Planning & Visioning

Session materials from “Governing Big Coops Through Crisis” presented by Bryan Pagán, President of the ICC and Cyn Macias-Gomez, President of the BSC at NASCO Institute 2024. Both the ICC and BSC Recently Encountered Crises.  The pandemic added fuel to the fire, but was not at the main issue at all.  In 2022 the ICC fired its Finance Director and the General Manager resigned after being censured by the board.  The BSC is on their third Executive Director in the last few years and has seen turnover in several important staff roles.

Co-ops are businesses designed to pool resources to serve a specific economic need of their current and future members. At the same time, co-ops hold a principle of Concern for the Community and often use those pooled resources contributed by individual members to serve as a social safety net for the membership collectively. This is a discussion guide that offers a few discussion prompts and some practices for balancing the tension between these goals.

Below, are the recordings for NASCO Institue 2020 sessions by room. Please share lessons learned with your cooperatives and communities. 

If you did not register for NASCO Institute and you'd like to support free and low-cost cooperative education, please consider contributing a donation amount that feels appropriate for you and/or your cooperative. Your donation makes it possible to offer cooperative education materials and resources free of charge. DONATE HERE.

The Democracy at Work Institute is building a comprehensive Resource Library that will include a wide range of materials, including academic papers, start-up toolkits, curriculum samples, actual documents from existing worker cooperatives, and more. The topic list below provides a map of the resources that will be available. We are also continuing to publish additional resources on a daily basis.

"Cooperation Begins With You: An orientation handbook for student housing cooperative boards of directors."

Written by Karin Evans for the North American Students of Coopration, Copyright 1981.

Tools for developing your vision

This is from Steve Dubb's workshop on community asset mapping at Institute 2010.