Multi-Stakeholder Cooperatives

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

“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?