On this page, find…

1. Mission & Values

2. How did the Coop Academy get started?

3. 2015 Cohort

4. Learn more

Mission & Values

The East Bay lacks training programs and job opportunities for low and moderate income workers to create their own stable, career-path employment. Worker-owned cooperatives are an innovative and powerful business model that can provide high quality jobs and shared entrepreneurship opportunities to low and moderate income workers, as well as benefits to the broader economy.

The Worker Coop Academy is an intensive multi-month training course educating teams of three or more who want to operate democratically-run, worker-owned enterprises.

 There are six modules the Academy covers:

• Governance, Management, and Leadership

• Business

• People and Culture

• Cooperative Development

• Legal Issues

• Cooperativism  

How did the Coop Academy get started?

The Worker Coop Academy was started in 2014 as part of a larger project called "A Blueprint for Creating Pathways to Ownership for Low and Moderate Income Workers in the SF Bay Area: The Inner East Bay as a Case Study." The Blueprint, primarily funded through a US Housing and Urban Development (HUD) grant, is equal parts research and action.

The Blueprint has three complementary strategies:

1. Piloting a Worker Coop Academy for cooperative entrepreneurs and organizations looking to become cooperative incubators,

2. Creating an Opportunity Roadmap to identify industry and business opportunities for creating scalable worker-owned businesses, and

3. Developing an Opportunity Roadmap for cooperative conversions in Oakland.

2015 Cohort

This year’s Worker Coop Academy 

will begin the week of August 24th and conclude December 17th.

There are four types of teams who will attend the 2015 Worker Cooperative Academy.

• 

  Startup: Founders of new worker cooperatives that are in their start up phase or plan to open in 2015 or 2016.

• Expand: Members of existing worker coops that are seeking to strengthen their business for growth.

• Convert: Owners and employees looking to transition an existing business to worker ownership.

• Develop: Coops that are being developed by a nonprofit or other organization that are already operational or will open in late 2015 or 2016.

Learn more and get involved

If you'd like to hear more about the Worker Coop Academy in video format, we held a webinar on May 13th, 2015, to provide an overview of the curriculum, participants, lessons learned from last year, and fielded questions from participants. Watch ithere.

For more information on how the Academy got started and the role it plays in the larger Blueprint for a cooperative economy, please visit Project Equity's website at www.project-equity.org/bay-area-blueprint.

If you have any questions, feel free to email Ricardo: [email protected].