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Catalyzing worker co-ops & the solidarity economy

Multi-Stakeholder Cooperatives

Businesses that are owned and democratically controlled by multiple stakeholders. This can include workers, consumers, producers, and/or community members.

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September 26, 2024

Diversity of Perspectives Benefits Multi-Stakeholder Co-ops

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Summary

In contrast to traditional co-operatives that are owned by a single class of members, multi-stakeholder co-operatives are owned and controlled by more than one type of membership class such as consumers, producers, workers, volunteers, or community supporters. Stakeholders can be individuals or organizations such as non-profits, businesses, government agencies, or even other co-operatives.

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August 8, 2024

The Potential of Data Cooperatives in the Nonprofit and Social Service Sectors

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Data management and work in nonprofit and social service agencies is generally less developed than the big data storage and analysis systems of platform capitalism. Data work in nonprofits is increasingly central to their operation, however, and the sector is experiencing rapid adoption of corporate data platforms. Given the value commitments of the sector, and this unique moment of development, the sector also presents strong opportunities for cooperativization.

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August 5, 2024

Insights into GAS: Solidarity Purchasing Groups

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Discover what it means to be part of a Solidarity Purchase Group (GAS) through the interview with Vincenzo Vizioli, president of Aiab Umbria. With a journey that began in the late 1980s, Vincenzo explains how his choice for organic and biodynamic farming has evolved into a model of sustainability, cooperation, and mutualism.

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March 4, 2024

Other Avenues Grocery Cooperative

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Celia LoBuono Gonzalez joins us on the show this episode to share her story and that of Other Avenues Grocery Cooperative.

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February 19, 2024

May First Movement Technology: Digital Radicalism

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Resistance in the digital environment demands that we center our values, intentions, and dreams, focusing on other ways to live, be, and know. May First Movement Technology is a cooperative (primarily based in the United States and Mexico) that aims to put these values into practice: digital media that supports social struggles and grassroots movements working to create the world we know is possible.

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January 8, 2024

Creating a Support System for Platform Cooperatives in Thailand

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In Thailand, several traditional cooperatives are offering products and services through digital platforms. While these may be considered Platform Co-ops, their primary revenue does not stem from the platform but from conventional business operations. This differs from the focus of this blog article, which refers to businesses that operate online through websites or mobile apps and are characterized by democratic decision-making and platform ownership by workers and users.

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November 30, 2023

Artisans Cooperative: An Etsy alternative, owned and run by artists and makers

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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.

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September 25, 2023

Mapping a Local Landscape of Care and Belonging

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Equal Care Coop and Clapton Commons are mapping a local landscape of care and support in Clapton Common, Upper Clapton. Using KUMU, a powerful system mapping platform, we are creating an interactive map that makes the often invisible grassroots networks of care and support more visible and accessible to people giving and receiving care.

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August 10, 2023

Activating the Unrealised Potential of Care Networks

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Equal Care's pilot in Commons-based care in Hackney builds on five years of work developing and delivering a ‘teams model’ of home care in Calderdale, Yorkshire.

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May 8, 2023

Owning Together: Worker-Consumer Co-ops in Conversation

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“Multi-stakeholder” co-ops have become popular in recent years, but what does it really mean to bring different groups together for common ownership and governance?