Find our worker self directed nonprofit resources for starting, supporting, or cultivating WSDNs below.

Solidari-Tea Time

A companion to our Legal Cafes, Solidari-Tea Time provides opportunities for solidarity economy movement organizations and cooperative entities to get advice, coaching and support with challenges you are experiencing on your organizational development journey.

• Are you having trouble making decisions together?
• Do you need support sharing work more effectively?
• Are you having a hard time bringing in new members to your organization?
• Are experienced members struggling to adapt to your new ways of working under shared leadership?
• Are you experiencing conflict as you encounter growing pains?
• Are you wondering what your next steps are as you transition to shared leadership?

You are not alone!  And we’re here to help.

Building organizations that align with our values of justice, shared leadership, and participatory democracy is challenging.  Bring your questions, challenges, and stumbling blocks to Solidari-Tea Time, and get support from consultants and practitioners experienced in building worker self-directed nonprofits, cooperatives, and other organizations practicing liberatory values.

See our upcoming tea time sessions and register for one!

Collaborate to Co-Liberate Series

Collaborate to Co-Liberate: Structures and Practices for Democratic Organizations (C2C) is a 12 module learning journey designed for solidarity economy and  social justice movement left organizations who are building organizations with democratic, participatory, and liberatory leadership structures.   C2C  examines some of the stickiest and most challenging questions we face when striving to build organizational structures that live into our values of a more inclusive, democratic, embodied, and life-giving world. The modules all together present a journey along the iterative, dynamic, and spiraling path through organizational transformation.  

Learn more and register for the self-paced learning journey!

Bite-Sized Legal Guide to Becoming a Worker Self-Directed Nonprofit

In this Bite-Sized Legal Guide, where we explore how worker self-direction can help nonprofits better achieve their missions, as well as the legal considerations for becoming a worker self-directed nonprofit. This bite-sized guide also includes a sample board resolution for worker self-direction.

Other Legal Guides

Check out our Bite-Sized Legal Guides on nonprofits in general, including How to Form a Nonprofit, How to Become a Worker Self-Directed Nonprofit, and How to Start a Fiscally Sponsored Project with a Partner.

Here's a Legal Guide for Boards of Directors of worker self-directed nonprofits!

Bylaws Toolkit for Worker Self-Directed Nonprofits

Check out our bylaws toolkit, complete with template bylaws and a guide for how to draft more participatory, equitable, and accessible bylaws. This guide lays out processes and templates for how you can establish a self-governing organization deeply rooted in your values and politics, whatever those values and politics are. It walks you through important conversations about how you will make decisions, balance power between stakeholders, coordinate work, and manage your organization while also ensuring that you are within the bounds of the law and prepared for the kinds of unforeseen events that can create legal liability.

Webinars

Just getting started? Watch our introductory webinar, “Worker Self Directed Nonprofits: Implementing Workplace Democracy in Nonprofit Organizations"

Looking for a deeper dive into nuts and bolts of worker self-direction? Watch our webinar, hosted by the praxis project, "Deeper Dive: Tools, Structures, and Examples of Worker Self-direction" [En Español] [In English]

Model Documents and Other Resources

Click here to see all of the Law Center's internal policies and processes for worker self-direction. Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International license for easy sharing!

This public Google Folder also has an ever-growing collection of handouts, slides, model documents, and more.

Topics and Videos:

• Who Sets Priorities at a Worker Self-Directed Nonprofit?

• The Role of The Board

• Meeting Processes

• Tour the Office of a WSDN!

• Onboarding New Staff

• Dividing Labor and Assigning Responsibilities

• Fiscal Sponsorship Versus Independent 501(c)(3)

• Bringing our Whole Selves to Work

• Alignment and Resiliency 

• Setting Staff Compensation

• Paying Nonprofit Board Members

Case Studies: Democratic Leadership in Practice

There is no one “right” way to do worker self-direction. Most worker self-directed nonprofits develop unique, organization specific ways to perform key organizational processes, such as handling the finances, communicating with the Board of Directors, managing strategic direction, implementing hiring and firing, determining staff salaries, and more. Dive in, and learn from the wisdom and experience of organizations like Resist, Movement Sustainability Commons, Justice Funders and more!

Faye Christoforo, a researcher with Nonprofit Democracy Network and codirector of the New England Grassroots Environmental Fund, based in Newmarket, NH, shares research they did to understand current democratic leadership practices across the United States. Check out their case studies here.