Cooperative Business Models Flourish in Hawaiʻi

Hardly a month goes by without another scare story about aspects of our health and care services. The prosecutions at Winterbourne View, and the massive collapse and public sector rescue of Southern Cross are seen by many as symptomatic of a care service system in crisis.

Is there a democratically accountable ownership model for health and care services that could make a difference? Could the active membership and co-operative ownership of workers, service users, volunteers and family members rebuild public trust in services and put an end to cruelty and neglect through a socially inclusive solution where the system of care is owned by the recipients?

Read the full article at The Guardian

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The list of benefits for cooperative ownership can go on and on. So why aren’t there more of them? Why isn’t there a cooperative grocery in every neighborhood? Why are the vast majority of small businesses still only using conventional ownership models?

Perhaps one reason is that cooperatives are essentially locked out of the $20-25 billion in federally guaranteed small business loans that private lenders make every year. The Capital for Cooperatives Act, a new bill introduced by newly elected U.S. Senator John Hickenlooper of Colorado, aims to change that. It comes after at least a decade of advocacy from the cooperative business sector.

“We’re glad to see that after all of these years of efforts this finally culminated in this legislative proposal to push this across the finish line,” says Kate LaTour, director of advocacy at NCBA-CLUSA, the main trade association for cooperatively owned business across the country.

Read the rest at Next City

"The Catalan Integrated Cooperative (CIC) began two years ago; it now has 850 members and several thousand people who participate in debates and projects. Under the label "integrated," the Cooperative functions as a political project seeking to tie together consumer and labor initiatives "and many others, such as education, mechanisms to create a cooperative basic income, eco-stores, collective stores, meetings and events, and a legal structure to help the formation of eco-networks and other similar projects in Catalonia," explains its communication team.

The Catalan Integrated Cooperative is a step beyond consumer cooperatives, because it also seeks out the contribution of services, creating a network of trust that allows the people associated with the Cooperative to cover many of their basic needs, with a will to transform" explains Gema Palamós from the legal team. Legally, the CIC is a ’mixed cooperative’ according to Spanish and Catalan law, meaning that it doesn’t limit itself to any one activity.

The term "integrated" alludes to the Cooperative’s political project, although it’s not a second-level cooperative—a cooperative whose partners are also cooperative members. Rather, it’s a "first-level cooperative whose partners are physical people" clarifies Palamós. The project brings together various eco-networks that function throughout Catalonia, connecting them and providing a legal structure for the physical people associated with them. This legal structure benefits the CIC in financial and legal terms, as well as in labor matters. "If we all were conscious of the advantages of the cooperative model when it’s goal isn’t profit, but rather living from your work, there would be a lot more cooperative projects," points out Palamós." (https://www.diagonalperiodico.net/blogs/diagonal-english/from-critique-to-construction-the-integrated-cooperative-in-catalonia.html)

Go to the full CIC wiki at the P2P Foundation

Go to the CIC homepage

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Smith reports that in 2020 three firms—DoorDash, Uber Eats, and Grubhub—controlled 93 percent of the restaurant food delivery market (DoorDash had a 45 percent market share, Uber Eats 30 percent, and Grubhub 18 percent).

A silver lining, however, is the emergence of local delivery services. Smith in her report profiles 20 of them—notably, 15 of the 20 firms she profiles were founded in 2020 or 2021. If you do the math, it is obvious that the market share of these upstart firms remains small. It is also highly likely that not every one of the new local firms will make it. After all, as the pandemic subsides and restaurants reopen to full capacity, the number of delivered meals is likely to fall. Nonetheless, many of these businesses may succeed, and if they do, they can help retain more wealth in local communities.

Writing in the Guardian, reporter Sophie Atkinson notes that the CoopCycle delivery service, which began in France in 2017, “now has 67 co-ops across seven countries in its ‘federation’ and has extended from Europe to Canada and Australia.” And, as Smith details, a similar movement has taken hold in many US cities.

As Smith points out, all these businesses are based in some measure on a similar idea: If you are not seeking to extract large profits for Wall Street investors, that gives the business more room to charge local restaurants less and pay workers more. That said, a single dominant business model has yet to emerge. Instead, Smith outlines multiple distinct business models that are in development.

Read the rest at Nonprofit Quarterly