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A University of Wisconsin Center for Cooperatives report summarizing governance structures, practices, and culture among U.S. worker co-ops based on survey data.
It gives practitioners and researchers a data-backed view of how worker co-op governance actually shows up across organizations.
Boards, researchers, and advisors comparing governance practices across worker co-ops.
Heirloom Library entries are summaries and wayfinding notes. The original source is the best place to read the full resource.
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A research report by Hilary Abell on barriers and success factors for scaling worker cooperatives, including cooperative culture, training, management, capital, and governance.
Democracy at Work Institute
A DAWI guide to democratic management practices organized around power, information, people, and money, with tools and examples for worker co-ops and democratic workplaces.
Democracy at Work Institute / Project Equity
A DAWI and Project Equity framework for understanding the local and regional supports that help worker cooperatives grow.
Published in April 2024, this report analyzes the 73 U.S. worker cooperatives that participated in the 2021 Cooperative Governance Research Initiative survey. It is useful for comparing board composition, elections, training, management structures, member participation, and board culture across the participating co-ops.
The findings describe one voluntary survey sample; they are not a governance prescription or a causal test of which practices produce better outcomes. UWCC has since published broader findings from its 2024 survey, but this remains the initiative's worker-co-op-specific report based on the 2021 data.