Trevor, how would you rate your co-op on each of the 7 cooperative principles? What works great? What could work even better?
Other questions (answers to any of them would be great) :
Are there any cooperative principles that don’t match up exactly with what members want? Are there any cooperative principles that members super-value? How are people on the board perceived as different from members not on the board? What do you do for non-board members to feel they own the organization? Do you have a period of time or criteria when someone joins, before they become a member-owner, or are members, as soon as they join, instantly equal in terms of your goals for their cooperative decision-making?
If you wanted more capital, such as to expand, how would you see that most likely working within your members’ values (would it be pre-sales, a bank loan/loan from outside organizations, or a few members with more money individually buying a building or receiving an interest rate higher than 8% per year, or all or most members contributing equally into a capital fund and not receiving a return higher than 8% per year)? Do you have financial reserves, and why or why not? How do various members think about the future?
I’m interested in the principle of subsidiarity/federation/localism for opening additional locations; is that something you’ve thought about, and if so, how would new locations interact with the current location?
Alex Linsker, Collective Agency, Portland Oregon, http://collectiveagency.co/
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On Thursday, February 18, 2016 at 10:55:31 AM UTC-8, Trevor Twining wrote:
Here’s a link to the Ontario Co-operative Association, whose resources and advice were particularly valuable when we set up. If you’re in Ontario, they’re more than happy to offer some initial assistance. If you’re outside, they’re happy to refer you to the group in your area who can help. We’ve become quite involved in the Niagara Regional Co-op Network which is closely connected with On Co-Op.
http://www.ontario.coop/programs_services/coop_development/starting_a_coop
It’s a rich resource, but there’s still a lot of jargon. I’ll try to break our experience down in plain language.
- We were already meeting as a jelly group for 18 months before we started with our space, so we had a core community from which to build.
- As we were talking about the mutually-invested community we wanted to build, someone who was already working on a food co-op in our city asked if we had considered the model.
- We looked at the resources at the link above and enough connected that we decided this was the model for us.
- We filled out the incorporation forms ourselves. It took a couple of hours. (I can walk you through if you get to this stage)
- The membership fees from the founding members gave us the capital we needed to create the corporation and get the initial paperwork filed.
- Members pre-paid first, last and as many months as they could up-front so that we could build a nest egg. Some members provided member loans.
- Our membership model also encourages participation that doesn’t directly involve the space, so we have a larger group of members than space users. (our current membership is 70, but less than 30 use the space 1d/week or more)
- With that money in the bank, we were able to sign our lease, get our utilities set up, and hang our sign on the door.
- We have a board of 8 directors, and they help guide the long term direction of the group. I’m still chief resident volunteer cat-herder/tummler, and we’re working on expanding our service offering so we can pay someone to be in this role.
- Annually we have a meeting to review finances, vote on key changes in direction, and when we get to the point where we’re managing a surplus, the group will decide how that’s allocated.
Next coworking meetup-type thing we do, I’d be happy to present this as a talk in more detail.
Trevor Twining
Cowork Niagara
Home of Niagara’s independent workforce
twitter: @coworkniagara, @trevortwining
On Feb 18, 2016, at 12:00 PM, Trevor Twining [email protected] wrote:
Thanks all, for your feedback so far.
Sounds like I need a (few?) follow up post(s). I’ll also post some links shortly to resources we used. In Canada, most co-ops are provincially incorporated, so I assume that in the US each state will have its own co-op legislation.
I’ll share what we did here in Ontario, and you should be able to figure out how that works in your province/state.
I’m not sure how this works in other countries, but the co-op movement in Europe generally is huge, so there should be some good resources on that side of the Atlantic.
Trevor Twining
Cowork Niagara
Home of Niagara’s independent workforce
twitter: @coworkniagara, @trevortwining
On Feb 18, 2016, at 11:28 AM, Tony Bacigalupo [email protected] wrote:
Trevor, I think a lot of us are excited to learn more about how you pulled this off!
I encountered early thoughts on this topic as well, but found it difficult to get a clear sense of how to go about in a way that would be viable. I think any more details you can provide on that would be helpful to others considering similar structures.
Thanks!
Tony
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On Thu, Feb 18, 2016 at 8:53 AM, Jenifer Ross [email protected] wrote:
Ditto. Can you provide more details on the financial structure?
Sent from my iPhone
On Feb 18, 2016, at 10:40 AM, Jacob Sayles [email protected] wrote:
I’d love to know more about this. I’m certainly sold on the value alignment but I don’t have a sense for how it works.
On Thursday, February 18, 2016, Trevor Twining [email protected] wrote:
Apologies. I used an internal link.
Here’s the real link
http://coworkniagara.com/blog/2016/02/10/why-co-operatives-and-coworking-go-hand-in-hand/
Trevor Twining
416-201-2254
twitter/skype/linkedin: trevortwining
On Feb 18, 2016, at 9:40 AM, Trevor Twining [email protected] wrote:
Hey everyone,
When we were developing the business plan for our space two years ago, a prospective member asked us if we had considered setting Cowork Niagara up as a co-operative. We didn’t know what that was, so we checked it out.
It was the best thing that we could have done. We’re the only co-operative coworking space in english-speaking Canada (there’s one other in Quebec). I’m now convinced that if more spaces use this model it will help create stronger, more resilient coworking communities. I’m sharing this in the hopes that it piques your collective curiosity.
I wrote a post about it on our newly-launched blog. If any of you have any questions about this, feel free to ask.
http://cowork/blog/2016/02/10/why-co-operatives-and-coworking-go-hand-in-hand/
Trevor Twining
Cowork Niagara
Home of Niagara’s independent workforce
twitter: @coworkniagara, @trevortwining
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