republic to work, go to a bi-weekly market, or open a bank account — is prohibitively expensive. Same for U.S. visas, or any other. And he couldn’t raise money for a college or housing fund: GoFundMe and Venmo don’t work in Haiti.

Haiti has been subjected to centuries of environmental shocks, exploitation, and extraction—often at the hands of foreign powers. In the late 1700s, enslaved Haitians revolted and overthrew French colonists. In retaliation, France made Haitians pay “reparations” for their freedom, amounting to an estimated $21 billion in today’s dollars via direct payments and high-interest loans.

The United States is not innocent either. From 1915 until 1934, the U.S. invaded and occupied Haiti, meddling with its finances and establishing a military dictatorship. In the 1990s, the U.S. conducted another military intervention there. As recently as 2009 and while in contact with U.S. clothing manufacturers that use Haitian labor, the American Embassy pressured the government to keep the minimum wage low.

Though the lasting impacts of colonialism and exploitation are evident in Haiti, I did observe a sanguine spirit of mutual aid throughout my stay there. Haitians helped each other, and were kind to each other, offering their time and energy to each other and their extended families. Nixon, the Sadhana project manager, would help locals access things that they needed. He and his partner even ran a school for children. 

But by the end of my stay, one glaring reality had become apparent: Supplemental foreign aid has its place, but without basic services and critical infrastructure, humans cannot thrive. When constantly victimized and made pariah by the international community, a whole country can be prevented from rising.

As I saw it, Sadhana Forest’s commitment to veganism — or even reforestation — is unlikely to pan out in a small Haitian village as it did in southern India. 

There is nothing I could have read in a book or seen on a website that would have made me understand the nature of the problems faced by those like Krichna. The real truth was found by being there, trying to do one thing, and seeing that it was actually something else that held promise. The real truth is the ground truth. 

Check out these related articles:

• The slums of Mumbai are a wellspring of innovation — and injustice
• Synergy, not disruption: Industry 4.0 meets traditional wisdom in rural Italy
• Association of Olopenses Women provides economic empowerment to rural Guatemalan workers

The post Survival before sustainability: How vegan reforestation in Haiti got stuck appeared first on Shareable.

And still, when it comes to the creation of works of art in our time, the broader society we live in has normalized the archetype of the “starving artist”. Because they create works driven by personal inspiration and an aspiration of beauty, the work of artists isn’t really “labor” and so the artist must do other work to pay the bills—at least this is how the dominant narrative goes.

Yet 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. This will allow freelance artists a stable foundation and organizational support so that they can do the work that we know to be valuable to civilization, now and for centuries to come. And although Guilded is starting with artists, the idea is to expand it to all kinds of workers, to eventually offer a mechanism and platform to extend employee benefits to all those who do freelance work.

Support for freelancers, a growing part of the workforce 

In today’s economy, an increasing share of workers are not employed traditionally, but rather exist as freelancers, contractors, and self-employed workers. In fact, at least a third of all US artists were self-employed, according to a 2019 report by the National Endowment for the Arts. In the US, artists are 3.6 times more likely to be self-employed than the average worker.

When you’re an employee, you have less autonomy over what you’re doing and how you do it. But your employer must provide training, guidance, and materials to do your job, and also benefits like healthcare (if you are a full-time employee) while paying into Social Security, Medicare, and unemployment systems.

Conversely, as a contractor or freelancer, you have the autonomy to provide goods and services in any manner you see fit, in agreement with the organization you are doing work for. But you must also pay state and federal taxes and social systems yourself, account for your own operational expenses, and might even have to pay higher rates to purchase your own benefits.

Freelancers are at a much higher risk of exploitation. [They] don’t enjoy the traditional benefits of the traditional employment contract, often work without benefits, and without legal protection. — Hope Mohr, General Manager of Guilded

Today, freelancers and contractors account for a huge portion of the economy. Even large companies like Google have more contractors than employees. A report by Upwork, a platform that helps freelancers find work, found that over a third (36%) of the US workforce engaged in some kind of freelance work during 2021.

Some services that Guilded offers are not all that uncommon to a traditional worker: the platform offers free or discounted tax prep and access to health benefits. It has a Guaranteed Payment Pool that pays out freelancers on time, even if a client delays payment. “Guilded is for everyone, it’s designed to meet the needs of anyone, any type of freelancer anywhere in the country,” says General Manager Hope Mohr. “Our focus right now is on artists and cultural workers because I feel like that has been a really neglected part of labor organizing.”

Collective benefits, collective power

More than just a set of financial and administrative services, Mohr emphasizes Guilded as a tool for empowering and organizing artists. Guilded aims to go beyond what already exists, facilitating the pooling of resources while leveraging power for artists and freelancers. As a part of its outreach, it offers training and political education on building collective power.

In fact, Guilded got started after being incubated by the United States Federation of Worker Cooperatives (USFWC), a larger organization that provides support and resources to worker-co-ops across US industries.   

Daniel Park, USFWC staff member and contractor for Guilded helped the initiative get its footing. “Guilded members are collectivizing their purchasing power so that they can get discounted or free access to tax prep, healthcare, etc.,” he says. “None of this would be possible if it was just one person. It requires everybody to come together and organize and combine their resources and access.”

Park initially got connected to USFWC through organizing for racial justice in the arts, and sees Guilded as a continuation of that work, because the lack of support and services disproportionately impacts artists from marginalized communities.“That lack of support impacts Black people more. Impacts trans folx more… we’re really moving through all of this not just with a labor framework in mind but also an intersectional framework.” For example, a 2020 report by Human Rights Campaign found that twenty-two percent of transgender adults and thirty-two percent of trans adults of color lack healthcare, significantly higher than 12% for non-LGBTQ adults.  

As an artist, Park is also a Guilded user, having utilized their services for at least four previous client contracts. They’ve helped with contract language but also with handling payment processes. Guilded’s aforementioned “Guaranteed Payment Pool” even took over when one client was late to pay, paying Park on time and collecting payment from the client later. In instances like these, Guilded even has in-house staff follow up with the client so that artists won’t have to.  “There’s another person here who is handling part of this work. It’s not just me anymore, I’m not alone in this anymore, and I’m not the only person looking out for me,” Park says.

Ownership and equity

Guilded’s business model draws from the success of Smart in the European Union, which has been offering employee-style benefits and employee ownership to freelancers for decades now. Guilded uses the same 6.5% fee that Smart uses—charged to clients, not freelancers. The hope is that clients see the value of paying this fee, both in terms of freelancer empowerment, but also because it could reduce administrative overhead for those that use a lot of freelance labor.

As for the model itself, Guilded’s stakeholders consist of three types of users: regular users, freelancer-owners, and employee-owners.

• Regular users are freelancers who can run contracts through the platform and receive benefits through it. 
• Once a regular user uses Guilded enough, they become eligible to buy into the platform as a freelancer-owner. At this point, users have the option to purchase a $100 equity share in Guilded, giving them both decision-making power and a financial investment in the co-op.
• Employee-owners are not necessarily freelancers, but they do the administrative work required to keep Guilded going. They too have governance and equity shares, though their decision making capabilities are different, tailored to the work relevant to their positions. 

“I do think that’s one of the most radical parts of this,” says Park. “How often are freelancers not given ownership over their work and probably don’t feel much ownership either, over their labor?”

Launching out of an experimental phase

Currently, Guilded is in an experimental phase.  “[We are] testing out, ‘Does this work? How does it do in practice? Is it benefiting people?” Park says, adding that developments are being made hand-in-hand with artists. “Not just user metrics but…qualitative; we want to have a conversation with you and hear about how is using Guilded going?”

The idea is to replicate this in other regions of the country, and to eventually include all kinds of freelance and contract workers. In addition to Philadelphia, there is also a Guilded network in the San Francisco Bay Area.

With about 40 active users and many others signed up, Guilded is building at the speed of trust where artists connected with USFWC have preexisting connections to other artists. Soon enough, there may be a cohort of Guilded freelancers near you.

Check out these related articles & resources:

• Art co-ops and the power of mobilizing collaboration for creativity
• A platform to stand on: How artists reap benefits from Stocksy’s cooperative framework
• New co-op helps fans support musicians during pandemic
• A Shareable Explainer: What is a Platform Co-op?

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