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Looking for founding members and interested parties to form a steering committee.

Please respond to this thread if interested and we can form a group chat to discuss the project details in greater depth.

Founding a business is hard work. I am more than willing to do all the harder stuff and found something, then share the power. Yet how is anyone else supposed to care about the business as much as I will after doing all the leg work on founding something?

My assumption and my experience is that most people won't want to put in all the unpaid meeting time and upfront cost to get something going, but unfortunately that is exactly what it takes to get something started unless you have a ton of backing and deeply motivated people.

Is it wiser to just found a business as the sole owner and have something like a 5 year plan of hiring people amiable to cooperation, and training people to assume that cooperator role as well as doing their job over the course of that time?

https://github.com/fahertym/cooperative-blockchain

I have been delving into self-teaching coding, particularly focusing on learning Rust with the assistance of an AI called Claude Sonnet 3.5. Due to my passion for promoting cooperative economics and my retirement due to disability from a career in personal training and gymnastics coaching, I have incorporated these principles into my coding journey. My aim is to not only solidify my knowledge of Rust but also to advocate for an economic system founded on solidarity and cooperation, as opposed to one driven by profit and greed.

Basically, the project is this:

Blockchain technology is revolutionary for economics, but currently it's only been used to further entrench current capitalist practices.

But it can do so much more.

For those who don't understand what exactly "blockchain" is and only know if it from cryptocurrency crap, it create a way to have a ledger that is decentralized across many individual boxes that is the same on all of them and in which everyone can see all the transactions. There is ways of encrypting those transactions, but I haven't gotten to that part of the project yet.

This means things like democratic governance, budgeting, transactions, identity verification and supply chain management can be done entirely transparently and in a way that is very difficult to compromise, as it would require compromising a majority of all nodes simultaneously.

I want to use these properties in order build a system that allows cooperatives to more easily be created and managed via "smart contracts" which can be used in order to establish organizations, members, bylaws, profit sharing, trade between coops, etc.

I put the GitHub repo at the top. Its far from done. But it's starting to actually take shape into someone that resembles my goals. Id love any collaboration of wisdom anyone has to offer, whether it be on features, ideas, develop knowledge etc.

Thanks in advance!

Can a co-op be structured to be owned automatically by workers and as a buy in membership by the public, and can anyone point me to any current models that function this way for examples of how decisions are made, profits are split, etc?

Thanks in advance for reading and sharing your input! Two things:

1. I’ve started a business retailing local produce. I would love input from those who have done/seen something like this before. Maybe you can link me to a similar effort so I may learn from their model? Can you also help me determine whether this is/should be a co-op or more of a private business?

2. Can anyone recommend software? I’m currently using Google Sheets but looking for something more automated.

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1. I’ve started a business retailing local produce.

I live on a small island. There are small farms around, but very very very little produce is bought locally (2%). I’ve been asking the question, “Why don’t we eat more things grown locally?” And the answers I’m finding include: Coordination is difficult, supply is inconsistent, it can be hard for farmers to connect to buyers, it can be hard for buyers to know what’s available and at what price.

So, two months ago I started a business to connect local supply with local demand: I promote produce from local farms (just three farms for now), I take orders from customers, I submit orders to the farmers, and every Tuesday I fulfill those customer orders by going to the three farms then sorting and having customers pick up from me.

I would like to hear about similar efforts elsewhere, that I might learn from. Do you know of any?

I see this as a social enterprise, with the purpose of connecting local food with local buyers. I am offering a sort of marketing/retail system for small farms, and I aim to offer consistency and bulk capabilities to buyers by sourcing between multiple farms. It’s just me running the show for now. But I believe there is something cooperative about sourcing between farms. Can you help me understand what kind of coop this evokes, if any?

2. I’m looking for software.

I’m doing what I can with Google Sheets, but I’d really like to find the right software(s) with the following capabilities:

-Makes tracking “my” inventory easy (I say “my” inventory because these items live on various farms until the day of order fulfillment).

-Also allows the farmers to track/update their own inventory, maybe even eliminating the need for me to update it.

-Lets my customers place their order easily (currently they just text me their order). Streamlines or automates the ordering process between customer, retailer(me), and farmer.

-Makes invoicing really easy, between farmer-retailer and retailer-customer.

Thanks for reading and advising!

This thread is part of an attempt by the moderators to create a series of monthly repeating posts to help aggregate certain kinds of content into single threads.

If you have any basic questions about Cooperatives, feel free to ask them here. Please also remember to visit this thread even if you consider yourself a cooperative veteran so that you can help others!

Note that this thread will be posted on the first and will run throughout the month.

I am an owner in a 4 apartment coop building. We need to have the roof replaced ASAP. I would like to hire the best contractor for the job (who also gave the highest and most comprehensive estimate). However, our coop funds are limited, and the other members do not have a lot of extra cash to spend immediately. I have the funds to comfortably front the repair, and would be willing to do so to get the job done right, rather than using a lesser contractor risking problems down the line. My question is - Is this highly discouraged? Are there any guidelines or protocols to use to “lend” money to my own coop board?

I've been digging around online and I can't find any answers to this, so I hope somebody here can answer.

Who exactly is classified as an employee and has to get paid minimum wage? Can regular members choose to do unpaid labor to help the company? What about the founders? I should add that I live in California.

Thank you for any answers. I apologize if this is a basic question, but I couldn't find any answers.

EDIT: I should add that I am referring to legality, not the individual policies of cooperatives as I know those vary a lot.

Hi all, I am trying to compile some essential theory about coops, as well as solid evidence of their benefits in contrast to privately own companies, preferably backed with numbers (econometry, maybe some other nice numbers (kinda math enthusiast here)). Can you recommend me some sources?

So I'm a recent college grad. I am currently looking for a job.

I'm also in a relatively well paying industry, software. This means I have the privilege of likely being able to set some money aside for retirement when I start working

Now, retirement is a long way off cause I am just entering the workforce now. But I've been taught that the best way to make sure I actually have money when I'm old is to start saving young.

As a way to account for retirement, or potentially a kid's college education should I ever decide to have kids, I was thinking about investing some of that money. But if I am going to invest, I'd like to do some real good in the world instead of being just another guy trying to make a quick buck off the back of working people.

Where do I really start looking into co-op investment and what kind if ROI can I expect for my retirement fund?

I don't need a super high one because again, retirement is a long way off and I want to do some good, but it def needs to be above inflation at the very least.

How do I actually find potential co-ops to fund?

I don't have the money rn, but I will when I get hired. I'm hoping to do some real good and help out my fellow workers.

Hey, I am basically curious where the biggest clusters of cooperatives are in the US? I would assume parts of Colorado, due to the regulations that are good for cooperatives, but where else do you find higher concentrations of cooperative formation?

Hello! I'm an am amateur screenwriter. I've been toying around with the idea of an Office-style workplace comedy centering around a Disneyland-inspired theme park in LA, with the theme park itself been owned and operated as a worker coop. I am also an unemployed teenager who doesn't really know how businesses work in general. How would you suppose a theme park on the scale of something like a Disney amusement park would be internally structured?

Hello, we received a notice of sale for our seasonal campground. We are a mix of permanent (majority) with a few transit sites. We are currently organizing against the sale and have a majority needed to do so. We are trying to form a cooperative. I am looking for any information, resources, experience in how to get this ball rolling.

We would like to save our happy place so any info would be greatly appreciated!

A question for co-ops that deal in industries with a lot of compliance issues.

I'm looking into starting an aircraft co-op. This would be a maintenance shop with a rental/flight training service attached with an eye towards apprenticeship for mechanics (think small aircraft, 2-6 seats and piston, not jets).

The issue is that in aviation, regulation covers most aspects of what can and can't be done, and has a huge effect on cost and safety. The A&P IA (certified mechanic) is personally liable for whatever they sign off, including work done by their apprentices. If you've got say, 2 A&P's and 6 apprentices, plus a couple office staff in a COOP format, how does democracy work with regard to things like compliance. If the certified mechanic states 'X must be done Y way' that seems to go against a coops democratic principals, on the other hand, they're personally on the hook for the work, so getting out voted doesn't work either.

Put another way: how does a co-op ensure that they stay in compliance with the law, even if doing so isn't popular with the worker owners? Again, this is a question of personal liability and safety regulations, so the issues around things like law enforcement, police, ect, aren't relevant here.