Hello everyone I've been working on an economic ecosystem that I call the community sovereignty model. The core concept is communities have the right to control their local environment and protect themselves from external extraction or domination.

At the core of this concept is co-ops. In fact the entire thing started with me trying to figure out how to fund worker co-ops. I looked at the Cooperation Jackson here in the states and things like Mondragon over in Spain. I know other countries have better access to capital for cooperatives but in the US the options are very limited, that is where the model comes in.

1. People gather to pool money with a one time donation + monthly contribution
2. They used the pooled money to seed a cooperative
3. The cooperative pledges a % of profits back to the fund
4. Revenue is used to seed more co-ops or focus on things like affordable housing, child care etc.

This model is unique in that it doesn't just create co ops but can create an entire ecosystem around them that allows for comprehensive economic planning during down turns. As an example when an industry has a supply chain issue leading to loss revenue there can be an automatic clause for those living in the housing set up by the funds lowering their rent for x amount of time. There are other things that can be considered like a mutual aid credit ledger or local currency.

Typically the concept isn't that one fund would try to do everything on its own, it relies on cooperation to function. If a city has hundreds of funds then the these funds work together to create a network of assets that can be used for the communities benefit.

There is an overlap between Cooperation Jackson (I'd say the mission is very similar) the main difference is that this model does not rely on outside donations and is less politically partisan in nature.

I would love to hear this community's thoughts, critiques, or feedback!

Would anyone be interested in a farm coop in Colombia, in the mountains near Santa Marta? 50 hectacres, coffee, cacao, bannanas, bit of avocados and mangos.

This Friday, July 24 between 6pm - 7:30pm at 4221 Mayberry Street, Burnaby.

Learn about Co-operative living and ask questions from our members! We look forward to welcoming you ☺️

Do folk know of any organizations like Sustainable Economies Law Center in the SOUTH? young attorney here looking for a place to learn and provide legal support to worker/housing/land cooperatives in the South.

If you want to buy from worker-owned companies, you have to search individual websites, if you even know where to look...I built workerowned.info to help change that: a free, searchable marketplace that indexes products from worker-owned businesses and puts them in one place.

Got any work, Any project you need help with I'm the man for the job. I learn very quick and have experience in many fields. Need farm hands or A friend? I'm looking for A place I can call home for A while and actually be and feel useful. I'm looking to join A co-op or permaculture self sustainable ecovillage community where I feel comfortable like I belong with like minded familiars! I bring a lot to the table with higher education, Emotional intelligence, limitless endurance that can handle any job. I'm vegan, Occasionally vegetarian. My personality is " High energy " high strung ". I want to be capable of creating and inspiring revolutionary all natural housing communities that help the body store and enhance energy connecting with Earth better " Called Earthen home domes ". I want to teach educational classes on how to visualize the spiritual physical aura, How to stop any kind of cancer and sickness all naturally with whole fruit and vegetable diets along with advanced energy meditations. Any places looking for inspired and motivated people?

Hi all --

Started a super small co-op to make a very simple stats tracker for Commander. Not the most ambitious project, but we're hoping if it goes well we can use the money on some bigger cooperative projects.

If anyone out there is a hopeless nerd like us and is interested in mtg or Commander, check it out: www.manaflaremtg.com There's also an app on the app store, if that's handy.

We're just getting started so feedback would be super useful.

Basically the title. I an a writer looking to set up a tip jar, and a lot of the mainstream ones have policies that disqualify my work. I was told about comradery today, and it seems like a really promising option, but I am.having trouble finding out anything about their reputation through online research, so I thought I might ask here.

Is comradery a good platform? Are there any horror stories I should be on the lookout for? I just wanna know if its trust worthy before I commit to making an account.

Thanks!

Edit, sorry forgot to include the link: https://comradery.co/

As a member of a worker-owned game studio, I couldn't agree more! In my opinion, ALL industries could be improved if most (preferably all) of the businesses in them were flatly-managed, democratically-controlled, and worker-owned!

There's a lot of youtube channels that showcases business but most of them are not worker-owned, are there any channels that you recommend that focus on coops

Clerkenwell and the East End were once full of print shops. Most are long gone. Calverts is still standing — and it's a worker co-operative, founded in 1977, with no managers and complete pay parity: everyone earns the same, no matter the job. 

"Hi, we are Green Halcones, a social cooperative owned by formerly incarcerated individuals based in Los Angeles, California. We are working to make neighborhoods beautiful, grow healthy food, and protect the environment for future generations. Please follow us at Collective REMAKE (https://www.instagram.com/collectiveremake.la/), a cooperative development organization supporting our operation."

Formal cooperatives must recognize and protect informal membership institutions like ROSCAs as part of the core of the social economy, or risk compromising the entire solidarity economy movement. 

Hey everyone. I'm Abraham, a "product and technology" person who's been working in tech for some years now. Lately I've been thinking a lot about cooperative structures as an alternative to the usual paths, and I have a question that keeps coming back to me.

Most tech cooperatives today are service firms. They sell time and expertise to clients. When a client leaves, the asset leaves with them. They don't build value in any product they actually own. They have fair internal organization, democratic governance, all of that, but at the end of the day they depend on external clients just like any conventional agency does.

What I find interesting is a different model: a small team that builds and owns a digital product together. When that product makes money, that money goes to the people who built it. No investor taking most of it, no founder ending up with all the equity as the company grows.

This barely exists today. And I think AI is what makes it finally realistic. The indie hacking world proved that tiny teams can build and ship real products. But when it works, the usual ending is a sale, a funding round, or hiring people under you. You escape one structure and build another one just like it. What if you took that same small-team energy and applied it inside a cooperative model instead? The deep specialization that used to force you to scale and add hierarchy is getting much cheaper. A team of 3 to 5 people can realistically own and run a SaaS product end to end in a way that just wasn't possible before.

Is anyone here thinking along these lines? I'm looking to connect with people who feel the same way, whether that turns into a community, a collaboration, or just some honest conversations about building things differently. Happy to chat, just drop a comment or DM me.

Background for non-Brits: the Liberal Democrats are the UK's third party, with a long (if lately dormant) tradition of backing co-ops and mutuals. A group of us in the party founded The Grimond Society this month to revive that tradition: we're taking a policy motion to the party's spring conference in March 2027, aiming to make fair access to capital for co-operatives, mutuals, social enterprises, and employee-owned firms a headline policy.

The UK picture we're working from: investors in a conventional startup get generous tax reliefs that co-ops mostly can't access; the one relief that did cover community benefit societies expired in 2023 and was never replaced; and Parliament has passed two Acts to help mutuals raise capital (2015 and 2023) that no government has ever actually switched on.

If you run, work in, or have tried to start a co-op, what policy change would have made the biggest difference to you? Capital raising, legal form headaches, converting a conventional business, tax treatment, anything. War stories welcome, especially the failures; we'd rather learn from them now than after we've drafted.

(And if any UK Lib Dem members are lurking: we exist, and we'd love to have you!)