Years spent working with Boston’s immigrants and homeless convinced Josefina Luna of one thing: If they were ever going to find a way out of poverty, they would have to do it themselves by working together.
In November 2013, Luna and a handful of entrepreneurs from some of the city’s poorest neighborhoods founded Cooperative Energy, Recycling and Organics, a worker-owned co-op that aimed to create green jobs by helping businesses compost to comply with a state law requiring, as of last October, grocery stores and restaurants disposing of one ton or more of food per week to divert it from landfills.
There was one problem: The co-op had no money.
“Lenders said we were too big of a risk because we hadn’t been in business three years and we didn’t have our own capital,” said Lor Holmes, CERO’s business manager. “We tried to go to nonprofit foundations, but they didn’t want to give us money either.”
So the co-op turned to a unique financing strategy, selling shares of stock in their business through a direct public offering, with a minimum goal of $100,000.
By June 10, when the DPO ended, CERO had raised more than $30,000 in donations and another $340,000 from 83 investors, whom the co-op hopes to award an annual 4 percent dividend.
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