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This is the idea behind investment clubs. Individual members tout companies they believe in. The club pools funds and invests in a selected company.

Co-op Principal began an investment club aimed at supporting cooperatives. In addition to keeping money local and providing capital to organizations with a social mission, members learn about investing.

Extracted from: http://www.coopwatercooler.com/discussions//building-to-co-op-movement-base-with-investment-clubs

Canadian co-op studies scholar Brett Fairbairn locates a tension in what he asserts to be the “dualistic” view of cooperatives, characterized by the twin set of economic and social goals. Within that framework, “industry” people (for Fairbairn, often managers) tend to focus on the primacy of economic goals while viewing social goals as a secondary expense, while “movement” people (Fairbairn introduces the wonderful phrase “arbiters of cooperative purity”) perceive the social mission as the primary raison de etre of cooperation.

The jump to applying this time-tested model to investing in cooperatives was first made in Minneapolis in 2013, when Co-op Principal was established. Club members agree to invest $50 per month, and they meet monthly (often at a local brewery) to discuss and vote on co-op investment opportunities. Since its founding, Co-op Principal has had a five-figure capital impact on its local co-op economy, and the club has generated annual returns for its members in the 2-4% range.

The vision of Co-op Principal’s founders was not simply to create a club in their city, but to spread the model across the country. To advance this agenda, they created a parallel non-profit intended to house model documents and provide support to other groups looking to get their own clubs going. Since its establishment, a similar club is now up and running in Boston, and at least three more are in the process of organizing for early 2017 launches. Active conversations are also now underway around how the growing of network of clubs can contribute resources to the non-profit for the purpose of developing the sort of shared plug-and-play online infrastructure that could drastically simplify the process of both starting new clubs and operating existing ones.

In short, co-op investment clubs are easy to set up (and hopefully will become even easier in the coming year) and have the potential to boost any community’s co-op movement in a number of positive ways. As such, every committed cooperator should seek out such a club in their community and, if it doesn’t exist, reach out to Co-op Principal for advice about starting one. Through small monthly investments and building a welcoming community of committed co-op enthusiasts, a robust network of cooperating co-op investment clubs could form the foundation of a reinvigorated co-op movement.

Extracted from: http://thecp.coop/

The Cooperative Principal provides start-up know how and on-going education to everyday people who come together to invest in a radically different, co-operative future.

 We were frustrated with Wall Street and the lack of alternatives so we did some homework. While the name investment club carries some baggage, as legal entities investment clubs are granted some benefits that we can actually use to change the status quo. Most importantly, they can reduce the financial hurdle that often exists if you want to do something interesting, outside of Wall Street with your money. So, we started the Cooperative Principal to provide start-up know how and on-going education to everyday people who come together to invest in a radically different, co-operative future.

In order to make it easier for folks to start and run local investment clubs, we founded the Cooperative Principal. In terms of organizational structure, think of a bike wheel where the center or hub is the Cooperative Principal (CP), a Minnesota based non-profit. This center hub serves the local clubs that are at the end of the spokes, around the wheel. The CP provides the education, documents and some administrative support to make starting a legal, properly registered club easier. Then, on an on-going basis, the CP provides investment ideas and analysis, facilitates local clubs connecting with each other and promotes the growth of the larger co-op movement.

This is the beauty of CP Investment Clubs, people who on their own can’t afford to invest in their values now have a vehicle to do so and co-ops have access to a new source of capital.

Beyond the dollars and cents, there is a social and educational component to The Cooperative Principal. Members meet in person a minimum of 4 times per year, ideally in a social setting (think microbrewery!) and the clubs operate in a cooperative, democratic manner. Based on investment analysis from the central non-profit, or their own research, members discuss and vote on where to put their pooled funds. Club members are both participating in their own democratic organizations and supporting the co-op economy in a way that is only possible by working together.

Extracted from: http://www.sharesavespend.com/blog/investment-club-reimagined

The Cooperative Principal is a new nonprofit organization that provides know-how and ongoing education to help start and run a local investment club—all with the goal of supporting cooperatives, organizations owned and operated for the benefit of their members.

Even though investment clubs aren’t as wildly popular as they once were, they still offer a great way to build your investment acumen. They can also provide the opportunity to learn about businesses, in my case co-ops in my community, and meet like-minded people.

At every meeting a member of our club presents an investment opportunity. The state I live in, Minnesota, leads the nation in business related co-ops, so we have many options to discuss. Then we vote on where to put our pooled funds. We have invested in five cooperatives so far including food, maple syrup and an investment co-op that buys and develops real estate in our community.

 A few important takeaways

1. Systematic investing, whether through an investment club or on your own, is important for people of all ages.

2. Supporting local and regional co-ops through periodic investments is a great way to link money and your values.

3. Investment clubs can give you a forum to pool money with like-minded people and make a meaningful impact on your community and region.

The post Project Of The Day: CoopPrincipal appeared first on P2P Foundation.

In his recently republished Cooperative Manifesto, Tim Huet explains why he came to the conclusion that ‘There Is No More Important Social Change Work You Can Do Than Cooperative Development’. Huet was one of the first organisers of the Arizmendi Assocation of Cooperatives, which Ed Mayo describes as a great example of coop replication.

For Huet, coops become relevant when they are part of a wider movement against capitalism. They provide answers to ‘the military question’: while closures, crises, strikes, protests and occupations can create the possibility and space for change, how do people self-organise to consolidate that space and expand it, by developing bases of economic and social power?

The difficult question of times

When cooperatives take a great leap forward, it’s usually in times of social crisis. This is when the relevance, necessity and potential of cooperation become clearest to people. In the ‘hungry 1840s’, the Rochdale cooperators’ fifth object was to ‘arrange the powers of production, distribution, education and government’. Providing decent food,  building houses, providing decent work and acquiring land were immediate tasks and also steps towards a hegemonic cooperative commonwealth, to be established ‘as soon as practicable’. Expressed in different language in different times, this is the invariant programme of cooperatives as a movement. So when is ‘practicable’, and what is practical now? These are strategic questions, throwing up yet more questions. What are the possibilities in these times? What resources, self-help and solidarity can we mobilise in this situation?

The political shell

Cooperatives seek to be self-reliant, therefore independent of lobbies and parties that seek to influence through private corporations or state action. The instinct of governments and sectional interests is to enrol, recuperate or suppress autonomous movements, including cooperatives. Coop organisations, therefore, have a strategic defence and propaganda role. In the present time of political turmoil, when parties make policy blandishments towards mutuals and coops, the principle of autonomy guides strategy and tactics. Cooperative movements exercise political ‘neutrality’ in order to maintain strategic freedom to resolve the real questions of social and economic power in favour of people.

Necessity, the mother of cooperation

We cooperate because there is no better or no other way. Meeting peoples’ self-defined needs and aspirations is the relevance test. We know that the movement is re-invented and grows fast in times of widespread social and economic conflict, if people have the means and opportunity to adapt the technology of cooperation. Lancashire in the 1840s, Ireland in the 1890s, post war Italy, Spain in the 1950s, Argentina in the present century.

Change was in the air in the 1970s. A wave of coop formations in the UK and US was inspired by a mix of libertarian socialism, anarchism, anti racism, the rising ecology movement, second wave feminism, community organising and other currents. Cooperatives gave people new infrastructure and tools in a period of social contestation. That wave fell back in the times of reaction which followed, particularly in the 1990s. In that phase, any strategy to rapidly expand coops had its work cut out. So, is now our time?

Of course, we don’t know yet. We know there is social conflict and political disintegration; we know people are in need; that people want change. But are they moving towards self-organised ways and means to get it? Do they have the time, social capital and savings to invest? Are they confident enough? Hindsight is easy, yet experience suggests that productive strategy won’t be a matter of helicoptering legacy coop models onto disparate people and situations, so much as directing solidarity to those expressing a desire to change their situation by acting together, and who feel that change is realistic, possible and necessary, even if they haven’t heard about coops. Where the human and material resources – cooperative capital – come from is another strategic challenge, especially in a country whose coops squandered their assets and failed to invest in the movement for decades.

Strategy has to aim at developing a framework in which cooperators can respond quickly and intelligently to what’s going on around them. Coop advocacy needs to work close to the heat, designing and disseminating relevant information about ‘why’ as well as proposals for ‘how’. Whatever language we use towards governments, policy makers and ‘influencers’, we need authentic language to speak to people. The effort to develop a real, uncompromised cooperative politics is especially urgent in times of cultural dissonance and rampant ideological cretinism.

Not all cooperation is good for you

Not all modes of cooperation are in themselves positive. We can understand the complex cooperation of workers that enables private firms to extract profit, the cooperation of prisoners with their captors, or the enthusiastic collaboration of consumers with extractive platforms, without justifying them as behaviours that meet peoples’ mutually defined needs and aspirations. Cooperative messages have to inspire, but they can’t just be feel good platitudes. They need to express what we cooperate against, as well as for. Our language should be sensitised to the fact that few would-be cooperators want to self-identify as ‘business’ people, for instance. Jargon words like ‘innovation’ and ‘entrepreneurialism’ mask mechanisms for increasing inequality and intensifying exploitation. The more we scramble our messages by trying to reclaim alienated vocabulary – perhaps to appear progressive, mainstream or unfrightening – the more we obscure the potential of cooperation as part of a movement for social change and the less relevant coops will seem to people. Good communication is strategic.

Show us the money

If the purpose of the coop movement is to create new cooperators, we can’t be defensive or patronising when they articulate a radical coop vision literally, even bluntly; or when they challenge the coop establishment. They’re correct, if not always polite. Years of work, negotiation and experience may yield useful knowledge and resources, but they don’t confer superior wisdom, ownership of the movement, or special insight into the goals and methods of coop strategy.

In a sense, any new wave of coops and cooperators begins to fail at the point it stops growing and starts consolidating. In movement terms, a coop that disappears is not necessarily a failure, and coops that go on forever are not all successes. Whether they go back 20 or 150 years, established coops tend to make their peace. They mutate from radical groups, to incorporated bodies, to businesses; move from meeting needs and aspirations, to hitting commercial targets; from self-help to charity. This is predictable. You can create coops, but you can’t make a commonwealth one coop at a time. Raising the game of intercooperation is strategic.

Strategy should to seek to update and adapt the coop development repertoire in response to times and situations. We should be open to the new, the unfamiliar, and the alarming. Strengthening established coops should be an object of strategy, where those coops are able to renew themselves and contribute to the renewal of the movement. In this wider renewal, younger generations often do the heavy lifting. They articulate new needs and aspirations, or old needs and aspirations in a new context. They put in the sweat equity. Many new coops are proposed or advised by old hands, and helping new cooperators make the right alliances and avoid old traps is vital. Yet we should not be in the business of judging whether there is a ‘market’ for their ideas and approaches. Coop renewal often means attempting things that are impossible, according to received wisdom. This is part of coop realism.

We will need to engage with many projects that don’t develop, to find the ones that could change everything. New cooperators are often our most passionate and connected advocates. In the recent uptick of formations in London and in the tech community, for instance, coop methods are being used by social activists contesting the use and ownership of new technologies; looking for new ways to combat exploitation; defending the commons; combatting fuel poverty; resisting landlords; radicalising food culture and politicising cultural work. Their views about the utility of what worked for people five, thirty or a hundred years ago are respectful and open, but critical. They look beyond the formal movement, and beyond the UK, for ideas and inspiration. The dimensions of the social crisis are global and local, rather than national. Deepening cooperative internationalism, and looking beyond the existing legal and national frameworks, are strategic for local development.

The places to look for the next wave of cooperators are all around us, if we’re willing to engage. The next game-changing coops may be on the verge of coming into existence.

The post Eclipse and re-emergence of the coop movement appeared first on P2P Foundation.