New from The Democracy Collaborative
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On June 13 and 14, The Democracy Collaborative joined the Democracy at Work Institute to host a convening of leaders in the fields of employee ownership, community economic development, sustainable business and finance, and philanthropy. The purpose of the event was to launch a new network, 50 by 50, focused on dramatically scaling up employee ownership in the United States. Specifically, the Learning + Design session focused on how to achieve the audacious goal of 50 million U.S. employee-owners by 2050. Discussion topics, a list of participants, and next steps identified by attendees can be found in the event report and website. One of the Design Team members of 50 x 50 was Thomas Dudley, who is also Co-Founder of Certified EO, a new certification program being developed to raise the profile of employee ownership in America. Read more about Certified EO in our featured websites below.
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Watch our most recent animation that outlines Democracy Collaborative Co-Founder Gar Alperovitz’s vision of the Pluralist Commonwealth, a community sustaining political-economic system.
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Community-Owned Energy Generates Environmental and Economic Benefit
This new report from TREC, an Ontario, Canada based developer of community-owned renewable energy and member of the Federation of Community Power Co-operatives, assesses opportunities to build community wealth stemming from Ontario’s Feed-In-Tariff program (FIT), which provides higher payment rates to renewable energy providers. The report recommends focusing the FIT on cooperatively-owned, First Nations-owned, and municipally-owned enterprises, finding that that every dollar spent on such community-owned energy efforts results in $2 more in additional local economic activity. The authors suggest publically-funded loan guarantees to grow the capacity of these enterprises.
READ THE FULL REPORT
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City Governments Promote Cooperative Business Development
This new report from the Imagined Economy Project assesses municipally led cooperative development approaches used in ten cities across the United States. Highlighting The Democracy Collaborative’s work in Cleveland, Ohio; Rochester, New York; and Richmond, Virginia, the report identifies Anchor, Ecosystem, and Preference as three distinct approaches to advance worker-cooperatives as a means to achieve inclusive economic development. The author discusses the impact of City efforts to date and cites the establishment of cooperative development programs within city agencies and the funding staff positions for this work as best practices.
READ THE FULL REPORT
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Worker-Ownership Reduces Economic Inequality
Amongst developed nations, the U.S. is a leader in unequal income distribution. But according to a recent Century Foundation report on the role of worker-ownership models, this is a trend that can be changed. The author examines how a cohesive national regulatory framework, national tax incentives, a U.S. employee ownership bank, and increased support for employee-ownership technical assistance centers can bolster U.S. worker-buyout policy. In aligning regulatory, technical, and financial support for worker-cooperatives, the United States can bring scale to this key economic equalizer.
READ THE FULL REPORT
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Without Changes, Racial Wealth Gap Will Persist for Centuries
Between 1983 and 2013, the average wealth of white American families grew by 84 percent—three times and 1.2 times the growth experienced by African American and Hispanic American families respectively. The Institute for Policy Studies (IPS) and CFED examine this and other racial wealth gap trends in their new report, and offer policy solutions to reduce wealth inequalities which include: conducting a government-wide audit to examine the ways in which current federal policies perpetuate racial wealth inequality, creating universal children’s savings accounts, and exploring progressive taxes such as a wealth tax.
READ THE FULL REPORT
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Certified EO is a new certification program being developed to raise the profile of employee ownership in America. Certified EO plans to leverage the reach of thousands of employee-owned companies to reach millions of people and make employee ownership part of the national consciousness. The program also provides resources for employee-owned companies to help them increase sales and recruit top talent.
Learn more at www.certifiedeo.com.
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Launched by the Pratt Center for Community Development in collaboration with PolicyLink and the Urban Manufacturing Alliance, the Equitable Innovation Economies Initiative (EIE) aims to help cities develop inclusive economic growth strategies with a specific focus on the manufacturing sector. EIE recently launched pilot projects in Indianapolis, IN; New York City, NY; Portland, OR; and San Jose, CA, through which it will identify barriers to, refine approaches for, and track the impact of their development strategies.
Learn more at prattcenter.net.
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