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  1. <?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>2019-01-13T16:55:38-07:00</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">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;
    2. 

  2. 

  3. &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;
    4. 

  4. 

  5. &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;
    6. 

  6. 

  7. &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.&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;
    8. 

  8. 

  9. &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;
    10. 

  10. 

  11. &lt;p&gt;Here are some examples of strategies I am talking about:&lt;/p&gt;
    12. 

  12. 

  13. &lt;ul&gt;
    14. 

  14.   &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;
    15. 

  15.   &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;
    16. 

  16.   &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;
    17. 

  17.   &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;
    18. 

  18. &lt;/ul&gt;
    19. 

  19. 

  20. &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;
    21. 

  21. 

  22. &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;
    23. 

  23. 

  24. &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;
    25. 

  25. 

  26. &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="governance" /><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;&lt;em&gt;by Nathan Schneider&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;
    27. 

  27. 

  28. &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;
    29. 

  29. 

  30. &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;
    31. 

  31. 

  32. &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;
    33. 

  33. 

  34. &lt;ul&gt;
    35. 

  35.   &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;
    36. 

  36.   &lt;li&gt;since the 1970s and 1980s, there has been appropriate tax treatment in US law&lt;/li&gt;
    37. 

  37. &lt;/ul&gt;
    38. 

  38. 

  39. &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;
    40. 

  40. 

  41. &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;
    42. 

  42. 

  43. &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;
    44. 

  44. 

  45. &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;
    46. 

  46. 

  47. &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></name></author><category term="user-trusts" /><category term="internet-of-ownership" /><summary type="html">by Nathan Schneider</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;
    48. 

  48. 

  49. &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;
    50. 

  50. 

  51. &lt;ul&gt;
    52. 

  52.   &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;
    53. 

  53.   &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;
    54. 

  54.   &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;
    55. 

  55.   &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;
    56. 

  56. &lt;/ul&gt;
    57. 

  57. 

  58. &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;
    59. 

  59. 

  60. &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="governance" /><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>
    61.