Financing & Financial Services

Communities across the world have organized member-owned institutions, both formal and informal, to survive against corporatized financial systems. The most predominant cooperative systems across the world are the Rotating Savings and Credit Associations (ROSCAs).

Four videos celebrating the life and works of this year's Cooperative Hall of Fame inductees.

In this episode of Punchcard, Abbas and I talk about what led to him betraying his politics and values to work at big corporate firms, like KPMG & IHG, and how he eventually managed to escape. 

This study explores the role of solidarity finance in promoting local development and the empowerment of marginalized communities through financial inclusion and access to community credits. It focuses on how solidarity-based financial mechanisms provide accessible credit with fewer barriers, fostering productive activities and economic resilience.

Movers and shakers from Co-op Power, the Old Creamery Co-op, Real Pickles, River Valley Co-op, & UMass Five College Credit Union, Valley Alliance of Worker Cooperatives, Downtown Sounds, Flat Iron coffee house, Neighboring Food Co-op Association, Our Family Farms, & PV Squared.

Dave Darby of Lowimpact.org and Stroud Commons talks with Tom Woodroof of Local Loop Merseyside and Mutual Credit Services about the Credit Commons – a way to federate different groups all over the world that are building the commons economy (because you can’t get everything you need from just your community) – but it does it without centralised control. I want to get more details from Tom about this world-changing initiative.

Transform Finance Executive Director Curt Lyon talks with Jim, Matt, and Josh about their work educating investors about ways to support businesses with a focus on worker empowerment.

In Ghana, a centuries-old financial system called Susu provides an example of effective bottom-up development that contributes meaningfully to reducing poverty and economic inequality.

Using text-as-data techniques, we apply the dictionary to a 15-year sample of credit union (a type of co-operative) and bank (IOFs) annual report texts. The resulting model ranks credit unions and banks on a co-op versus IOF firm scale and identifies credit unions that may be at risk of losing their identity because of their use of IOF language.

Meet the Black women organizers defying anti-Blackness to build a Canadian federation of Rotating Savings and Credit Associations.