New Policy Kit: Social Cooperatives

Today, the Democracy Policy Network has published our Social Cooperatives policy kit, an open resource for legislators, advocates, journalists, and citizens to learn about how a powerful, tested model of organizing social care can ensure that the growing caring economy is co-created by caretakers and communities. The kit was designed by Elias Crim, civic entrepreneur and founder of Solidarity Hall.

A social cooperative is a model of social care provision in which care (such as childcare, eldercare, disability care, or even other social service and public needs, like prison reentry, refugee resettlement, or environmental and cultural stewardship) is collaboratively provided by an enterprise co-created and co-directed by multiple stakeholders, such as care workers, care recipients, family members, community members, governments, and funders. It stands in contrast to status quo models in which care provision is created, directed, and performed solely by isolated families or corporate and government bureaucracies.  With a decades-long track record of delivering quality care, dignified work, and democratic workplaces, social cooperatives (or social co-ops) have made significant contributions to the quality of life in places like northern Italy, Quebec, South Korea, Belgium, Brazil, France, Greece, Portugal and Spain. While still a new idea in the United States, social co-ops offer an innovative tool for addressing the accelerating decline in social care quality and provision.

Largely a response to government cutbacks in the social safety net, social co-ops have emerged as social care organizations which are community-led and democratically-governed, thus avoiding both top-down control and private sector commodification. Some typical characteristics of social cooperatives are:

• A primary focus on community benefit (as opposed to solely the benefit of shareholders or workers), especially in the field of social care services;
• A related emphasis on creating jobs for and serving disadvantaged communities;
• A multi-stakeholder model of governance (i.e., the coop has multiple categories of members, to include volunteers, community members, local government, among others) which uses a process of co-creation of care services;
• A democratic workplace which uses open book management;
• A funding model which often includes procurement contracts with local governments but may also include contracts with private companies.

In the United States, social co-ops are not yet recognized legally as a specific legal category of enterprise. However, communities are currently using a variety of approaches (conventional worker co-ops, non-profits, and social enterprises) to deliver social care, each of which partly resembles a social co-op. Since none of these forms actually replicate all the key features of a social co-op though, our ultimate goal should be to enable this new enterprise model to come as close to its developed form (i.e., as found in Italy, South Korea, and Quebec, for example) as possible. What is needed most now are “early adopters” who work to advocate, do further research, and launch demonstration enterprises.

If you are an entrepreneur, legislator, activist, expert, or journalist looking to help promote social cooperatives in your community, check out (and share) our kit — and please get in touch!