Multi-Stakeholder Cooperatives

This week, workers and community supporters launched the Pittsburgh Progress, “a cooperative news organization, owned and democratically run by its workers and members… dedicated to looking out for, and telling the stories of, the working-class people who form the heart and soul of our diverse communities.”

The Dorchester Food Co-op is a new community & worker-owned grocery store that aims to make healthy food accessible and advance economic opportunity and neighborhood engagement. General manager John Santos joins CommonWealth's Jennifer Smith to discuss the co-op's origins and business model.

This month’s guest is Rob Callender, co-founder of Kin.coop, a platform designed to help people start and manage cooperative savings clubs. What would it look like to organise money collectively? 

Three existing care co-operatives explained how care co-ops work and shared their experiences of setting up a care co-op in their localities.

Mansib Rahman, CEO of Montreal-based food delivery and logistics startup Radish.coop, joins Dru to discuss cooperative governance, member allegiances, equity and IPOs in cooperatives, and how we can transform the food system.

In contrast to traditional co-operatives that are owned by a single class of members, multi-stakeholder co-operatives are owned and controlled by more than one type of membership class such as consumers, producers, workers, volunteers, or community supporters. Stakeholders can be individuals or organizations such as non-profits, businesses, government agencies, or even other co-operatives.

Data management and work in nonprofit and social service agencies is generally less developed than the big data storage and analysis systems of platform capitalism. Data work in nonprofits is increasingly central to their operation, however, and the sector is experiencing rapid adoption of corporate data platforms. Given the value commitments of the sector, and this unique moment of development, the sector also presents strong opportunities for cooperativization.

Discover what it means to be part of a Solidarity Purchase Group (GAS) through the interview with Vincenzo Vizioli, president of Aiab Umbria. With a journey that began in the late 1980s, Vincenzo explains how his choice for organic and biodynamic farming has evolved into a model of sustainability, cooperation, and mutualism.

Celia LoBuono Gonzalez joins us on the show this episode to share her story and that of Other Avenues Grocery Cooperative.

Resistance in the digital environment demands that we center our values, intentions, and dreams, focusing on other ways to live, be, and know. May First Movement Technology is a cooperative (primarily based in the United States and Mexico) that aims to put these values into practice: digital media that supports social struggles and grassroots movements working to create the world we know is possible.