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Nathan Schneider
2019-01-09 21:22:31 -07:00
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<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?><feed xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" ><generator uri="https://jekyllrb.com/" version="3.8.5">Jekyll</generator><link href="https://cmci.colorado.edu/medlab/feed.xml" rel="self" type="application/atom+xml" /><link href="https://cmci.colorado.edu/medlab/" rel="alternate" type="text/html" /><updated>2019-01-09T16:54:00-07:00</updated><id>https://cmci.colorado.edu/medlab/feed.xml</id><title type="html">Media Enterprise Design Lab @ CU Boulder</title><subtitle>The Media Enterprise Design Lab is a think tank for community ownership and governance in media organizations, based at the University of Colorado Boulder's College of Media, Communication and Information.</subtitle><entry><title type="html">Organizations as Abstractions Over the Law</title><link href="https://cmci.colorado.edu/medlab/2018/12/09/organizations-as-abstractions.html" rel="alternate" type="text/html" title="Organizations as Abstractions Over the Law" /><published>2018-12-09T00:00:00-07:00</published><updated>2018-12-09T00:00:00-07:00</updated><id>https://cmci.colorado.edu/medlab/2018/12/09/organizations-as-abstractions</id><content type="html" xml:base="https://cmci.colorado.edu/medlab/2018/12/09/organizations-as-abstractions.html">&lt;p&gt;The law, perhaps by definition, lags behind people working for social change. I certainly found this over and over in the next-generation cooperative projects I profiled in &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://nathanschneider.info/e4e&quot;&gt;Everything for Everyone&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;. One co-op in Catalonia was, legally, a mishmash of entities that presented themselves as if they were a coherent whole; another, in New Zealand, was an LLC that called itself a foundation but operated like a co-op. MEDLab has been working with Action Network, whose founder &lt;a href=&quot;https://civichall.org/civicist/build-tech-with-movements/&quot;&gt;describes&lt;/a&gt; its innovative governance model as “cooperative,” even though the organization is mainly a 501(c)(4) nonprofit. Some of these co-ops are more cooperative in practice than many “actual” co-ops; it’s just that the older co-op law was inadequate to meet their needs. They had to hack.&lt;/p&gt;
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?><feed xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" ><generator uri="https://jekyllrb.com/" version="3.8.5">Jekyll</generator><link href="https://cmci.colorado.edu/medlab/feed.xml" rel="self" type="application/atom+xml" /><link href="https://cmci.colorado.edu/medlab/" rel="alternate" type="text/html" /><updated>2019-01-09T21:22:22-07:00</updated><id>https://cmci.colorado.edu/medlab/feed.xml</id><title type="html">Media Enterprise Design Lab @ CU Boulder</title><subtitle>The Media Enterprise Design Lab is a think tank for community ownership and governance in media organizations, based at the University of Colorado Boulder's College of Media, Communication and Information.</subtitle><entry><title type="html">Organizations as Abstractions Over the Law</title><link href="https://cmci.colorado.edu/medlab/2018/12/09/organizations-as-abstractions.html" rel="alternate" type="text/html" title="Organizations as Abstractions Over the Law" /><published>2018-12-09T00:00:00-07:00</published><updated>2018-12-09T00:00:00-07:00</updated><id>https://cmci.colorado.edu/medlab/2018/12/09/organizations-as-abstractions</id><content type="html" xml:base="https://cmci.colorado.edu/medlab/2018/12/09/organizations-as-abstractions.html">&lt;p&gt;The law, perhaps by definition, lags behind people working for social change. I certainly found this over and over in the next-generation cooperative projects I profiled in &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://nathanschneider.info/e4e&quot;&gt;Everything for Everyone&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;. One co-op in Catalonia was, legally, a mishmash of entities that presented themselves as if they were a coherent whole; another, in New Zealand, was an LLC that called itself a foundation but operated like a co-op. MEDLab has been working with Action Network, whose founder &lt;a href=&quot;https://civichall.org/civicist/build-tech-with-movements/&quot;&gt;describes&lt;/a&gt; its innovative governance model as “cooperative,” even though the organization is mainly a 501(c)(4) nonprofit. Some of these co-ops are more cooperative in practice than many “actual” co-ops; it’s just that the older co-op law was inadequate to meet their needs. They had to hack.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Really, no organization is what the incorporation statutes and bylaws say it is. Organizations are made of people, culture, relationships, and other things that don’t fit into the letter of our laws, and which shouldn’t. This is especially the case for democratic enterprises trying to operate in a legal regime designed primarily for control by large investors and wealthy donors. Those seeking to develop new strategies for more accountable organizations have to be clever. They have to build the organizational structure as a &lt;a href=&quot;https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abstraction_layer&quot;&gt;layer of abstraction&lt;/a&gt; quite distinct from the legal layer.&lt;/p&gt;
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&lt;ul&gt;
&lt;li&gt;The Sustainable Economies Law Center supports and trains &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.theselc.org/worker_selfdirected_nonprofits&quot;&gt;worker self-directed nonprofits&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; (and is one itself), which operate as worker co-ops within the context of a 501(c)(3) organization&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;Some cooperatives &lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.shareable.net/blog/forming-a-worker-coop-llc-or-cooperative-corporation&quot;&gt;form as LLCs or other business entities&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt; and encode their cooperative practices in bylaws and contracts, rather than at the level of incorporation&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;A new startup, &lt;a href=&quot;https://staffing.coop/&quot;&gt;Staffing Cooperative&lt;/a&gt;, is developing a new model in which &lt;strong&gt;the co-op serves as a holding company&lt;/strong&gt; for non-cooperative subsidiaries, whose workers, in turn, become members of the co-op&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;A startup, &lt;a href=&quot;https://staffing.coop/&quot;&gt;Staffing Cooperative&lt;/a&gt;, is developing a new model in which &lt;strong&gt;the co-op serves as a holding company&lt;/strong&gt; for non-cooperative subsidiaries, whose workers, in turn, become members of the co-op&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;li&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;/medlab/assets/VirtualCoop.pdf&quot;&gt;I have proposed a strategy&lt;/a&gt; based on nonprofit fiscal sponsorship, through which &lt;strong&gt;early-stage co-ops can form without incorporation&lt;/strong&gt; by operating within an umbrella entity, which may or may not be itself a co-op&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;