News
SolidFund supported Jonas Algers to attend the 2017 Platform Cooperativism conference in New York.
Jonas will report back to members in the Fund's member group on Loomio.
Solidfund members discussed and agreed to make a contribution of just under £6,000 to Altgen, in support of its work to develop new programmes of support and education for young people wanting to be involved in worker cooperatives.
The main work is the Freelancers Coop development programme. Specifically, there will be an online campaign to raise awareness among young people and recruit 40 freelancers for the programme, and work to adapt innovative and creative learning methods to make the programme and learning materials relevant and inspiring.
Altgen is aiming at the following outcomes:
INSPIRE young precarious people in the creative industries with the potential of setting up their co-operative enterprise as an alternative and empowering career path.
FACILITATE the coming together…
November will see the first of a new type of event for the co-operative movement, based on the success of Community SOUP events in the United States.
A SOUP is quite simple - it is a dinner and a live crowdfunding event rolled into one. It costs £5 to attend, and for that you get a bowl of soup, some bread, and a vote. The evening starts with four presentations, chosen by the organising group, of projects that are seeking funding to get off the ground. Once the presentations are over, dinner is served and everyone discusses the projects. Finally, everyone votes on which project they think will benefit their community the most, and the winner takes all of the door money.
It is a direct, communitarian event built on…
SolidFund members voted to underwrite the costs of running this year's Co-op Camp at the Green Gathering Festival.
In the Co-ops’ Camp you’ll find a community of people involved with housing, energy, workers’, land and other co-operatives, plus:
skillshares – why and how to set up a co-op; examples from around the world; organising co-operatively for radical social change; & plenty more
a large exhibition with chill-out space & reading area
drop-in and one-to-one chats with Co-ops Camp crew
3 co-operator networking events on 3 consecutive…
SolidFund members discussed and voted in favour of a proposal to donate £500 to a fledgling project aimed at preserving records from the wave of British worker co-operatives and co-operative development in the 1970s-1990s.
The Workers’ Cooperative National Archive project aims to identify surviving records and encourage those who hold them to deposit them in recognised public archives where they will be available to co-operative historians and researchers. The project’s organisers are also planning to develop an online directory of the archives, identifying where archives can be consulted.
Andrew Bibby and John Goodman, both of whom worked in worker co-operatives in the 1970s and 1980s, are behind the project. They are also former co-operative development agency advisers.
Here are…
SolidFund was born out of an idea we had at the first Worker Coop Weekend, in 2014. One reason for setting up the Fund was to guarantee we could hold worker coop gatherings every year. So check out Worker Coop Weekend 2016, 6-8 May. This year it's in Staffordshire.
The Weekend is a mix of co-learning, presentations, celebration, great food, camaraderie and bonfires.
Worker Coop Weekend is fast becoming a key date in the UK cooperative calendar. Whether you work in a coop, want to work cooperatively, or just want to support and learn about worker cooperation - please join us. And it's cheap!
More information and booking: uk.coop/wcw2016
Co-operatives UK has just published new research on worker co-ops, by Virginie Pérotin of Leeds University. Titled 'What do we really know about worker co-operatives?', Pérotin's paper refutes one or two widely shared assumptions.
She finds that:
- Worker co-operatives are larger than conventional businesses and not necessarily less capital intensive
- Worker co-operatives survive at least as long as other businesses and have more stable employment
- Worker cooperatives are more productive than conventional businesses, with stable, “better and smarter” working, and production organised more efficiently
- Worker co-operatives retain a larger share of their profits than other business models
- Executive and non-executive pay differentials are much…
CICOPA, the world federation of worker coops, has released a video reflecting the inspiration and experiences of young worker and social cooperators from 9 countries.
The video was financed by Mercosur, the South American federation, and largely self-produced by the local groups. They would like you to share as widely as possible.
Download the video here.
With support from the Fund, three members of Belfast Cleaning Coop visited Custom House Workers' Coop in east London in June 2015, to show support and learn from each other.
Custom House set up in July 2014. They were supported and advised by Belfast Cleaning Coop in the start up phase. Help with rules, business planning, financial planning, tendering and staffing was done by email, Skype and phone. A year on, it was agreed that a face to face visit would be beneficial. SolidFund contributed £480.00 to travel and accommodation costs for the trip.
Over two days, discussions covered a wide range of subjects including:
Issues around sweat equity: how do we ensure equal commitment from all members?
Who does what, when, and how -…
We've just published a short report on the Fund's first year, which sums up how and why we started, and what's happened in the 15 months since Member 001 signed up.
It includes an analysis of the Fund's success factors, and looks forward to a future where we can make a real contribution to the growth of worker cooperation and a strong worker coop network.
Read the report at http://s.coop/solidfundreport
Fifteen brave souls congregated last Wednesday in a theatre rehearsal room in Hackney with plenty of flipcharts, marker pens and laptops, to build the SolidFund website.
Despite having no external promotion, except word of mouth, the worker cooperative solidarity fund now has 461 members and £18,000 nestled in the ICOF coffers. This is just a start.
There are many people out there who, we believe, want to help build a world of fair work. To hook them up, hopefully in their thousands, we need a website linked to automated administration. We start as we mean to continue; as close to zero admin costs as possible. So it is brilliant that our friends at Agile and Outlandish are…