The next meeting of the DC Cooperative Stakeholders Group will be on October 27th, from 1 PM to 2:30 PM. It will be held at the offices of the Dept. of Small and Local Business Development (aka DSLBD) – 441 4th Street, NW, Suite 805S, Washington, DC 20020.

If you are interested in attending please RSVP at this link: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/october-cooperatives-stakeholders-tickets-36990322049?aff=erelexpmlt

Hope you can join us.

~ Rodney North

The Stakeholders Group first met on December 19, 2016. Since then we have met every month, sometimes in the offices of the DSLBD, sometimes at the Impact Hub, and sometimes at The Hive 2.0 in Anacostia.

Here’s a partial (but interesting) list of organizations who have been represented at one or more meetings of the Stakeholders Group:

CO-OPS

CPA Co-op (Community Purchasing Alliance) 

Tightshift co-op 

Northwest Childcare Cooperative

DC Growers Co-op

A Few Cool Hardware Stores (part of the Ace Hardware co-op)

DC CITY GOVERNMENT

Dept of Small and Local Business Development (DSLBD)

Deputy Mayor’s Office of Planning and Economic Development

My Brother’s Keeper

ALLIED ORGANIZATIONS

The National Cooperative Business Association

Credit Union National Association

National Association of Housing Cooperatives

US Association of Overseas Cooperative Development Council

Democracy At Work Network (technical assistance)

Network for Developing Conscious Communities

Alliance For Regional Co-operation (ARC)

Good Food Markets

The Democracy Collaborative

NDCC (Network for Developing Conscious Communities)

Dreaming Out Loud

FINANCIAL INSTITUTIONS

WACIF (Wash. Area Community Investment Fund)

Capital Impact Partners

National Cooperative Bank (NCB)

LOCAL SUPPORT ORGANIZATIONS

KDC Cooperative Solutions (Mid-Atlantic Co-op Development Centre)

This weekend, Sep 30th and Oct 1st, the National Cooperative Business Association is hosting the Co-op Festival on the National Mall (www.CoopFestival.coop). Learn about the impact co-ops make in building a better world!

Several months ago, Cooperation DC laid out their vision for 2017. And I am just posting this vision now.  Their vision is:

…to establish an ecosystem to launch and support worker-owned businesses in DC in the following ways:

• Launch NW Childcare Cooperative: In 2017, we will launch a childcare women-owned business consisting of 15 Latina immigrant worker-owners. A grant award provided by the Meyer Foundation will enable the formulation of the business plan and launch.
• Organize an African American Women-led Childcare cooperative East of the River: The efforts and lessons learned while organizing the NW childcare cooperative in 2016 will serve as the foundation to create the support and infrastructure needed to identify and develop the women that will form the worker-owned childcare cooperative business East of the River.
• DSLBD Cooperative Convenings: Participating in stakeholder meetings will prove instrumental to creating a cooperative ecosystem by sharing current needs, mapping the current coop infrastructure, setting priorities, and addressing long-term and short-term needs.
• Issuing the first Working World Peer Network loan to a DC local cooperative: we will build local and regional capacity through our participation in the Working World Peer Network.
• Fundraising: In order to realize these goals we will need to fund raise $300,000 in calendar year 2017. If you’d like to support the (re)emerging cooperative movement in DC, please consider making a tax-deductible donation. No amount is too big or too small!

Click here for more info on Cooperation DC

Join Vernon Oakes, host of Everything Co-op for an informative workshop on How Co-ops Strengthen Communities. The workshop is sponsored by The Hive 2.0, and will be held at 1231 Good Hope Road Southeast Washington, DC 20020. If you’ve been listening to Everything Co-op, and want to learn about what you’ve heard; then join Vernon for this workshop.

The Hive 2.0 is a co-workspace location in Washington, DC. On Monday June 26th at 6PM the organization will sponsor the first workshop in their Summer Workshop Series “How Co-ops Strengthen Neighborhoods” lead by Rodney North, former Answer Man for the Equal Exchange worker-owned cooperative.

                                 Here’s an outline for the Workshop

* What is a co-op?

* Examples of co-ops in the daily lives of Americans

* Why is the co-op model particularly useful in strengthening
neighborhoods?

* How do co-ops meet basic needs in ways that the marketplace does not?

* Examples of co-ops elsewhere who are meeting needs other communities

* The current – and potential – reality of co-ops

There is a modest fee of $10 to attend the event. To register, Click Here!

So many subscribers have asked for access to the June 8th Rodney North interview on Everything Coop. To Listen to the interview Click Here!

Back in October, the Washington Post had an article about Metro’s planned cuts primarily affecting the predominantly African-American neighborhoods. Is a perfect opportunity to organize transportation co-ops to get people to work and other places? Maybe even Metro and/or the DC Government would even help fund some of costs or even make in-kind donations? Or would this be co-opted by Uber and Lyft to undermine Metro further? 

As many of you likely know, DC has started a free composting program with drop-off locations in every ward. Compost collection has already begun at Eastern Market. It will start on May 13 at the Columbia Heights, Glover Park Burleith, 14th and Kennedy, Brookland, and Parkside-Kenilworth farmers markets. It will begin on May 20 at the University of the District of Columbia and on June 3 at the Ward 8 Farmers Market. It will run year-round at Eastern Market and through market season at the remainder of the sites.

Did you know that DPR has started a Community Compost Cooperative Network, which allows you also to drop off your food scraps at your neighborhood cooperative at any time? To join each member must take an hour training and help process compost 1-hour a month.  Each cooperative can handle around 100 active composters or about 1 ton of material a month. Currently there are about 1000 people composting in this network. Find your local DC cooperatives on this interactive map.

We have learned that the United Kingdom’s Co-operative Bank is to be sold. The danger is that the bank will be sold to international investors without the name of the bank being changed.

We owe it to the members of the thousands of genuine co-operatives operating within the United Kingdom, to make sure that the integrity of the word “co-operative” is maintained. These are co-operatives that are often essential in their daily lives. We should also understand that any many parts of the world co-operatives are vital to the well-being of millions of people, so we should no allow the word ‘co-operative’ to be misused.

We want to get the UK regulator to exercise his power to stop the misuse of the term “Co-operative”. I have worked with co-operatives in more than 40 different countries and I know how important it is that when an organization is called “co-operative” that it is truly genuine.

Please sign this petition to protect the name “co-operative.”

Edgar Parnell, Witney, United Kingdom

The National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC) and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation invite proposals for Digital Edition Publishing Cooperatives. Working together, the Cooperatives will develop technical and human infrastructures to support the digital publication of documentary and scholarly editions and to provide for their long-term preservation, discovery, and use. This initiative responds to the urgent need of scholars and documentary editors for reliable, sustainable, authoritative, and field-driven outlets for publication and discovery of digital editions. At the same time, we hope to investigate the possibility of creating a federated system or systems for publishing and sustaining digital editions. Developing the Digital Edition Publishing Cooperatives will be a two-stage process for Planning and Implementation.

Up to eight planning grants will provide funds to support the first stage of this multi-year endeavor, beginning no later than February 1, 2018. Each project team will consist of a principal investigator to spearhead the initiative, a lead representative from each of at least three participating editions and the host institution(s). During the Planning stage, each team will develop a proposal for implementing a Digital Edition Publishing Cooperative. Planning grants are for one year and up to $100,000.

All planning teams would be eligible to apply for Implementation funding. Three implementation grants of between $350,000 and $500,000, each for up to three years, are expected to be awarded, for a total of up to $1.25 million. Implementation grants will be awarded in September 2019, with a start date of no later than October 1, 2019. A full description of the program, its outcomes, and a glossary of special terminology, are available at: www.archives.gov/nhprc/announcement/publishingcoops.

Deadline for Proposals: July 6, 2017

To view the full announcement, visit:

www.archives.gov/nhprc/announcement/publishingcoops

Want to learn more? Join the Webinar, March 30, 2017, 3:00 p.m. EST

Potential applicants can also learn more by joining our webinar on March 30, 2017 at 3:00 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. To join the webinar, go to: https://connect16.uc.att.com/gsa1/meet/?ExEventID=89909710 and enter your name and email address. You do not need to pre-register for the webinar.

For additional information:

Contact Darrell Meadows, NHPRC Director for Publishing, at (202) 357-5321 or darrell.meadows@nara.gov