The Democracy Collaborative and Common Wealth is undertaking a project in 2020 to explore the frontiers of public ownership in the 21st century in both the US and UK. We will develop policy ideas in four areas where existing structures of ownership amplify corporate power, erode workers’ rights

Democratic, public ownership of pharmaceutical development, production, and distribution in the U.S. is necessary to combat the increasingly harmful impacts of Big Pharma which decades of regulation have failed to counteract.

For In These Times, Adam Simpson and Thomas Hanna write about how North Dakota’s radical history carries valuable lessons for today’s public banking movement. One hundred years ago July 28, a bank in Bismarck, N.D., opened its doors for the very first time. This would have been an unremarkable event

The Making of a Democratic Economy is a clarion call for a movement ready to get serious about transforming our economic system. Illuminating the principles of a democratic economy through the stories of on-the-ground community wealth builders and their unlikely accomplices in the halls of institutional power, this book is a must read for everyone concerned with how we win the fight for an economy that’s equitable, not extractive.

Mission-led employee-owned firms embody a powerful model of enterprise design for a new era of environmental sustainability and social equity. This report shares the story of this emerging model, embodied in 50-plus firms that are employee-owned B Corporations and benefit corporations, plus dozens

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

The Democracy Collaborative’s Marjorie Kelly on how we create a democratic economy.

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 inequalities.

Matthew J. Burke explores just economic transitions and long-term strategies for energy democracy in the journal Energy Research & Social Science. In his article, Burke highlights the thought leadership and guidance of the Democracy Collaborative: Energy democracy is an emergent social movement

The Democracy Collaborative’s testimony to the U.K.’s leading progressive think tank on how to bring about a thoroughgoing democratization of our political economy. In the fall of 2017, Institute for Public Policy Research reached out to The Democracy Collaborative requesting evidence from the U.S. on broad-based ownership strategies and recommendations for how wealth can be generated and shared more equally.

Writing for 1812, Sarah Al-Khayyal writes an introductory article on Community Wealth development. In 1812, the article highlights the different strategies proposed by The Democracy Collaborative: “Community wealth building is ‘a systems approach to economic development that creates an inclusive

A new report by Mary Ann Beyster, president and trustee of the Foundation for Enterprise Development (FED), published by the Fifty by Fifty initiative of The Democracy Collaborative, examines the investing landscape for potential opportunities in employee ownership. The report, Impact Investing and Employee Ownership, reports on the results from six months of research, showing that the opportunities for impact investors to support employee ownership are limited, but that an investing infrastructure is beginning to emerge across asset classes.

This report by Mary Ann Beyster, president and trustee of the Foundation for Enterprise Development (FED), discusses the investing landscape for potential opportunities in employee ownership.

While employee-owned businesses have historically used a wide range of financial tools, the role of private equity and impact investors has been limited to date. In a meeting convened by the Fifty by Fifty Initiative, the Foundation for Enterprise Development, and the Rutgers School of Management and Labor Relations, participants took a deeper look at barriers, opportunities and resources for connecting the gaps between investors and employee-owned firms.

This report from The Democracy Collaborative explores ways in which impact investors can help build an inclusive economy by accelerating the growth of broad-based ownership models — worker cooperatives, social enterprises, employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs), hybrid enterprises, and municipal enterprise.

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. 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 meeting.

Originally published in Rooflines: The Shelterforce blog on July 7, 2016. Since 2010, 60 percent of new cooperative worker-owners are people of color and more than two thirds of total worker-owners are women. These are some of the findings from Cooperative Growth Ecosystem: Inclusive Economic

The City of Rochester’s Office of Innovation has been coordinating a project to develop worker-owned cooperative businesses as part of a comprehensive wealth building strategy for Rochester, New York. The Democracy Collaborative completed this study in February 2016, which documented the incredible potential for the project, a high degree of community support including local Anchor Institution buy-in, as well as several potential business niches for future worker-owned businesses.

At age 60, when many of her friends are considering retirement, Josefina Luna is chair of the board of CERO Cooperative Inc. CERO is a five-member worker-owned cooperative on a mission to encourage composting and create jobs in the hard-up Boston neighborhoods of Roxbury, Dorchester, and East Boston

How can we scale up the cooperative movement without losing our cooperative values? That is the question contributors seek to answer in this collection of essays. Contributors include Hilary Abell, Michael Johnson, Joe Guinan and Caitlin Quigley, along with contributing editors Thomas Hanna, Andrew McLeod and Len Krimerman.

In the years since the financial crisis and Great Recession of the late 2000s, growing numbers of people in the United States have come to the realization that the current economic and political system is profoundly dysfunctional. Public concern continues to grow over increasing disparities of wealth and income, deteriorating social and environmental outcomes, and the dangers of vesting power in large hierarchical organizations – whether private corporations or government agencies.

This report showcases some key emerging best practices in state and local policy-making to support community wealth building — designed to support economic inclusion goals, create quality jobs with family-supporting wages, address generational poverty, stabilize communities and the environment, and address growing wealth inequality.

Earlier this month, the small city of Somerset, Kentucky drew national attention when it opened a municipally-owned and -operated fuel center in an effort to drive down gas prices for local residents. As a result of its proximity to Lake Cumberland, a popular tourist destination, the city of 11,000 residents has long struggled with high fuel prices—especially during the summer months between Memorial Day and Labor Day.

Though they end up as owners and decision-makers, workers in low-income communities often don’t start off doing all the work of developing and growing a worker-owned cooperative themselves. This is even true for the Mondragón Cooperative Corporation, the world’s single largest worker cooperative network and a leading source of inspiration for efforts to build worker cooperatives to scale in the United States.

The new Democracy Collaborative report, Worker Cooperatives: Pathways to Scale, aims to help build the field of U.S. worker co-op development by providing a current view of the cooperative landscape and by analyzing factors that inhibit or promote cooperative development. The report is authored by

In These Times talks to Hilary Abell, author of the Democracy Collaborative report “Worker Cooperatives: Pathways to Scale,” about New York City’s move to invest $1.2 million in worker cooperatives.

Seattle‘s minimum wage ordinance is one step toward lessening inequality and poverty compounded by low-wage work. But there are still many challenges ahead. Cooperative development is one tool in the community wealth building strategy toolbox that can help lift low-wage workers, and especially women, out of poverty.

Today, corporate profits are at an all-time high and employee wages are at their lowest ever as a percent of GDP. Worker cooperatives embody the hope that we can reverse the downward spiral in wage stagnation, wealth distribution, and concentration of ownership to build an economy that truly serves people and communities. But what will it really take to create a more cooperative economy?

The broad appeal of the ‘Cleveland Model’ and of community wealth building in general is becoming evident in a growing number of communities around the country, and—increasingly—overseas as well.

Worker cooperatives are an important part of the community wealth building toolbox, and our new report Worker Cooperatives, Pathways to Scale, authored by Hilary Abell, assesses the state of worker cooperative development in the United States and suggests key strategies and policies for scaling up its impact.

Since our last posting on Boulder’s municipalization efforts, the city has taken another big step forward and succeeded in creating its own power and light utility. Through the continued efforts of an informed, engaged, and environmentally conscious citizenry, Boulder is moving closer to its goal of significant emissions reductions through local control of its energy system.

This paper aims to help build the field of U.S. worker co-op development by providing a current view of the cooperative landscape and by analyzing factors that inhibit or promote cooperative development. Although informed by the cooperative giants in Europe, this analysis highlights lessons learned through the development and growth of worker co-ops in the U.S.

Democracy Collaborative senior fellows Marjorie Kelly and Joe Guinan and senior researcher Thomas Hanna each contribute chapters to a new free e-book, Democratic Wealth: Building a Citizens’ Economy. The authors discuss economic institutions, alternative economic system designs, and forms of

Democracy Collaborative Research Director Steve Dubb along with Executive Director Ted Howard and Research Associate Sarah McKinley contributed the chapter “Economic Democracy” to the two-volume encyclopedia, Achieving Sustainability, now available courtesy of Gale Publishing. They outline the history of the economic democracy movement, highlighting community wealth building strategies such as community development finance institutions and cooperatives.

Community land trusts are a key strategy for helping low-income communities build assets through home ownership while mitigating the destructive consequences of irrational, speculation-fueled housing markets. Our new infographic highlights the mechanism behind the community land trust.

Melissa Hoover is the Executive Director of the United States Federation of Worker Cooperatives (USFWC), the national membership organization for worker cooperatives, founded in 2004. She is also a founding director of the nonprofit Democracy at Work Institute, which provides technical assistance resources to worker cooperatives.

On November 5th, residents of Boulder, Colorado went to the polls to decide whether or not the city should continue on its path towards a locally controlled public utility devoted to expanding renewable energy and reducing carbon emissions. At issue was ballot question 310, an initiative backed by the existing corporate provider Xcel Energy that would have crippled the city’s municipalization efforts by placing severe debt and other restrictions on the process.

Democracy Collaborative co-founder Gar Alperovitz and community development associate Keane Bhatt provide 10 concrete action steps that individuals and groups can take to foster democratic economies and build community wealth. Using on-the-ground examples, they show how to engage credit unions, build employee-ownership structures, work with hospitals and universities to forge community partnerships and more.

This essay by Democracy Collaborative co-founder Gar Alperovitz and Research Director Steve Dubb opens the academic symposium journal issue on “Alternatives to Capitalism.”

See below for an interview with Kate Sofis, founding Executive Director of SFMade, interviewed by Steve Dubb, Research Director of The Democracy Collaborative. Kate Sofis is Founding Executive Director of SFMade, a non-profit organization launched in 2010 to support the building of a local

Last week, The Democracy Collaborative’s Stephanie Geller had the opportunity to chat with Ellen Macht, President and CEO of the Atlanta Wealth Building Initiative, about an exciting new project launched by The Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta to bring quality jobs, assets, and sustainable economic growth to Atlanta’s most marginalized neighborhoods.

A March 2013 interview with Rob Witherell, representative with United Steelworkers (USW), by Steve Dubb, Research Director of The Democracy Collaborative. Rob Witherell works for the United Steelworkers union at its headquarters in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In addition to working on contract

“I’m a free market guy. But I’m not gonna let this economy crater in order to preserve the free market system” – George W. Bush, December 17, 2008 At the heart of the present debate on how to address the continuing political stalemate and economic decay in America are some fundamental misconceptions

This working paper by Gar Alperovitz and Steve Dubb examines how “new strategies of worker ownership within a community framework can function as the linchpin of an approach capable of uniting economic justice organizers, progressives, labor, and environmental activists.”

How thousands of co-ops, worker-owned businesses, land trusts, and municipal enterprises are beginning to democratize the deep substructure of the American economy, with a new introduction by the author, Gar Alperovitz, and a new foreword by James Gustave Speth. More info and ordering at www

To understand emerging ownership alternatives, Marjorie Kelly reports from a community-owned wind facility in Massachusetts, a lobster cooperative in Maine, a multibillion-dollar employee-owned department-store chain in London, a foundation-owned pharmaceutical in Denmark, and other places where a hopeful new economy is being built. Along the way, she finds the five essential patterns of ownership design that make these models work.

This report provides the first comprehensive survey of community wealth building institutions in the green economy. Featuring ten cases, the report identifies how policy and philanthropy can build on these examples to create “green jobs you can own.”

Resources do not represent community wealth unless communities own and control them. This handbook looks at various kinds of shared ownership, including cooperatives, employee ownership, community land trusts, municipal ownership, local and tribal ownership, mission-controlled ownership, and

The United Nations General Assembly has declared 2012 as the International Year of Cooperatives, highlighting the contribution of cooperatives to economic development, in particular recognizing their impact on poverty reduction, employment generation and social integration. The United Nations uses the “International Year” designation to draw attention to major issues and encourage action.