Dear Colleague,

• Our latest report, Educate and Empower: Tools for Building Community Wealth, written by Senior Associate for Policy and Strategy Keane Bhatt and Director of Special Projects Steve Dubb, was profiled in Forbes magazine, Shareable, and MassLive. Steve discussed the centrality of education in inclusive economic development in an article for the Stanford Social Innovation Review (SSIR), and last week The Democracy Collaborative hosted an online discussion on practical strategies to empower residents to participate in community economic development. You can watch the webinar of this event, which features the report’s co-authors as well as Carla Javits (REDF), Aaron Bartley (PUSH Buffalo), and Dana Pedersen (Cooperation Texas). 

• Gar Alperovitz, co-founder of The Democracy Collaborative and co-chair of the Next System Project, analyzed the failures of capitalism in the 260 year-old British Royal Society for the Encouragement of the Arts, Manufacturers and Commerce’s most recent issue of the RSA Journal. Gar notes growing skepticism of “the ability of free-market democracies to deliver widely shared increases in prosperity” and proposes a community-sustaining system defined by a culture of cooperation and democratic ownership.

• Gus Speth, co-chair of the Next System Project and senior fellow, was recently interviewed as a feature in the “Change Agent” series of the Great Transition Initiative, where he discussed his own environmental background and the goals of the Project. Last month, Next System Project Executive Director Joe Guinan joined Social Capital Markets’ (SOCAP) Co-founder & Convener Kevin Jones and sociology Professor Juliet Schor to facilitate a twitter chat about the need for systemic change. You can read highlights from the conversation here. 

• Democracy Collaborative staff continue to promote community wealth building in the field. Steve Dubb contributed to Shelterforce magazine’s Rooflines blog on the subject of converting businesses to employee ownership, and I recently had the opportunity to talk with Equitable Opportunity radio hosts Mike Hancox and Vernice Miller Travis about the role anchor institutions and worker cooperatives play in building a more inclusive economy. You can listen to a free podcast of the radio interview on iTunes.

• In August, responses to Peter Barnes’ “common wealth trusts” proposal by Thomas Hanna, director of research, and Marjorie Kelly, executive vice president and senior fellow, were featured by the Great Transition Initiative. Marjorie highlighted the importance of property rights and suggested that a “multiplicity of ownership designs” should be considered. Thomas focused on the real world examples of public trust funds and suggested alternative ways that common wealth trusts could be used to further ecological sustainability as well as social and economic equality.  

• Over the past two years, The Democracy Collaborative has dialogued with the Toronto-based Atkinson Foundation as it helped develop a community wealth building strategy for Canada’s largest city. We are pleased to share two reports from the foundation’s new research series, The Prosperous Province: Strategies for Community Wealth, released shortly after representatives from Toronto visited Cleveland to study the Greater University Circle Initiative. The "Anchor Institutions" and "Community Benefits Agreements" reports highlight opportunities to leverage the province’s institutional purchasing power to support various community wealth building strategies. 

• While nationally recognized as a model for worker-ownership, Cleveland’s Evergreen Cooperatives are also creating wealth and building assets in other innovative ways. Its highly innovative home-buyer program for employees was recently featured in Yes! Magazine, and Green City Growers was profiled in Crain’s Cleveland Business for its rapid growth.