Cooperatives: A Path to Economic Equity

With over 30,000 cooperatives in existence nationwide, opportunities for workers and business owners to thrive via shared ownership has also increased. Cooperatives foster community wealth and empower members to create solutions that address socioeconomic issues.

What is a cooperative?
A Cooperative (or co-op) is an enterprise formed to serve the economic and/or cultural needs of its members. It is owned equitably by all of its members and governed democratically. Members share net income or savings in proportion to their use of the cooperative’s services, not based on dollars invested or ownership share.

Types of cooperatives
Worker cooperatives are for-profit businesses owned and controlled by the workers. In a worker cooperative, the worker members own their own jobs, and all employees have a path to ownership. Worker co-ops are one of the pillars of a solidarity economy, along with community-owned investment vehicles and community-controlled real estate. 

Other forms of cooperatives, such as consumer food co-ops and producer co-ops, also provide economic empowerment, through access to healthy foods and other goods, or access to markets for members’ products.

Cooperative services
To support this path to increased community wealth, Pathlight Law offers comprehensive legal services for co-ops, including:

• Co-op legal formation
• Contracting drafting and review
• Documents and compliance for capital raising.

We have represented many cooperatives, in a variety of ways:

• formation of the worker cooperative that acquired Nick’s Pizza in Oakland, California, and help with the business purchase agreement;
• restructuring Bread & Roses Digital, a digital marketing company, from founder-owned to a cooperative and adding employees as worker-owners;
• compliance advice and documents to support a capital raise for Food Shed Cooperative, a grocery co-op in McHenry County Illinois;
• fast and efficient bylaws review for Cooperation Racine, a new Black-led artist’s cooperative in Chicago;

Additionally, our team has supported multiple community groups using cooperatives for local shared real estate ownership.

Interested in learning more?
Our service ranges from a low-cost flat fee service for new worker cooperatives to hands-on strategic design and documentation of more complex cooperative structures. Book a free initial consultation to talk about your cooperative.