These are two videos about co-operative business models that are having some success. Evergreen Cooperatives is in Cleveland, OH and they've got some really cool businesses as part of the coop including a large-scale solar installer and a huge greenhouse producing tons of lettuce and herbs for the community. Their model was based on the Mondragon Corporation from Spain which is incredibly successful with 2008 revenues of 16.77 billion Euros.
While this is not really an investment that is available to the general public, the employees are able to invest after 6 months of working in the company and then grow their ownership stake and share in the profits. The effect that this has on a community's economic development is huge. The key here is for the large purchasers of services in the region (Universities, hospitals, local governments, large local corporations, etc.) to exclusively source their services from these local cooperative providers. This maintains and in fact ends up building community wealth through the employee ownership model.
My big question here is how to start something like this. Would a group of socially and environmentally responsible businesses in the Puget Sound region band together and begin to offer this employee re-investment program? What would the benefit to these existing companies be? Would it be more likely that a large endowment or foundation would have to go in an purchase these companies with the goal of selling them back incrementally to the workers? If anyone has some experience or knowledge of cooperative operations please chime in because I feel like I've got a lot of energy around this idea.
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