Hey everyone,

My family (my wife, our son, and I) are seriously considering starting a housing co-op—or possibly joining an existing one. We’re posting here to see if there are any like-minded folks who share this vision or anyone with practical advice on making it happen. We've started building a bit of community here in Chicago, but it's still an expensive metro area that's easy to feel adrift in on our own.

At our core, we’re deeply community-driven people with little extended family, and we’re looking to build something long-term—ideally multi-generational. Our dream is to create a space where people can live harmoniously, share resources, and cultivate a strong sense of belonging. Think: community dinners, shared responsibilities, self-sustainability, creative spaces, and mutual support.

If you have experience with housing co-ops, intentional communities, or just have thoughts on what makes them work (or not work), we’d love to hear from you! Also, if you’re interested in being part of something like this, let’s connect and see where the conversation takes us.

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts!

All of the resources online seem 10+ years old and i cant to find any grocery (or any other) co-ops in the denver area. Would love to support!

Hi everyone!

I'm hoping to share an idea that's been bouncing around in my mind for awhile. Perhaps someone has already thought of this - if so, I suppose I should just be directed there.

I'm hoping to hear feedback on this idea, and - especially since economics is just an interest rather than a field I have extensive knowledge in - whether it's just a dumb idea or if it has some merit.

The tl;dr is: Would creating a free, open source "democratic crowdfunding" platform be beneficial for helping new cooperatives gain starting capital and to help existing cooperatives expand their operations?

As a quick mention for me: I'm a software engineering student. So this isn't an "I have a great idea for an app, someone make it pls" post; rather, it's more of an "I have this idea that might be helpful and would like to consider making it a reality if the community sees benefit in it." (However, I couldn't work on something of this scale on my own, of course)

Background

From reading through this subreddit and learning about cooperatives in general, a common pain point that has seemed to stick out to me regarding starting a coop was gaining starting capital. This makes sense; without the traditional route of investors, it's much harder to gain funding through what I understand to essentially boil down to donations.

I have also thought about crowdfunding. However, I foresee issues in this regard as well. It seems that a common incentive for people to crowdfund a project is to get something in return, whether it be some target product at a discount or merch or something like that. That is, people fund to gain something in return. To me, it sounds similar in spirit to investing, although instead of gaining long-term control over the organization, the incentive is more short-term. I digress.

Another issue I have with crowdfunding is that a person with more money may wield greater control over what projects can succeed and which can fail. If person A has $30,000 to spend and person B has $30, person A can advance a project they like quicker than person B can.

I think crowdfunding in theory could work, but the "personal incentive" aspect of it might make it harder for cooperatives to get a foothold - particularly if the cooperative has less of a "material incentive" to offer. Not to mention crowdfunding websites are typically run by for-profit organizations that need to take their cut.

The Idea

My idea is - for lack of a better word - a democratic crowdfunding platform. To be clear, this would be a digital platform, and community members and coops would interact with the platform either through a website or a mobile app.

I want to be clear that these specifics should not be set-in-stone, and should be discussed and debated.

The (Rough) Process

My thinking is the platform would work under characteristics like this:

1. A "community" is defined. Perhaps this is an area containing a good mix of different groups of people and cities of different economic status.
2. The members of that community put money into a community-wide "pot." Each member can put in as much as they'd like, although a few bucks is all that's expected. Maybe $3 - $5 or so
3. Meanwhile, cooperatives join the platform, either to gain funding for starting, or to gain funding to expand operations. For example, Coop A could be seeking starting capital funding, while Coop B could be seeking funding to grow their workforce. The coops define their goals clearly on the service, explaining what they need the money for. It's in their interest to also explain how their existence can help the community as a whole.
4. With community members putting money in the "pot" and cooperatives explaining what they need the money for, the community takes a vote on regular intervals (perhaps monthly or once-every-two-months). Each member defines how they think the pot should be split up. For example, perhaps an individual thinks that 50% of the pot should go to Coop A, 20% should go to Coop B, and 30% should go to Coop C. After the vote is complete, for each Coop, the percentages that all community members entered in are averaged together. This becomes the percentage of the pot that each coop gets.

For example, in a pot of $50,000:

Why?

My thinking is that by putting the money into a community pot, community members would vote moreso on what they want to see happen in their community rather than limit their financial allocations to what serves their material or financial desires.

The idea of "spending" gets "abstracted out" in a way, with the community members voting based on percentage of the pot - whatever that may be - rather than the money in their bank account. That isn't to say the total value of the pot needs to be a mystery, but rather, it doesn't need to be the focal point of the experience.

The "big picture" I'm shooting for is that the platform serves as a starting point for the community itself to decide what types of services are needed or desired, and to raise funding for those services. While this process may be equal yet slow, once the cooperative gains is capital, the cooperative has full control to develop/implement whatever it needs (and can likely do so speedily).

The goal is to strike a balance between the community having control over what services get started as to suit their needs (as opposed to businesses only getting started by people with enough money), and giving organizations control to work efficiently (as opposed to the community needing to vote on every single decision).

Potential Disadvantages

I think a fundamental disadvantage to this idea is that raising money would probably be slow. In the interest of giving all community members an equal say in how the pot should be divided, I would have to guess the pot would see relatively equal splits, rather than one Coop getting lots of funding while others get next to nothing.

Implementation

As a digital service, a frontend and backend application would need to be developed. For clarification: frontend is what the end user would interact with, like a website or mobile app. Backend is an application that runs on a server, processing data as it goes in and out.

For now, I'm less concerned with the specifics for the front end, but rather the needs for the backend.

Right away, I don't like the idea of having one centralized server for the entire app. In opinion, this could give the service too much control over the coops on the platform. Rather, I think the service should simply be developed as a tool that can be implemented by local communities. That is, the software would be freely available for communities to spin up on their own. The frontend could be designed to connect to the individual's local backend server (even if the frontend itself is hosted centrally, should it be a web app, or on an app store, should it be a mobile app)

This approach gives control of the service to the communities.

I also think having both the frontend and backend applications be open source would be helpful as it would allow communities to not only use the software for free, but allow them to, at least theoretically, customize it to their needs.

Challenges

Some challenges I immediately can think of are:

• Verification - How do we ensure the people voting in the app are members of the community? If we use photo ID, would this be too much of a privacy concern? What about community members who don't possess an ID? Additionally, how do we ensure a bad-acting coop won't abuse the platform with fake accounts to rig the vote in their favor?
• Funding for new communities - If we roll with the decentralized backend approach I suggested previously, how do we ensure all communities have access to afford the technical resources for running the backend? On that note, if the backend is running on typical-grade hardware, we need to ensure the software is well optimized.
• Data security - Assuming individual communities implement their own backend servers, how can we ensure the data is handled securely across all communities?
• Backend funding - How do we ensure communities have enough capital to support the backend? Perhaps the cooperatives who participate on the platform put in a certain amount to cover costs, based on what they can afford to pitch in?

Conclusion

That was a long post. Thanks for taking the time to read it. Is this idea any good? Maybe it's a starting point? Or perhaps I'm missing something crucial and it should just be thrown out. I'd love to hear some feedback on this! Thanks.

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’m a software engineer with a lot of interest in cooperatives in tech. I’m curious why it is that cooperatives aren’t a scalable response to rising concerns about layoffs and worker replacement by AI especially in desk work. What’s hard about starting cooperatives? What’s hard with the legal setup and are there legal setups that allow non-voting investors?

hey folks! we've been around for 4+ years and proud how far we've come. we're nominated for Portland's best vegan restaurant by the local paper and I thought some fellow cooperative members would be interested in lending us your votes. It doesn't require any registration, so voting is quick and easy. Please vote Mirisata here: http://poll.fm/14976175

(the leading restaurant is a fine dining place that's raffling off a $250 meal to people who vote for them - so many people who've never eaten there are voting for a chance to win. getting votes from ideologically aligned people who've not had our food seems like fair play)

thanks! happy to answer any questions about our restaurant too.

I am a recent grad hoping to get started in tech. I hope to use my coding skills for the greater good for society and not for corporations going down. I am willing to join a co-op for the reasons stated.

I'd love a local (Long Beach, CA) buyers club and since its less capital to start up it feels like a great way to launch a community building and money saving org. There's a lot of interest here and we have quite a few similar institutions that are traditional retail storefronts focusing on no-packaging goods or donations based community aid free stores.

If anyone is a member of a buyers club I'd love to hear your experience!

Title says it all

I’m in the U.S./California btw, but am open to learning about other programs in other places

I noticed that the slogan of Z-Library is "The gateway to knowledge is open to all," and I believe everyone should have the right to access knowledge for free.

However, more and more paid knowledge products are emerging. Take the example of the Mondragón online courses offered “Keys to the Mondragon cooperative experience“， which are priced at €450. Is this price reasonable? https://www.mondragon.edu/en/keys-mondragon-cooperative-experience?utm_campaign=muprof-claves&utm_source=mondragon&utm_medium=content-mkt&utm_content=&utm_content=

How should cooperatives set prices for knowledge products?

I know that some set a range between the highest and lowest wages. Then, different wages are assigned according to job positions.

Is this the best approach?"

If someone makes an innovation, how should labor-based distribution be applied?

For example, by issuing a charter that applies to all, any cooperative that meets the charter would automatically become part of a collective, allowing them to support each other.

Mondragon follows a top-down recruitment-like model. What I envision is a model where different groups autonomously link together.

Has there been similar practice?

I know an organization called "B corp", Connect companies with the same standards.

https://www.bcorporation.net/en-us/

We can learn from that.

Today, most companies operate under autocratic management, where power is concentrated at the top. This is largely enabled by proxy voting, allowing CEOs and executives to secure compliant boards. The result is inefficiency and waste, like Meta’s billions spent on the Metaverse—an unpopular project with no board oversight to challenge Mark Zuckerberg. Meanwhile, CEO-to-worker pay ratios have skyrocketed, with executives earning hundreds of times more than the employees driving their success. Vicinity Local is different.

Currently, the co-founders, both NYU students, are making decisions democratically with input from our consultants and interns. We are building a company that has accountability and balanced power from the start. Our future operational structure is built around an elected Board of Representatives split evenly between worker and investor representatives. The CEO will cast tie-breaking votes while remaining accountable to both groups. Workers gain voting rights, petition power, and veto authority after a probationary period, while investors gain similar rights after applying for a certificate of voting rights. The board appoints the CEO and executive team, who oversee daily operations but remain answerable to those they represent.

This structure ensures fairness, increases efficiency, and fosters better decision-making by aligning management with the interests of workers and investors. Vicinity is proof that companies can grow and thrive without sacrificing equity, accountability, or innovation. Join us in redefining what it means to be part of a truly democratic and impactful company. We are looking for interest, consultants, legal advice, and early-stage investors!

Click this link to see our workplace constitution: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1AuNjJiFOAkPBOr4qJiE2TcwNz-dR-j-MYMXrPrc6MX8/edit?tab=t.0

This is a link to our website: vicinitylocal.com

If cooperative workers not only earn wages higher than the market average but also receive additional dividend profits, is this still unfair—since some people put in the same amount of labor but earn less?

So I’m thinking: if cooperative workers receive wages for their positions, and the dividends are used to establish more cooperatives, could this be a good path—a path to the widespread establishment of cooperatives?

Let's boldly speculate about the future.: if cooperative workers only receive wages and not profit sharing, there will be less competition between cooperatives as more are established.

However, if each cooperative has its own profit sharing, there will likely be a competitive relationship between different cooperatives.

Plan to set up a cooperative and would appreciate any recommendations for good cooperative charters that I can download or refer to. If you have any resources or examples, please share with me.

wiki concept: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Market_socialism

Can market socialism be a right way to communism？