Join Us for: Steps to Organizing a Cooperative!
Register Here

Perhaps you’ve shopped at your local food co-op and wondered how a group of people in your community came together to successfully build an amazing grocery store. Or maybe you were inspired by the worker co-op that installed your solar panels. Have you ever wondered just how that group of 50 residents collectively govern and run their housing? You might be in awe over the beautiful jewelry artists in your town are selling since they formed an artists co-op to share space, marketing, and resources.

In 2021, CW is launching a webinar series focused on steps to organizing a cooperative. These webinars will focus of different sector approaches and development processes that create thriving member-owned businesses across sectors, locations, and industries. Join us on May 6th as Margaret Bau, long-time Cooperative Developer with USDA Rural Development, leads us through the organic apporach to starting a cooperative. Learn about the co-op development process from the time a group contacts a co-op development center with an idea to the time the doors open! She’ll cover the essential steps of cooperative development, where the group should make go/no-go decisions, and how cooperative developers support the process at each stage.

Future webinars in this series will feature sector specific approach for housing, consumer food co-ops, and worker-ownership conversions. We’ll also explore how various development approaches, like business incubators and co-op academies.

Spanish interpretation will be available throughout this webinar series.

Please register for the webinar here. While we are offering this webinar at no cost, you are welcome and encouraged to make a donation to support the creation of this webinar series and CW’s work.