Multi-Stakeholder Coops

Most co--operative practice is single stakeholder. Therefore the co-op sector divides between typically consumer co-ops, worker co-ops and farmer co-ops, each generally with their backs to each other and walking away from each other. This one dimensional aspect is impeding in my view an untapped revolutionary economic potential for a new generation of full dimensional co-ops to ignite. The key for a civilised economy is to unite citizens under all their actualities and capacities as creative people and providers. Thus we need to move to multi-stakeholder co-ops. This is in fact under development in a few countries - notably Italy and Quebec. The focus is mainly on social and health care services but we ran another event in the summer with a different theme, ecological ventures, and the support for the model was equally strong. You will note that these new forms of economic democracy as they develop force the co-op banks to adapt to the identified needs and to work to co-devise diverse solidarity financing solutions.

Known as either Social Co-ops or Solidarity Co-ops It has its roots in Northern Italy but it has spread to Spain, Portugal, France (still rather small there), Poland, Hungary and Quebec in Canada. Our colleague John Restakis has a wonderful chapter in his book Humanising the Economy on this movement. Mike Lewis and I also have a section on the Italian Social Co-ops in our book. The key strategic point that I would emphasize here is that the Social Co-ops in Italy and the similar Quebec Solidarity Co-ops both unite and give political voice in a collaborative way to Commoners. Their strategic mission and indeed legal obligation by statute is the pursuit of the General Interest of Citizens and the securing of the Common Good, namely as I see it and as many of them demonstrate, the practical ways to build commonwealth and well being.

In Quebec there are now 500 Solidarity Co-ops and the unusual nature of this stakeholder Co-op (as opposed to traditional worker or consumer co-ops) is leading since 2008 to a mentality shift in Quebec. I heard last week from a Canadian co-op leader in Montreal that more than 9 out of 10 of new Co-ops formed in the past couple of years in Quebec province, are Solidarity Co-ops. That is a salient change in karma, it would appear." - July 2013

An existing food related multi-stakeholder co-op in the US is Fifth Season (there are others too, but I can't remember off the top of my head): http://fifthseason.coop/