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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>2019-02-20T22:18:49-07:00</updated><id>https://cmci.colorado.edu/medlab/feed.xml</id><title type="html">Media Enterprise Design Lab @ CU Boulder</title><subtitle>MEDLab 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">Become Better Together with Enspiral</title><link href="https://cmci.colorado.edu/medlab/2019/02/20/better-work-together-enspiral.html" rel="alternate" type="text/html" title="Become Better Together with Enspiral" /><published>2019-02-20T00:00:00-07:00</published><updated>2019-02-20T00:00:00-07:00</updated><id>https://cmci.colorado.edu/medlab/2019/02/20/better-work-together-enspiral</id><content type="html" xml:base="https://cmci.colorado.edu/medlab/2019/02/20/better-work-together-enspiral.html">&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;https://static1.squarespace.com/static/55a0c7c1e4b0ab3ab0407073/t/5c2960d32b6a28bef1a2dea9/1546215658386/BWTcover.jpg?format=1500w&quot; alt=&quot;Better Work Together&quot; /&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Part of the appeal in being a worker on new gig-economy platforms like Uber or Taskrabbit is the apparent autonomy, the feeling of not having a boss. Sure, an app on your phone is your new boss, and through it a large, transnational corporation whose investors want nothing more than to automate you away, but maybe that beats someone coming out of the corner office to breathe down your neck. For some people, the app-boss is at least a step in the right direction.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Toward what? Most of us probably aren’t sure. But the people involved in a Wellington, New Zealand-based network called Enspiral have done more than just about anyone to figure out—to figure out where we’d want the future of work to be headed if the better angels of our nature were in charge. I’ve had the chance to visit them (and &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/ava37e/figuring-out-the-freelance-economy-v23n6&quot;&gt;lived to tell the tale for &lt;em&gt;Vice&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/a&gt;). Now, a trip down to Wellington, although I absolutely recommend it, is a little less necessary. The Enspiralites have created a book, &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://betterworktogether.co/&quot;&gt;Better Work Together&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;, which chronicles in conversational stories and pictures their attempts to create a kind of community worth working toward.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Enspiral is fairly small, as organizations go—a few hundred active participants, a modest budget. Rather, it’s lean. Most of the Enspiralites’ businesses exist outside the organization, but attached to it, allowing Enspiral itself to take risks, learn lessons, and reinvent itself when necessary. It’s a community of early adopters. They offer themselves as beta-testers for a suite of collaboration software they’ve co-produced, such as &lt;a href=&quot;https://loomio.org&quot;&gt;Loomio&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;https://cobudget.co/&quot;&gt;Cobudget&lt;/a&gt;. They relentlessly explore challenging governance frameworks like sociocracy and teal. They even funded the book’s production through a new blockchain-enabled platform called &lt;a href=&quot;https://daostack.io/&quot;&gt;DAOstack&lt;/a&gt; (which still crashes my browser when I try to use it). These are not ordinary workers; they’re people with the passion, the patience, in many cases the privilege, and the fault-tolerance to repeatedly try stuff that may or may not work.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;In the book, you’ll see why. There is a generosity and pleasure and even a spirituality in how they talk about their efforts that makes it all seem less like, well, work. There are typos, but these pale in comparison to the challenges we collectively face. The upshot is not a final theory or doctrine or destination, but a mode of working toward it, of declining to accept disguised versions of feudalism as good enough. &lt;a href=&quot;https://betterworktogether.co/&quot;&gt;Order it, digitally or physically, here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/p&gt;</content><author><name>Nathan Schneider</name></author><category term="collab-gov" /><summary type="html"></summary></entry><entry><title type="html">Meet KOSAKTI, a Creative New Cooperative in Indonesia</title><link href="https://cmci.colorado.edu/medlab/2019/02/02/meet-kosakti-in-indonesia.html" rel="alternate" type="text/html" title="Meet KOSAKTI, a Creative New Cooperative in Indonesia" /><published>2019-02-02T00:00:00-07:00</published><updated>2019-02-02T00:00:00-07:00</updated><id>https://cmci.colorado.edu/medlab/2019/02/02/meet-kosakti-in-indonesia</id><content type="html" xml:base="https://cmci.colorado.edu/medlab/2019/02/02/meet-kosakti-in-indonesia.html">&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;The following is a lightly edited email exchange I had with Bimo Ario Suryandaru, CEO of KOSAKTI, a cooperative in Indonesia. He and his team are developing an interesting approach that I was grateful to learn about, and I thought others might be, too. &lt;a href=&quot;http://kosakti.id/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/KOSAKTI-PROFILE-compressed.pdf&quot;&gt;See their slide deck here&lt;/a&gt;.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What does KOSAKTI exist to do?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Our biggest goal is quite simple: to erase inequality in all of its aspects. By that, we don’t mean that everything should be equal, we only want to make it just, economically speaking. KOSAKTI was established by former NGO members who came to a realization that they could not move forward just driven by donors. Community development should be done in a reciprocal way. Therefore they established a cooperative business.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;That is a very ambitious goal. How did you find us at MEDLab?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I was reading &lt;a href=&quot;https://cmci.colorado.edu/medlab/assets/VirtualCoop.pdf&quot;&gt;your VirtualCoop concept proposal&lt;/a&gt; after my friend showed it to me. Apparently, we are doing a similar model that you propose with our cooperative, KOSAKTI, in Indonesia. It is not an easy road, considering the cooperative model is not a very popular choice here. In addition, our model is very unique and new.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;The idea of VirtualCoop is a kind of umbrella organization that includes within its legal structure startup co-ops within it. Is that what you do?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;After KOSAKTI failed to run its own businesses twice, I suggested, why don’t we just support people (especially our members) who are already running their business well yet still need some help? In any way possible: business consultation, management, innovation, legal, and much more.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Originally, we thought this model already existed. But when Camilla Carabini from Coopermondo came to Indonesia, we used thrd opportunity to ask her about this model. She said it had never crossed her mind—other than the ways it resembles a federation model or a confederation.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;What kinds of projects are part of the co-op? What kinds of businesses are they in?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I don’t think one email is enough to share everything we’re doing here. Generally, we’re involved in consultation and assistance on cooperative business development. A few examples: we’re doing a co-owned direct-trade promotion integrated business in coffee, coconut sugar, and other agriculture commodities; a film-industry cooperative; community cricket farming; community daycare and so on.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Are any of the companies using KOSAKTI’s legal incorporation, rather than incorporating independently themselves? Or all of them? How does the legal relationship work?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Most of them, yes. We use KOSAKTI’s legal incorporation as a cooperative. However, they still have an option if they someday wanted to incorporate independently. On the relationship matter, they only need to become our cooperative member to use any of our services, including legal incorporation. I’m not saying it is working smoothly; right now we are facing problems, such as business permit limitation for a single incorporation.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Are any of the companies within the co-op themselves co-ops? You mention that you support conversions. What has that looked like?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Yes, there is one of our partners that is a co-op and also others that already have business legal entities such as private company or foundation. We treat those as a business partner rather than a member.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Do you operate primarily online, or through in-person interactions and relationships?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;For now, we are operating primarily through person-to-person interactions and relationships since we are still working in small scale. It is one of our main goals to be able to offer our service online, and we are working on it by developing our website and mobile apps. We hope to be able to collaborate with other similar cooperative or entities out there, that’s why we have a special interest in platform cooperatives.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Can you tell me a bit about the scale of your company?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;We are a small cooperative, with only just 140 members and ten business units. We have been running for only three years. We are working through many sectors with only just $1,500 in the organisation’s bank account and $10,000 in losses last year. It is a very new concept and not very many people like it, but it is fun.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;That’s a tough spot to be in. What would success look like to you, in the long run?&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I have to ask you back the same question for this one… We don’t really have a clear view, actually. So far, we are pretty optimistic that this model could make many things so much better and also so much easier for new co-ops. Making people notice this ownership issue as an important thing is more than enough success for us, and making it understandable is way more.&lt;/p&gt;</content><author><name>Nathan Schneider</name></author><category term="collab-gov" /><category term="internet-of-ownership" /><summary type="html">The following is a lightly edited email exchange I had with Bimo Ario Suryandaru, CEO of KOSAKTI, a cooperative in Indonesia. He and his team are developing an interesting approach that I was grateful to learn about, and I thought others might be, too. See their slide deck here.</summary></entry><entry><title type="html">Co-ops Need Leaders, Too</title><link href="https://cmci.colorado.edu/medlab/2019/01/20/co-ops-need-leaders-too.html" rel="alternate" type="text/html" title="Co-ops Need Leaders, Too" /><published>2019-01-20T00:00:00-07:00</published><updated>2019-01-20T00:00:00-07:00</updated><id>https://cmci.colorado.edu/medlab/2019/01/20/co-ops-need-leaders-too</id><content type="html" xml:base="https://cmci.colorado.edu/medlab/2019/01/20/co-ops-need-leaders-too.html">&lt;p&gt;I frequently encounter a notion, among those drawn to cooperatives, that a cooperative should be an amorphous, faceless collective in which old-world skills and norms of leadership can be discarded. How does this work out for them? Not well.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Usually one of two entirely predictable things happens as a result—and generally both. One is a &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.jofreeman.com/joreen/tyranny.htm&quot;&gt;tyranny of structurelessness&lt;/a&gt; in which there are leaders who claim not to be leaders and therefore can’t be held accountable. Another is that nobody takes serious responsibility for anything, because there is no incentive or recognition for doing so; as soon as the most par-for-the-course challenge arises, everyone throws up their hands and walks away.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I won’t name names, but we know who we are. I’ve been guilty of practicing both of these myself.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;One of the things that I gradually have come to realize, especially while writing &lt;em&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://nathanschneider.info/e4e&quot;&gt;Everything for Everyone&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/em&gt;, is that the co-op tradition is full of amazing leaders. Their stories are too little-known, even among cooperators, perhaps because of the story we tell ourselves that leaders aren’t needed here. But you can’t get far in the history without encountering remarkable examples.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Founders must be leaders.&lt;/strong&gt; Consider people like &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/10/business/mary-anderson-died-co-founder-of-rei-cooperative.html&quot;&gt;Mary and Lloyd Anderson&lt;/a&gt;, who founded REI, or &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio.php?id_nbr=7330&quot;&gt;Alfonse Desjardins&lt;/a&gt;, who built Quebec’s co-op banking system, or &lt;a href=&quot;https://nader.org/1992/12/15/dr-michael-shadid-and-national-health-care/&quot;&gt;Michael Shadid&lt;/a&gt;, the Lebanese doctor who founded a pioneering cooperative hospital in Oklahoma, or &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/209000&quot;&gt;Albert McKnight&lt;/a&gt;, a pan-Africanist Catholic priest who helped build infrastructure for Black-owned co-ops in the South, or &lt;a href=&quot;https://archive.org/details/vicepresidentinc00linc&quot;&gt;Murray Lincoln&lt;/a&gt;, an architect of Nationwide Mutual and parts of the electric co-op system, or many more people you may have never heard of in the US &lt;a href=&quot;http://heroes.coop/&quot;&gt;Cooperative Hall of Fame&lt;/a&gt;. And of course I had the chance to meet many more leaders in our midst today, like &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/21/business/smallbusiness/a-new-wrinkle-in-the-gig-economy-workers-get-most-of-the-money.html&quot;&gt;Brianna Wettlaufer&lt;/a&gt; of Stocksy, &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/wd7edm/be-the-bank-you-want-to-see-in-the-world-0000626-v22n4&quot;&gt;Enric Duran&lt;/a&gt; of the Catalan Integral Cooperative and FairCoop, &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.commonbound.org/speaker/felipe-witchger&quot;&gt;Felipe Witchger&lt;/a&gt; of Community Purchasing Alliance, and &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/bnpbg5/could-colorado-voters-usher-in-the-future-of-healthcare-in-america&quot;&gt;Irene Aguilar&lt;/a&gt;, a doctor and state senator who fought for a co-op health system in my home state of Colorado. There are so many more.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Creating anything new in the world, especially something that runs against the grain, requires courageous and visionary individuals, tied to resourceful communities. These people are frequently stubborn, demanding of those around them, and adept in conflict. We should not expect anything less, yet somehow cooperators too often assume that co-ops can transcend this basic reality of social life.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The necessity of strong leadership in new co-ops is a principal assumption behind &lt;a href=&quot;http://start.coop/&quot;&gt;Start.coop&lt;/a&gt;, the new equity accelerator for co-ops on whose inaugural board I serve. We’re very aware that unless we support the founders above all, their co-ops will never get founded.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Members must be leaders.&lt;/strong&gt; Just as new co-ops often try to be leaderless, legacy co-op members can forget the leadership of their founding and neglect their own responsibility to support leaders among them. Not only do we need co-op members who know they are members and who can recite the &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.ica.coop/en/cooperatives/cooperative-identity&quot;&gt;cooperative principles&lt;/a&gt;, we need members with the vision and tenacity to challenge their co-ops to be ever better. Here, the stories are even harder to come by, but they are happening all the time—in cases like &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.geo.coop/story/green-dreams&quot;&gt;the transformation&lt;/a&gt; of Pedernales Electric Cooperative in Texas or the &lt;a href=&quot;https://mississippitoday.org/2018/12/14/we-dont-have-any-voice-rural-mississippians-feel-shut-out-overcharged-by-electric-co-ops/&quot;&gt;ongoing struggle&lt;/a&gt; for economic and racial justice in Mississippi’s co-op utilities.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Another organization whose board I have recently joined is &lt;a href=&quot;https://weown.it/&quot;&gt;We Own It&lt;/a&gt;, which supports co-op members across the United States who are organizing to revive the democracy in their co-ops. Here, again, the strategy is leadership development; our flagship program is a fellowship for members poised to be leaders in changing their co-ops for the better.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Leaders must be accountable.&lt;/strong&gt; There are, of course, differences between leadership in co-ops and that in other kinds of organizations. Leaders in investor-owned firms must be chiefly accountable upward, to wealthy investors. Co-op leaders should have accountability that points downward, or horizontally, to members. Co-op leaders should recognize accountability as a strength; leaders depend on their communities in everything they do, just as Wall Street CEOs depend on the support of their profit-seeking backers. Being accountable is a way of being in solidarity and of making leadership work.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Accountability, however, cannot overwhelm leadership. When members recognize the need to have and support leaders among them, they also grant those leaders the space to lead—even to make mistakes. They choose leaders intentionally, rather than relying on the vagaries of charismatic authority and background privilege to choose for them, and they honor the responsibility those leaders have taken on. They root for their leaders, whoever they are. Then, they identify specific mechanisms of oversight and recall through which real accountability can happen.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Don’t reinvent too many wheels at once.&lt;/strong&gt; I am drawn, like many cooperators today, to the ideal of a world in which we are all equally leaders of our own lives, interacting through ever more radically direct forms of democracy. I still row in that direction through my research and activism. But when I’m advising co-op founders struggling for a foothold in an economy slanted steeply against them, I find myself more and more leaning toward conservatism—toward the examples of remarkable, accountable, not-necessarily-radical leaders of cooperatives past.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;For our co-ops to survive and transform communities, we don’t need to reinvent every single wheel of organizational life at once. It’s powerful enough if you can flip a few critical levers—like who owns a company and how its most high-level policies are decided. When you do that, some of those old, widespread habits of old-fashioned organizational life can take on new meaning. Leadership, for instance. When people exhibit vision, talent, and tenacity for building the next generation of democratic enterprise, we should support them with all we have, rather than pretend we can do without them.&lt;/p&gt;</content><author><name>Nathan Schneider</name></author><category term="collab-gov" /><category term="internet-of-ownership" /><summary type="html">I frequently encounter a notion, among those drawn to cooperatives, that a cooperative should be an amorphous, faceless collective in which old-world skills and norms of leadership can be discarded. How does this work out for them? Not well.</summary></entry><entry><title type="html">Event: Boulder, Meet The Colorado Sun</title><link href="https://cmci.colorado.edu/medlab/2019/01/10/boulder-meet-colorado-sun.html" rel="alternate" type="text/html" title="Event: Boulder, Meet The Colorado Sun" /><published>2019-01-10T00:00:00-07:00</published><updated>2019-01-10T00:00:00-07:00</updated><id>https://cmci.colorado.edu/medlab/2019/01/10/boulder-meet-colorado-sun</id><content type="html" xml:base="https://cmci.colorado.edu/medlab/2019/01/10/boulder-meet-colorado-sun.html">&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https://www.eventbrite.com/e/boulder-meet-the-colorado-sun-tickets-54663624372&quot;&gt;Register here&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Out of widespread consolidation and layoffs in Colorado journalism, a new publication emerged last summer, The Colorado Sun. After just a few months, it has already produced vital reporting from across the state. The Sun is also journalist-owned and affiliated with the cryptocurrency startup Civil.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Join Colorado Sun editors and reporters, together with CU Boulder students who have been collaborating with them, for a celebration of what they have accomplished. Learn about their work and their business model, and find out how you can get involved in a renaissance for news-gathering in our state.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Hosted by the Media Enterprise Design Lab at CU Boulder’s College of Media, Communication and Information, with support from the university’s Office for Outreach and Engagement and the Brett Family Foundation.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;</content><author><name>Nathan Schneider</name></author><category term="stakeholder-news" /><category term="events" /><summary type="html">Register here</summary></entry><entry><title type="html">Organizations as Abstractions Over the Law</title><link href="https://cmci.colorado.edu/medlab/2019/01/09/organizations-as-abstractions.html" rel="alternate" type="text/html" title="Organizations as Abstractions Over the Law" /><published>2019-01-09T00:00:00-07:00</published><updated>2019-01-09T00:00:00-07:00</updated><id>https://cmci.colorado.edu/medlab/2019/01/09/organizations-as-abstractions</id><content type="html" xml:base="https://cmci.colorado.edu/medlab/2019/01/09/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;

&lt;p&gt;Here are some examples of strategies I am talking about:&lt;/p&gt;

&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 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;

&lt;p&gt;Hacking up abstractions, however, runs into limits. For one thing, there can be tremendous advantages in taxation and regulatory treatment from using an incorporation statute designed with your kind of organization in mind; for instance, co-ops can facilitate early-stage community investment in ways that are simply not feasible for other companies. In some jurisdictions, too, it is outright illegal to call anything a co-op that is not incorporated as such. Finally, there is the danger of slippage. Many co-ops that are generations old have lost much of their democratic culture, and the only thing retaining even a modicum of accountability to their members is the fact that they are stuck in a cooperative legal statute. If democracy isn’t hard-coded into the organization, it becomes that much more vulnerable to defaulting back to the dominant, less-democratic paradigm.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Misaligned legal and organizational layers can exact a cost over time. &lt;a href=&quot;https://mayfirst.org/en/&quot;&gt;May First/People Link&lt;/a&gt;, an activist-oriented tech provider, is a nonprofit that has long identified as a “democratic membership organization,” in which member organizations and individuals elect the board. Again, it is probably more cooperative than many actual co-ops. But currently, the organization is discussing &lt;a href=&quot;https://comment.mayfirst.org/t/mm-2018-form-a-committee-to-explore-converting-our-organization-to-a-multi-stake-holder-cooperative/910&quot;&gt;a proposal&lt;/a&gt; to make the legal transition to cooperative status. Over the years, MFPL’s democratic tendencies have generated both regulatory and organizational friction. Those advocating this shift see it as a means of “resolving contradictions and weaknesses in our current democratic structure”—and to more transparently communicate to members what their relationship and responsibilities to the organization should be.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;Hacking the law may be a strategy for innovation, but in the long run it probably can’t be a substitute for changing the law as well.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;Thanks to Brian Young of Action Network and Camille Kerr of Staffing Cooperative for their contributions to this conversation.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;</content><author><name>Nathan Schneider</name></author><category term="internet-of-ownership" /><category term="collab-gov" /><summary type="html">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 Everything for Everyone. 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 describes 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.</summary></entry><entry><title type="html">Hypothesis: ESOPs for the Online Economy</title><link href="https://cmci.colorado.edu/medlab/2019/01/06/ESOPs-for-the-online-economy.html" rel="alternate" type="text/html" title="Hypothesis: ESOPs for the Online Economy" /><published>2019-01-06T00:00:00-07:00</published><updated>2019-01-06T00:00:00-07:00</updated><id>https://cmci.colorado.edu/medlab/2019/01/06/ESOPs-for-the-online-economy</id><content type="html" xml:base="https://cmci.colorado.edu/medlab/2019/01/06/ESOPs-for-the-online-economy.html">&lt;p&gt;I work in a startup town, the rare kind of place where you can trip over veteran founders, with multiple exits behind then, on the sidewalk. By “exits,” I mean the end-goal of most tech-oriented startups—the moment when the startup is sold, either to a bigger company or, more rarely, to the investing public on the stock market. The whole culture of startup communities like Boulder is aimed toward this; it’s when founders and investors get their big payday. And yet this is the logic that turns our online infrastrutures into commodities. In the exit, it is often the data and loyalty of us the users that is being sold to the highest bidder.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;What if another kind of exit were possible? What if founders and investors could aim for an exit that sold to the users with a real stake in the future behavior of the firm, as well as in its sustainability? These are questions I’ve been puzzling on for some time now, and I think I’m starting to see a viable path forward.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The ESOP, or employee stock ownership plan, is the most successful strategy for enabling employee ownership in the US economy. In companies from New Belgium Brewing to Southwest Airlines, it makes worker-owners of 14 million Americans. In contrast, there are just several hundred worker co-ops with just several thousand workers among them. Two things make the ESOP model work as well as it has:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;ul&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;it consolidates the ownership shares in a trust, making it far easier to finance than a bunch of individual workers with individual credit histories&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;since the 1970s and 1980s, there has been appropriate tax treatment in US law&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;

&lt;p&gt;For a particular profile of firms (generally closely held and medium-sized) the ESOP has been an attractive exit strategy for many founders.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;The inventor of the ESOP model, Louis Kelso—a Coloradan and graduate of CU Boulder’s business and law schools—didn’t want to stop at that. He envisioned the ESOP as just one kind of “SOP” enabling more broad-based capital ownership. I suspect the challenges of the online economy present an opportunity to consider other such models he proposed, particularly the CSOP, or consumer stock ownership plan. Analagous to the ESOP, this would enable long-term users of a business (Kelso envisioned examples like neighborhood grocery stores or monopoly utilities) to become owners of it—by borrowing outside capital on the promise of future growth. Such financing means the CSOP could provide an exit payout far greater than what cash individual users could muster.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;What if, for instance, Uber drivers could become dividend-earning owners in this way, or if Facebook users could use such a trust to elect their own trustees to the company’s board? This could be a strategy for remedying some of the critical accountability crises of the online economy.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;I am currently engaged in research on the feasibility of such models, with the support of a fellowship from Rutgers University’s &lt;a href=&quot;https://smlr.rutgers.edu/content/institute-study-employee-ownership-and-profit-sharing&quot;&gt;Institute for the Study of Employee Ownership and Profit-Sharing&lt;/a&gt;. The first step is a paper with &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.universiteitleiden.nl/en/staffmembers/1/morshed-mannan&quot;&gt;Morshed Mannan&lt;/a&gt;, a brilliant thinker on legal strategies for a more democratic online economy. We’re exploring what conditions would work best for this kind if exit, as well as the policies needed to make it more feasible.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;More to come. &lt;a href=&quot;https://www.zotero.org/ntnsndr/items/collectionKey/U298EBUI&quot;&gt;Here’s a small bibliography-in-progress&lt;/a&gt;. In the meantime, if this topic is related to your interests, I would love to hear from you.&lt;/p&gt;</content><author><name>Nathan Schneider</name></author><category term="collab-gov" /><category term="internet-of-ownership" /><summary type="html">I work in a startup town, the rare kind of place where you can trip over veteran founders, with multiple exits behind then, on the sidewalk. By “exits,” I mean the end-goal of most tech-oriented startups—the moment when the startup is sold, either to a bigger company or, more rarely, to the investing public on the stock market. The whole culture of startup communities like Boulder is aimed toward this; it’s when founders and investors get their big payday. And yet this is the logic that turns our online infrastrutures into commodities. In the exit, it is often the data and loyalty of us the users that is being sold to the highest bidder.</summary></entry><entry><title type="html">Notes on Collective Governance</title><link href="https://cmci.colorado.edu/medlab/2019/01/06/notes-on-collective-governance.html" rel="alternate" type="text/html" title="Notes on Collective Governance" /><published>2019-01-06T00:00:00-07:00</published><updated>2019-01-06T00:00:00-07:00</updated><id>https://cmci.colorado.edu/medlab/2019/01/06/notes-on-collective-governance</id><content type="html" xml:base="https://cmci.colorado.edu/medlab/2019/01/06/notes-on-collective-governance.html">&lt;p&gt;&lt;img src=&quot;/medlab/assets/fetters-wave.jpg&quot; style=&quot;float:right; width:50%; padding:10px;&quot; /&gt;Those of us looking to shape our enterprises with methods for collective governance and shared ownership are led to ask: &lt;em&gt;What can collective governance look like? What shape does that take? What are some of the challenges and freedoms presented in this model?&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;We spoke with several cooperative-minded experts who offered their insight into these questions, as part of a collaboration with the Action Network, a nonprofit online mobilization platform whose team is seeking to further democratize its operations. Here are a few takeaways from our discussion:&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;ul&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Clarity:&lt;/strong&gt; Facilitate strong and clear communication around your offerings and core values. Create a ladder of engagement for the purpose of empowering members around co-ownership, leadership, and responsibility. The earlier you can define members’ roles and emphasize their level of commitment, the more assured your members and core partners may feel.&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Trust:&lt;/strong&gt; Build trust within your organization to increase loyalty and engagement among members and core partners. It will be difficult to be everything to everyone. 1) Recognize the nature of your member-base; if they are mostly international, allow for participation in voting and web-based meetings based on remote positioning and convenience to their time zone. 2) Record and send out online meetings, creating open discussion forums and providing a variety of ways in which your members can communicate their needs and opinions to you. 3) Develop tools to increase accessibility and transparency around important stakeholder information, and show your members how to engage with your platform.&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Collaborative effort for collective success:&lt;/strong&gt; Understand that people respond differently to different kinds of communication. Some will want to dominate much of the activity or conversation on the platform. Spot the need to activate or incentivize many members to engage based on their preference or ability so that the contribution of value and insight is more fairly distributed.&lt;/li&gt;
  &lt;li&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Use your users:&lt;/strong&gt; In any early stage of a startup or software project, the best test group for your product is your members; give room for critical feedback as a chance to listen, learn, and improve. This will also cultivate an environment of oppeness and transparency at every level of the process, while also retaining the agility and autonomy that the development team needs.&lt;/li&gt;
&lt;/ul&gt;

&lt;p&gt;If we think about a wave—the flow, the tide that pulls from within, it requires many forces working in tandem to build momentum and energy, enough to create the wave’s body and crest.&lt;/p&gt;

&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;A special thanks to the participants in this discussion: Brian Young (executive director and founder, Action Network), Martha Grant (product manager, Action Network), Alanna Irving (team member, Open Collective; co-founder, Enspiral and Loomio), Chris Tittle (director of organizational resilience, Sustainable Economies Law Center), Margaret Vincent (senior counsel, Stocksy United).&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;</content><author><name>Katy Fetters</name></author><category term="collab-gov" /><summary type="html">Those of us looking to shape our enterprises with methods for collective governance and shared ownership are led to ask: What can collective governance look like? What shape does that take? What are some of the challenges and freedoms presented in this model?</summary></entry></feed>