Seed Commons is growing! We are thrilled to announce that we have accepted five new organizations for membership in our financial cooperative. As they work their way through our non-extractive lending training program, they will be able to bring proposals for investment to our member-managed sustainability committee, drawing on the non-extractive capital we have raised together as a cooperative—and will be able to share their on-the-ground knowledge and experiences back to each other and our 39 other members across North America.

Here’s more on our new members:

Borderless Collective works towards a culture of repair to create tangible psychological and material benefits for Black and Indigenous communities in and around Omaha, Nebraska, with an emphasis on building collective power and the capacity for economic self-determination.

Cooperation Crenshaw is working to ignite the Black radical imagination by creating a worker-centered, community-led solidarity economy in South Central Los Angeles, with a focus on developing a networked ecosystem of democratic workplaces.

Cooperation Meadville is a workforce and economic development initiative helping build community wealth in Meadville, Pennsylvania, kickstarted by Common Roots PA, a grassroots developer of permanently affordable housing and the Keystone Development Center, which provides support and technical assistance to cooperatives across the mid-Atlantic.

Cooperación Santa Ana is advancing worker cooperatives in Orange County, California. Since 2019, over 97 participants have graduated from their 12 session CooperAcción program, resulting in 23 worker-owned business or worker-led projects emerging in Orange County and LA. Additionally, six cooperatives—in care, construction, food production/food service, agriculture, and consulting—have or are currently working more intensively alongside Cooperación Santa Ana through its incubator program.

Uptima Entrepreneur Cooperative, headquartered in Oakland, California, is the nation’s first cooperatively owned business support organization, dedicated to providing holistic support for diverse entrepreneurs. Since 2014 they have supported over 1,000+ entrepreneurs in exploring business ownership, including cooperatives, with education and advisory services. This work has helped owners starting and scaling their businesses raise over $20 million and create over 1,000 jobs.

We’re thrilled and honored to onboard this new cohort of members into our cooperative, and can’t wait to see what we can accomplish to advance worker and community ownership together.