The Democracy Collaborative

Advisory

We engage with communities and institutions to connect them with innovative strategies, models and training to build community wealth in their neighborhoods.

Research

We build knowledge and leadership for the community wealth building field with cutting-edge research and analysis.

Field Building

We promote & communicate our vision and engage in collaborative partnerships to co-create the community wealth building field.

System Change

We work to raise awareness of the need for systemic change, designing models that better realize fundamental values of equality, democracy, and sustainability.

Our recent work

Community Wealth Building

Fighting inequality with comprehensive and transformative solutions for community economic development.

Cities Building Community Wealth

Submitted by mstearn on November 4th, 2015

Cities Building Community Wealth

In cities across the nation, a few enjoy rising affluence while many struggle to get by. This situation is created in part by the practices of traditional economic development. Current trends threaten to worsen, unless we can answer the design challenge before us. Can we create an economic system—beginning at the local level—that builds the wealth and prosperity of everyone? Read more about Cities Building Community Wealth...

Inequality’s Dead End—And the Possibility of a New, Long-Term Direction

Gar Alperovitz

Nonprofit Quarterly

It is easy to be distracted by what passes for economic news these days, focused as it is on short-term fluctuations and assurances of recovery and revitalization. The simple truth, however, is that year by year, decade by decade, life in the United States is steadily growing ever more unequal.

Developing new models to promote equity and anchor capital in communities.

Broad-Based Ownership Models as Tools for Job Creation and Community Development

Marjorie Kelly, Steve Dubb and Violeta Duncan

As cities wrestle with the growing challenge of wealth inequality, more and more leaders are looking to broad-based ownership models as tools to create jobs and build community wealth. These models are highly effective, with a positive impact for low- and moderate-income individuals and communities. This report looks at six such models—ESOPs, Worker Cooperatives, CDFIs, Social Enterprises, Municipal Ownership, and Emerging Hybrids—with examples of best practices, and explores how these models can be used in community economic development.

Taking Employee Ownership to Scale: Learning + Design Session

Democracy at Work Institute, The Democracy Collaborative

On June 13 and 14, 2016 in Washington, DC, many of the nation’s leading experts in employee ownership, sustainable business and finance, community and economic development, and philanthropy came together in a Learning + Design session. Co-hosts for the meeting were Marjorie Kelly and Jessica Bonanno of The Democracy Collaborative and Camille Kerr of Democracy at Work Institute. The purpose of the session was to discuss how to achieve unprecedented scale of employee ownership by focusing on achieving an audacious goal: 50 million U.S. employee-owners by 2050. This report summarizes and expands upon the June meeting:

Building a stronger network of practice for community wealth builders across the country.

Learning/Action Lab for Community Wealth Building

Our new Learning/Action Lab program helps amplify local capacity to deploy new strategies for building wealth in low-income communities, connecting grassroots leaders with the models and best practices they need for transformative economic development. Our first cohort of Lab participants is bringing together five Native organizations for ongoing training and consultation as they develop new community-owned enterprises.

PolicyLink's Angela Glover Blackwell interviews Ted Howard

Our executive director outlines how community wealth building can help empower marginalized communities. Read more about PolicyLink's Angela Glover Blackwell interviews Ted Howard...

Helping orient our work today as community wealth builders towards the world we want to see tomorrow.

The Pluralist Commonwealth

Our co-founder Gar Alperovitz sketches out the major institutions of a systemic alternative based in plural forms of democratic ownership, oriented around community at various scales—what he has called “The Pluralist Commonwealth.” Visit thenextsystem.org for more resources and information.

Community Wealth Building: Eight Basic Principles

Submitted by john on March 19th, 2018

Based on Ted Howard's remarks to the recent Alternative Models of Ownership conference, we've distilled the eight basic principles behind community wealth building—a transformative approach to local economic development—into this handy one page guide. Read more about Community Wealth Building: Eight Basic Principles...

Engaging with eds, meds, and other anchor institutions to help them help communities.

Higher Education’s Anchor Mission: Measuring Place-Based Engagement

Emily Sladek

Our new report, Higher Education's Anchor Mission, examines how an ongoing—and expanding—effort to track the impact of colleges and universities on the financial and social well-being of their surrounding neighborhoods is helping these anchor institutions align their resources to build stronger community partnerships and create more inclusive local economies.

Evergreen Cooperative Laundry Expands to Second Plant, More than Tripling Its Workforce

Submitted by john on May 9th, 2018

A man wearing scrubs and a hairnet operates industrial laundry machinery

CLEVELAND, OHIO — MAY 10, 2018 Evergreen Cooperative Laundry (ECL) announced a major expansion today in collaboration with Ohio’s second largest employer, taking over management of the Cleveland Clinic’s laundry facility in Cleveland’s Collinwood neighborhood. This additional location complements ECL’s original facility in Glenville. The expansion brings more than 100 new employees into the company, joining the 50 workers employed at the original laundry. Read more about Evergreen Cooperative Laundry Expands to Second Plant, More than Tripling Its Workforce...

Resources to advance community wealth building and help it scale.

The Anchor Mission Playbook

Rush University Medical Center

with support from Chicago Anchors for a Strong Economy (CASE), the Civic Consulting Alliance, and The Democracy Collaborative

Anchor institutions can play a key role in helping the low-income communities they serve by better aligning their institutional resources—like hiring, purchasing, investment, and volunteer base—with the needs of those of communities. The recommendations in this “playbook,” drawn from research carried out to help Rush University Medical Center (RUMC) align around its Anchor Mission, are being published to help other hospitals and health systems accelerate their own efforts to drive institutional alignment with community needs.

Community-Wealth.org

Our Community-Wealth.org site is an essential resource for practitioners and policy makers working to build community wealth. For almost a decade, our site has served as a central clearinghouse for key research and reports from the field, cutting across traditional community development silos and offering a comprehensive guide to local wealth building strategies.

Highlights

Right To Own: A Policy Framework to Catalyze Worker Ownership Transitions

Peter Gowan

Our new report explores the "right to own"—giving workers the right of first refusal anytime their workplace is up for sale—as a strategy to massively scale up employee ownership in the economy. We outline the major provisions and legal changes necessary to enact this right, and the ecosystem of support and financing necessary to make it truly operative for workers.

Read more about Right To Own: A Policy Framework to Catalyze Worker Ownership Transitions...
Building Resiliency through Green Infrastructure: A Community Wealth Building Approach

Submitted by john on March 22nd, 2019

Building Resiliency through Green Infrastructure: A Community Wealth Building Approach

Worker coops and social enterprises can build the green stormwater infrastructure our cities need for climate resiliency—while also building community wealth. Read more about Building Resiliency through Green Infrastructure: A Community Wealth Building Approach...
Marjorie Kelly on employee ownership and community wealth

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Read more about Marjorie Kelly on employee ownership and community wealth...
January 2019 Anchor Collaborative Convening

Submitted by john on March 18th, 2019

From January 16th to 18th, 2019 the second Anchor Collaborative Convening brought together 55 leaders and champions of anchor collaboratives from 25 communities across the US and Canada. The Democracy Collaborative would like to extend our immense gratitude to New Orleans Business Alliance (NOLABA), The Annie E. Casey Foundation, and to all of our participants who brought thoughtful, fun and creative energy throughout.
Read more about January 2019 Anchor Collaborative Convening...
Urban and Metropolitan Universities: The Transformative Power of Anchor Institutions

Emily Sladek, Guest Editor

‘Urban and Metropolitan Universities: The Transformative Power of Anchor Institutions’ focuses on the role of urban and metropolitan universities as anchor institutions in their community to address long standing inequities. Anchor institutions are nonprofit or public institutions that are rooted in place. These institutions have a mission to serve and are the largest employers and purchaser of goods and services in many communities. Also, they have other assets and capacities that can be leveraged to support reciprocal community development, including local hiring, procurement, and investment practices. Anchor mission strategies involve the entire university, including the business, community partnership, administrative, research and academic divisions.
Metropolitan Universities journal (MUJ) is the Coalition of Urban and Metropolitan Universities’ quarterly online journal. This special issue, guest edited by The Democracy Collaborative's Emily Sladek, is an initiative of TDC and CUMU's Higher Education Anchor Mission Initiative.

Read more about Urban and Metropolitan Universities: The Transformative Power of Anchor Institutions...
An Indigenous Approach to Community Wealth Building: A Lakota Translation

Submitted by john on November 16th, 2018

An Indigenous Approach to Community Wealth Building: A Lakota Translation

Stephanie Gutierrez, co-founder of Hope Nation LLC, explores hows effective community wealth building in Native communities depends on an active process of cultural translation. Read more about An Indigenous Approach to Community Wealth Building: A Lakota Translation...
Our Common Wealth: The return of public ownership in the United States

Thomas Hanna

Public ownership is more widespread and popular in the United States than is commonly understood. This book is the most comprehensive and up-to-date analysis of the scope and scale of U.S. public ownership, debunking frequent misconceptions about the alleged inefficiency and underperformance of public ownership and arguing that it offers powerful, flexible solutions to current problems of inequality, instability, and unsustainability- explaining why after decades of privatization it is making a comeback, including in the agenda of Jeremy Corbyn's Labour Party in Britain. Hanna offers a vision of deploying new forms of democratized public ownership broadly, across multiple sectors, as a key ingredient of any next system beyond corporate capitalism. This book is a valuable, extensively researched resource that sets out the past record and future possibilities of public ownership at a time when ever more people are searching for answers.
Buy on Amazon * Buy from a local independent bookseller

Read more about Our Common Wealth: The return of public ownership in the United States...
Connecting healthcare anchors and communities

Submitted by john on October 22nd, 2018

Our twice-annual Healthcare Anchor Network (HAN) convenings are largely designed as spaces for the over 35 member hospitals and health systems to roll up their sleeves and get to work building collaborative tools and strategies to advance the anchor mission. But we also like to take time to zoom out, put big questions on the table, and connect with social innovators and community leaders in our host city. Read more about Connecting healthcare anchors and communities...

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