David Lynn, Lauren Grattan, Elias Crim
Fund Profile: Mission Driven Finance
This community investment fund is unafraid of financial innovation and is emerging as a new platform for reinventing effective impact investing.
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Daniel Wortel-London
Two Great Documentary Films about Cooperatives
Historian Daniel Wortel-London reviews two excellent documentaries about co-ops, one a closeup look at the impact of Mondragon in the local culture and the other a keen examination of the meaning of economic democracy.
David Lynn, Lauren Grattan, Elias Crim
Fund Profile: Mission Driven Finance
This community investment fund is unafraid of financial innovation and is emerging as a new platform for reinventing effective impact investing.
Celeste Serra
Cooperatives in Argentina’s Time of Need
Argentine correspondent Celeste Serra provides some history of cooperativism in her country following 2001’s financial crisis and a sketch of hopes for growth under the current cooperative-friendly national administration.
Felipe Witchger
My Investing Journey (Part Two)
Turning from the condition he calls capital supremacy to the practice of ethical action in the role of individual investor, OM publisher Felipe Witchger outlines his own approach and offers suggestions for getting under way.
Steve Dubb, Elias Crim
A Conversation with Steve Dubb of Nonprofit Quarterly (Part One)
Steve Dubb is unusually attuned to the shift the U.S. is undergoing on questions of economy. He talks with us about neoliberalism’s waning credibility and what Nonprofit Quarterly, his employer, represents as an institution of and amid a time of change.
Elias Crim
At the Intersection of Property, Power, and Place: Community Land Trusts
Community land trusts in the U.S. are a legacy of the 1960s and Civil Rights, representing ideals of stewardship, co-responsibility and democracy still older and more universal. In this century the structure’s importance deepens and expands here and worldwide. On Common Ground tells the story.
Felipe Witchger
My Investing Journey (Part One)
Ownership Matters publisher Felipe Witchger sketches out in two parts the way his thinking about investing well — the urgency and the possibilities — became re-oriented. In this installment: the purposeful investor’s dilemma.
Margo Dalal, Elias Crim
Fund Profile: Detroit Community Wealth Fund
Detroit may not have a sizable cooperative business community, but it is fertile ground. DCWF’s executive director tells of partnering with local neighborhood development orgs and Seed Commons to grow this fund and incubator.
Rob Everts, Elias Crim
A Conversation about the Impact of Equal Exchange with Rob Everts
The Equal Exchange story begins, formally, on May Day in 1986, with a more-than-symbolic challenge to Reagan-era U.S. trade posture. Long-time former CEO Rob Everts talks with us about the cooperative’s journey, values and impact.
Micha Josephy, Elias Crim
Fund Profile: Cooperative Fund of New England
CFNE’s Executive Director talks about the 45-year-old fund’s position of strength entering the pandemic period last year as well as the evolution in focus and strategy it continues to undergo.
Rebecca Fisher-McGinty
Mondragon and the Sovereignty of Labor
Rebecca Fisher-McGinty spent time in Mondragon, in Spain, in the course of studies in cooperative management. She came away with lessons in the power and priority of the worker in a community whose members are the owners of its economic institutions.
Issue 6|
What is a Co-op Holding Company?
Joseph Cureton, Elias Crim
Fund Profile: Obran Cooperative
Co-founder Joseph Cureton talks about Obran’s holding-company structure, the strategic vision underlying, and some challenges encountered on the path to realizing that vision.
Greg Brodsky
How to Invest in Cooperatives (Part Two)
What exactly is the character of difference between investing in cooperative enterprises and conventional investing? Here’s an overview of the whys and wherefores.
Issue 5|
How to Invest in Cooperatives
Greg Brodsky
How to Invest in Cooperatives (Part One)
Cooperative entrepreneurs and business investors who want their investments to fight wealth inequality face some obstacles to working together. These challenges can be overcome with understanding.
Kathy Gregg, Elias Crim
What the Movement for Worker Ownership Really Needs
Kathy Gregg argues that the cause for worker-owned businesses in the U.S. is burdened by over-emphasis on “scalability” and under-emphasis on (right-sized) growth.
Leo Sammallahti
Europe Report: The “Secret” of Finnish Cooperativism
Finland stands out in Europe for the success of its cooperative sector. Why, how? Some insight can be drawn from a look at the later years of the 19th century — and, again, of the 20th.
Issue 3|
Building World-Class Jobs
Elias Crim
Fund Profile: Main Street Phoenix Project
Launched to meet the challenge of pandemic and disaster capitalism, the Main Street Phoenix Project turns acquisition, restructure and sale convention on its head — handing employees the keys and giving them the tools to stay in business as well.
Camille Kerr, Elias Crim
A Conversation with Camille Kerr of ChiFresh Kitchen
“We focus on formerly incarcerated people because that’s where the barriers are.” ChiFresh Kitchen, jump-started under unlikely conditions in early 2020, has a solid business footing and a vision for growth.
Elias Crim
Lessons from Sara Horowitz’s New Book on Mutualism
Drawing on U.S. labor-movement and New-Deal-era history, Sara Horowitz urges a bottom-up approach to public policy to build cooperative-ecosystem density and “patient capitalist” perspective.
Issue 2|
Mapping the Ecosystem
Elias Crim
Fund Profile: Community Equity Fund of Asheville, NC
How Stephanie Swepson-Twitty, Eagle Market Streets CEO, and Kevin Jones, Faith+Finance co-founder, began collaborating to address a critical business-funding gap in their Buncombe-County home area of western North Carolina.
Issue 1|
Are You Seeing What We’re Seeing?
Kevin Jones
Fund Profile: Seed Commons Founder Brendan Martin
Seed Commons’ founder Brendan Martin’s vision is for a cooperative fund of funds enabling community-based financing — and his vision is working.