Nashville, Tennessee
The New Economy of Tennessee Loan Fund (NET Fund) is a non-extractive loan fund that supports minority worker cooperative startups and conversions. It was founded in the spring of 2019 by the Southeast Center for Cooperative Development in alliance with Free Hearts, an organization led by formerly incarcerated women that providing support, education, and advocacy to families impacted by incarceration.
New Orleans, Louisiana
Coop New Orleans seeks to bring together a community consortium to facilitate the start-up and development of worker-owned cooperative businesses in the region, as well as other cooperative forms such as housing cooperatives..
Lexington, Kentucky
The Patchwork Cooperative Loan Fund is a community wealth fund that exists to help develop and support democratically controlled or worker-owned cooperative enterprises that serve the Lexington community. They do this through free technical assistance, “non-extractive” business loans, and building community.
The South
The Federation Of Southern Cooperatives is a non-profit cooperative association of black farmers, landowners, and cooperatives. Their goals are: to develop cooperatives and credit unions as a means for people to enhance the quality of their lives and improve their communities; to save, protect and expand the landholdings of Black family farmers in the South; to develop a unique and effective Rural Training and Research Center to provide information, skills, and awareness, in a cultural context, to help our members and constituents to build strong rural communities; and to develop, advocate and support public policies to benefit our membership of Black and other family farmers and the low-income rural communities where they live.
Dayton, Ohio
CO-OP Dayton is a non-profit organization founded in 2015 to develop cooperative businesses that meet community needs, whether that’s access to fresh groceries or to quality job opportunities. They believe that the cooperative model of worker ownership can transform the Dayton region by rooting jobs and businesses locally.
Cooperatives mean jobs with greater dignity and opportunities for workers to build wealth through their contributions to the business. And cooperatives mean businesses with greater accountability to the people that live and work in Dayton.
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The Bay, California
Repaired Nations works to educate, organize, and empower low income Black youth in the Bay Area to launch cooperative enterprises for sustainable economic security through shared ownership and control of housing and businesses.
Repaired Nations creates redress for historic trends of oppression through cooperative training and development for collective ownership. Initially, Repaired Nations focuses on building wealth in Black communities by giving youth the tools needed to remain rooted: access to land and access to capital. Bookclubs, Workshops, and Trainings will educate and inspire communities to engage in cooperative effort, while giving grounded, practical skills for collective ownership.
They repair the effects of colonization and oppression by helping to weave interconnected communities into thriving, sustainable networks to equitably provide the essentials of life.
They value cooperation, simplicity, patience, and compassion, never straying from these in our pursuit of ecologically sustainable development in under-resourced communities.
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Start.coop exists to build an ecosystem that lifts up, supports, and accelerates cooperative entrepreneurs on their business journey. Their accelerator selects the most promising teams from across North America and provides them with training and support embedded in our rigorous business curriculum and world-class mentor community.
Start.coop is supporting a new generation of entrepreneurs who are expanding ownership in business sectors ranging from healthcare to the gig economy. They prioritize businesses that create wealth for people of color, women, immigrants and other marginalized populations.
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The Climate Justice Alliance (CJA) helps run a cooperative loan fund project called Reinvest in Our Power. Reinvest in Our Power is a collaborative vehicle aligning groups, including CJA, to address inequity and democratize wealth by moving capital and governance from the extractive to regenerative economy.
West Virginia
New Economy Works West Virginia (N.E.W. WV) works to provide business development support and financing to worker-owned and producer-owned cooperatives in central Appalachia. This is part of building a new economy in the region that is inclusive, democratic, and community controlled.
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
The Philadelphia Area Cooperative Alliance (PACA) is a cooperative whose members are co-ops in the Philadelphia region. Their mission is to improve the lives of people in the Philadelphia region by supporting democratically organized businesses, promoting the principles of the international cooperative movement, and growing the cooperative economy.
PACA envisions a vibrant and growing network of cooperative enterprises that operate in all sectors of the economy to build a better world—providing essential services, strengthening democratic organizations, creating quality jobs, building community wealth, reducing poverty, strengthening our local economy, protecting the environment, and increasing community engagement.
