How-To Guide

This resource is intended to give small business support organizations a background on how the worker cooperative model can help entrepreneurs reach their dreams.

After working with professionals to determine which entity type is right for your worker cooperative, the next step is to work with professionals to develop your governing documents. Bylaws and operating agreements should include high-level information about the governance of the organization. They clarify and codify the democratic governance and ownership of your cooperative, help provide a structure through which the cooperative can grow, and provide a last resort for conflict resolution if relationships break down.

The Democracy at Work Institute/USFWC Press Kit includes information about worker cooperatives, why they are important, examples of existing cooperatives and development organizations, city government initiatives, frequently asked questions, and more.

 This handbook walks worker owners and cooperative developers through the process of laying the groundwork for, creating, and implementing systems of accountability and evaluation in small to medium sized worker cooperatives.

Editable versions of the toolkit's appendices can be found here.

When forming, worker cooperatives have an important choice to make regarding their legal entity. Each entity type has implications on important issues including taxation, employment law, and access to capital. This resource is intended to give a brief overview of the entity types and lay out the issues worker cooperatives may want to consider when choosing which is the best fit for the business at whatever stage it is currently in.

This presentation goes over the steps of the cooperative transition process and outlines benefits, challegnes, and key questions of a business transition.

Link: here

Before a cooperative transition process can get started, the selling owner needs to make some decisions about how to structure the process, specifically she needs to clearly define who has decision-making power in the process: herself, the transition committee, the likely coop members, and the whole group. This chart outlines who decides what.  

Gant chart outlining the phases a business goes through during transition to a cooperative. 

The absence of supervisors, who are charged with immediately identifying and addressing problem performance, makes the periodic occurrence of worker evaluations critical in a collective. This 1-page document outlines the importance of evaluations and provides tips on performing evaluations effectively. 

Tips for effective meetings and consensus decision-making. Thanks to USFWC member, South Mountain Company, for this resource.