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A legal and practical manual from SELC, EBCLC, and the Green Collar Communities Clinic on starting and operating a worker-owned business.
Governance design is tied to legal structure. This manual helps founders see how ownership, employment, entity choice, governance documents, and financing fit together.
Worker co-op founders and advisors who need a practical legal roadmap.
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 legal guide to converting an existing business to cooperative ownership, including entity formation, governance documents, asset transfer, financing, and transaction steps.
This free seventh edition, revised in April 2016, gives worker-coop founders a practical California-oriented roadmap across entity choice, governance documents, employment, tax, financing, and securities questions. SELC's current legal-guides hub continues to offer it with an explicit warning that the manuals are educational and may become outdated.
Choose it to understand the legal workstreams and prepare questions for advisors, not for current statutory answers or filing language. Every entity, employment, tax, fundraising, and governance step should be checked against current law in the cooperative's jurisdiction.