We're always cooking up pay-it-forward legal advice, action-oriented workshops, and happy hours with engaging conversations on how to build just and resilient local economies. And we don't only provide in-person events for you to connect with us, we provide online trainings and travel across the country to support grassroots economic empowerment. Don't miss out!
Please, help us get the word out about our upcoming events. Share with your friends or networks on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, or LinkedIn! If you're interested in an event, someone you know will probably be interested too. Share the love!
Find Sustainable Economies Law Center's events below!
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Thursday, March 04, 2021 at 05:00 PM PST
Online via Zoom in Oakland, CAOnline Legal Cafe
The Sustainable Economies Law Center provides direct legal support to individuals and groups who are working to create new solutions for resilient local economies. The Resilient Communities Legal Cafe provides sliding-scale donation-based legal advice, via Zoom, by appointment.
If you need advice about starting a worker-owned cooperative, converting an existing business into a cooperative, organizing a housing cooperative, founding a nonprofit or other social enterprise, please RSVP below! Here are some questions we will be prepared to answer:
✅ Radical Real Estate Law: How to form a housing cooperative, real estate cooperative, or nonprofit housing?
✅ Legal formation for small businesses: What are the regulations and requirements to have your organization legally function?
✅ Legal entity choice: Should your org be a for profit, non-profit, and which legal entity fits best with your vision?
✅ Employment law: Whether you're an employer, employee, or a cooperative, we can answer questions on how to prevent or resolve issues?
✅ Tax law: What are the ways to receive tax exemption for your org?
✅ Contracts: Contract review, drafting, and negotiation
✅ Liability issues: What are your governance requirements to avoid liability?
✅ Environmental Law: Do you have questions about how to create more green spaces for your community?Note: We especially encourage Black, Indigenous, people of color, and low-income communities to RSVP. We focus on cooperatives, participatory or democratic nonprofits, land trusts, and mutual aid groups. If you need Spanish Language or American Sign Language interpretation, please email Tia ([email protected]) with Subject Line "Interpretation Request - for [mm/dd/yyyy] event." We will do our best to accommodate your request.
Keep an eye out for an e-mail when you RSVP. The e-mail will have your appointment slot, instructions on how to attend our Legal Cafe remotely, and an intake form that we need you and your partners to fill out.
Format: You and/or your group will be paired with a lawyer for 30-45 minutes to get answers to questions about entity formation, contracts, governance, and more! Since we're based in Oakland, our event times are listed as Pacific Standard Time.
Got any questions? E-mail [email protected]!
Only one person per group needs to RSVP.
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Thursday, March 11, 2021 at 12:00 PM PST · 87 rsvps
ZoomTeach-in: Subchapter T & How Money Flows Through a Cooperative
Are you getting ready to do your taxes? In this teach-in our Director of Economic Democracy, Ricardo Nuñez, will provide an introduction to the powerful way that worker cooperatives equitably distribute wealth and why it matters for your cooperative’s taxes! He’ll cover:
✅ How does money flow through a cooperative business?
✅ What are some of the tax and accounting issues in a cooperative?
✅ What cooperative specific tax benefits exist and how can your cooperative take advantage of them?We’ll also be joined by a Kieron Slaughter, Chief Community Development Officer at the City of Berkeley’s Office of Economic Development, to share how Berkeley businesses can access the Berkeley Revolving Loan Fund, particularly in light of the coop-friendly amendments that went into effect in 2020 and the influx of CARES-funded no/low-interest loans (so exciting!).
We’d like to thank the City of Berkeley for sponsoring this event and making more resources available to grow the cooperative economy in Berkeley!
If you are an entrepreneur, a business owner thinking about succession planning or transitioning to an employee owned company, or a worker coop with worker-members or candidates looking to skill up (Principle 5!), this training is for you!
ASL interpretation will be provided.
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Tuesday, March 16, 2021 at 10:00 AM PDT · $25.00 USD · 2 rsvps
ZoomStakeholders and Shareholders: Innovations in resilient agricultural cooperatives
Therese Tuttle and Kim Arnone will discuss the related concepts of inclusion and investment by comparing two recently formed agricultural cooperatives: F.E.E.D. Cooperative, Inc., and Bay Area Ranchers Cooperative. F.E.E.D. Cooperative is organized as a multi-stakeholder cooperative, and Bay Area Ranchers Cooperative is organized with significant community financial investment through two different but simultaneous securities offerings. The presentation will consider technical mechanisms for achieving social benefits.
This activity has been approved by the California State Bar for 1.0 hour of MCLE credit.
About the Speakers:
Thérèse C. Tuttle
Therese Tuttle represents California consumer cooperatives, agricultural cooperatives and worker cooperatives. She also advises clients on business formation and estate planning matters. In 2000, she founded Tuttle & Van Knonynenburg, LLP, a firm focused on cooperative and agricultural law, with her law partner Frank Van Konynenburg; in 2001 the firm successfully defended the 400 members of Tri Valley Growers, a processing cooperative, from claims of creditors in the cooperative’s bankruptcy. Prior to founding the firm, she worked for California Farmers Union and served as Director of Cooperative and Economic Development for National Farmer’s Union, managing cooperative project requests from 23 state-based member organizations. In 2013, she drafted amendments to California’s cooperative law that enabled preferred-share financing and capitalization of cooperatives. She has spoken on this topic at annual meetings of the California Center for Cooperative Development and has been awarded USDA’s “Great Cooperator” Award. She serves on the non-profits committee of the California State Bar Association.
Kim Arnone
Kim specializes in developing community capital raising strategies for impact funds, social enterprises, cooperatives and nonprofits. She works primarily on investment offerings that can be publicly offered and that are open broadly to her client’s community members and supporters. Kim has assisted a wide range of enterprises in successfully raising capital including offerings from professional sports teams, worker- and consumer-owned businesses, farms and food producers, impact investment funds and nonprofit loan funds, among others. Kim has served on the advisory boards of a variety of enterprises including a renewable energy financing company, a local business development coalition and a socially responsible ecommerce marketplace. She has served on various nonprofit boards including as chair of AIDS Legal Referral Panel of San Francisco and as a member of the Oakland Chamber of Commerce. She earned her Juris Doctorate from Hastings College of Law, where she was editor-in-chief of the Women’s Law Journal. Kim lives, works and plays in Oakland, and is committed to helping her community be vibrant, socially responsible, and inclusive.Dues paying members of the Cooperative Professionals Guild receive access to this webinar for free and future webinars at a 50% discount. Not a member? Become a dues paying member of the Guild and you will be automatically invited to this event! Join today by clicking here!
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Thursday, March 18, 2021 at 12:00 PM PDT
Online via Zoom in Oakland, CAOnline Legal Cafe
The Sustainable Economies Law Center provides direct legal support to individuals and groups who are working to create new solutions for resilient local economies. The Resilient Communities Legal Cafe provides sliding-scale donation-based legal advice, via Zoom, by appointment.
If you need advice about starting a worker-owned cooperative, converting an existing business into a cooperative, organizing a housing cooperative, founding a nonprofit or other social enterprise, please RSVP below! Here are some questions we will be prepared to answer:
✅ Radical Real Estate Law: How to form a housing cooperative, real estate cooperative, or nonprofit housing?
✅ Legal formation for small businesses: What are the regulations and requirements to have your organization legally function?
✅ Legal entity choice: Should your org be a for profit, non-profit, and which legal entity fits best with your vision?
✅ Employment law: Whether you're an employer, employee, or a cooperative, we can answer questions on how to prevent or resolve issues?
✅ Tax law: What are the ways to receive tax exemption for your org?
✅ Contracts: Contract review, drafting, and negotiation
✅ Liability issues: What are your governance requirements to avoid liability?
✅ Environmental Law: Do you have questions about how to create more green spaces for your community?Note: We especially encourage Black, Indigenous, people of color, and low-income communities to RSVP. We focus on cooperatives, participatory or democratic nonprofits, land trusts, and mutual aid groups. If you need Spanish Language or American Sign Language interpretation, please email Tia ([email protected]) with Subject Line "Interpretation Request - for [mm/dd/yyyy] event." We will do our best to accommodate your request.
Keep an eye out for an e-mail when you RSVP. The e-mail will have your appointment slot, instructions on how to attend our Legal Cafe remotely, and an intake form that we need you and your partners to fill out.
Format: You and/or your group will be paired with a lawyer for 30-45 minutes to get answers to questions about entity formation, contracts, governance, and more! Since we're based in Oakland, our event times are listed as Pacific Standard Time.
Got any questions? E-mail [email protected]!
Only one person per group needs to RSVP.
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Thursday, March 25, 2021 at 12:00 PM PDT
Online via Zoom in Oakland, CAOnline Legal Cafe
The Sustainable Economies Law Center provides direct legal support to individuals and groups who are working to create new solutions for resilient local economies. The Resilient Communities Legal Cafe provides sliding-scale donation-based legal advice, via Zoom, by appointment.
If you need advice about starting a worker-owned cooperative, converting an existing business into a cooperative, organizing a housing cooperative, founding a nonprofit or other social enterprise, please RSVP below! Here are some questions we will be prepared to answer:
✅ Radical Real Estate Law: How to form a housing cooperative, real estate cooperative, or nonprofit housing?
✅ Legal formation for small businesses: What are the regulations and requirements to have your organization legally function?
✅ Legal entity choice: Should your org be a for profit, non-profit, and which legal entity fits best with your vision?
✅ Employment law: Whether you're an employer, employee, or a cooperative, we can answer questions on how to prevent or resolve issues?
✅ Tax law: What are the ways to receive tax exemption for your org?
✅ Contracts: Contract review, drafting, and negotiation
✅ Liability issues: What are your governance requirements to avoid liability?
✅ Environmental Law: Do you have questions about how to create more green spaces for your community?Note: We especially encourage Black, Indigenous, people of color, and low-income communities to RSVP. We focus on cooperatives, participatory or democratic nonprofits, land trusts, and mutual aid groups. If you need Spanish Language or American Sign Language interpretation, please email Tia ([email protected]) with Subject Line "Interpretation Request - for [mm/dd/yyyy] event." We will do our best to accommodate your request.
Keep an eye out for an e-mail when you RSVP. The e-mail will have your appointment slot, instructions on how to attend our Legal Cafe remotely, and an intake form that we need you and your partners to fill out.
Format: You and/or your group will be paired with a lawyer for 30-45 minutes to get answers to questions about entity formation, contracts, governance, and more! Since we're based in Oakland, our event times are listed as Pacific Standard Time.
Got any questions? E-mail [email protected]!
Only one person per group needs to RSVP.