Community Wealth Blog
On Common Ground, edited by John Emmeus Davis, Line Algoed, and María Hernández-Torrales, documents how interest in one of the more exciting new economic models to emerge in recent decades, the Community Land Trust (CLT), is spreading around the world.
Defining Community Wealth Building
Community wealth building (CWB) is a system-changing approach to community economic development that works to produce broadly shared economic prosperity, racial equity, and ecological sustainability through the reconfiguration of institutions and local economies on the basis of greater democratic ownership, participation, and control.
Evergreen’s Fund for Employee Ownership acquires its first company, setting Cleveland-based Berry Insulation on a path to being owned by its workers
Today’s deal is a practical demonstration of a new model accelerating business conversions to employee ownership.
The Global Remunicipalisation Project
Over the next few years, The Democracy Collaborative will serve as a US hub for a global project on re-municipalization. The project, hosted at the University of Glasgow in Scotland, aims to explore the potential of, and growing movement for, returning services and utilities that have been privatized to public ownership. An important element of the project is a survey to better understand past and present efforts around re-municipalization. If you have been involved in such a campaign, we invite you to take the survey, which is available in multiple languages.
Public Finance for the Future We Want: Opportunities for democracy amidst the next crisis
Co-published with the Transnational Institute (TNI), the New Economics Foundation (NEF), the Tellus Institute, Change Finance, Focus on the Global South, Fairfin, and the MOBA Housing Network, this new volume, entitled Public Finance for the Future We Want, includes two chapters penned by Democracy Collaborative staff discussing the role of anchor institutions in community wealth building and the potential for a public buyout of fossil fuel companies.
The Student Divestment Movement’s Next Frontier: Community Investment
Reinvestment presents a unique opportunity for universities to partner with their local communities to promote equitable economic development and energy democracy. Campaigns’ embrace of community investment would strengthen the crucial role that divestment movements play in fostering long-term system change. This strategy creates a powerful opportunity to engage young people in new economy work while leveraging the resources of some of our most powerful institutions to shift financial capacity from the extractive economy to a new energy system.
Holiday Shopping For the Democratic Economy
The holiday season is upon us and for some, that means the start of the holiday gift-buying season! If you are one of those to-be shoppers, we implore you to support businesses that are doing good: worker-owned businesses, women- and minority-owned businesses, pro-worker companies, and ethical & sustainable product companies. Americans spend nearly $1 trillion during the holiday season, help us spread the word to your networks, friends & family that we can support brands and companies that do good!
Creating an Ecosystem of Opportunity on Pine Ridge
Thunder Valley Community Development Corporation (TVCDC) is a Lakota led non-profit based in the Thunder Valley community of the Porcupine District on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, which celebrated its 10 year anniversary in 2017. For the last five years, TVCDC has participated in and co-created the Learning/Action Lab for Community Wealth Building, alongside The Democracy Collaborative, the Northwest Area Foundation and four other Native American community-based organizations, to develop and work through strategies that build and root wealth locally for the benefit of their community.
Community Wealth Building: Eight Basic Principles
Based on Ted Howard's remarks to the recent Alternative Models of Ownership conference, we've distilled the eight basic principles behind community wealth building—a transformative approach to local economic development—into this handy one page guide.
“Community Wealth Building” on the rise in city governments
The future where every city, as a matter of course, has its own “office of community wealth building” working to build opportunities and community ownership in their local economy is getting closer everyday.
Universities Move Towards Buying, Hiring and Investing Locally
Monday, October 9, 2017
Social Entrepreneurs: Forget Everything You Think You Know about Raising Capital
When you hear the word “investor,” what do you picture?
When I ask most people this question, they describe a white man in a suit (or, if in Silicon Valley, maybe khakis and a button down shirt) in a fancy office spending every work day combing through pitch decks, executive summaries, and due diligence and barking tough questions at terrified entrepreneurs.