Newsletters

Our monthly email newsletter provides an essential overview of the latest news and state of the art developments in community wealth building. Check out the archives below.



June 2017

This month's developments include:

  • We publish a new book from Democracy Collaborative Co-Founder and Co-Chair of the Next System Project Gar Alperovitz
  • We release new report on Opportunities for Impact Investors to Scale Employee Ownership
  • The Democracy Collaborative launched the Healthcare Anchor Network, a group of more than 30 health systems working to improve community well-being by building inclusive and sustainable local economies

May 2017

This month's developments include:

  • We welcome Valerie Piper as the new Vice President of Engaged Practice at The Democracy Collaborative.
  • Executive Vice President & Senior Fellow Marjorie Kelly and Chief Financial Officer & Director, Employee Ownership Programs Jessica Bonanno were honored by the Rutgers University School of Management and Labor Relations with fellowships to further their research on employee ownership. 
  • In an article in The Nation, Democracy Collaborative Co-Founder Gar Alperovitz, Next System Project Executive Director Joe Guinan, and Research Director Thomas Hanna put forward the idea of “quantitative easing for the planet,” in which the government would buy out fossil-fuel companies in order to keep unburnable carbon in the ground. 
  • The Next System Project announced six winning original essays from the 2016 “What’s Next?” essay contest. 

April 2017

This month's developments include:

  • We redesigned our Rolling Back Inclusion tracker
  • Democracy Collaborative President and Co-Founder Ted Howard and Democracy Collaborative co-founder and co-chair of the Next System Project Gar Alperovitz contribute an op-ed to the Chronicle of Philanthropy  about how funders can invest in he new “laboratories of democracy” to support innovative and scalable, local and regional wealth building models.
  • YES! Magazine published an article that discusses efforts by two of the health systems featured in our Hospitals Aligned for Healthy Communities toolkit series
  • We release a new policy brief from the Next System Project, authored by Democracy Collaborative fellow Ellen Brown, founder and president emeritus of the Public Banking Institute, that explores alternative ways to fund and finance the rebuilding of America’s infrastructure. 

March 2017

This month's developments include:

February 2017

This month's developments include:

  • We launch our Rolling Back Inclusion tracker, which will monitor the state of critical community development programs and how they are affected by the new administration
  • We release two new publications that suggest ways to begin these conversations in your community: Jacksonville’s Community Wealth Building Roundtable, by Michelle Barth, details how a city-led convening unfolded in Jacksonville, Florida; and Sparking the conversation in your community, by Justine Porter, provides insights from a “Do-It-Yourself” convening process in Poughkeepsie, New York.

December 2016 & January 2017

This month's highlights include:

  • We release the third toolkit in the Hospitals Aligned for Healthy Communities toolkit series on Place-Based Investing
  • We publish the forty-first in our Community Wealth Cities series on Dallas, TX.
  • We share learnings from our December event Advancing the Anchor Mission of Healthcare
  • Democracy Collaborative Co-Founder and Co-Chair of the Next System Project Gar Alperovitz contributed articles to TruthoutThe Nationand Medium 
  • Evergreen Cooperatives is featured in Smithsonian Magazine and in the Smithsonian Cooper Hewitt museum’s exhibit By The People: Designing a Better America

November 2016

This month's highlights include:

  • A post-election statement from The Democracy Collaborative, emphasizing our commitment to continue to develop, implement, and project a powerful alternative that builds wealth and strengthens democratic life in communities across the country – with no one left out.
  • A summary of President & Co-Founder Ted Howard's keynote from Chicago Anchors for A Strong Economy’s inaugural conference, Driving Collective Impact through Anchor Collaboratives.
  • A new video from our Hospitals Aligned for Healthy Communities toolkit series on inclusive, local sourcing

October 2016

This month's highlights include:

  • We launch our new toolkit series, Hospitals Aligned for Healthy Communities, produced with the support of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and designed to help hospitals and health systems build community wealth through inclusive hiring, investment, and purchasing.
  • We release of our latest report, Strategies for Financing the Inclusive Economy, which highlights tools for financing cooperatives as well as other broad-based ownership models such as employee stock ownership plans and municipal enterprise.
  • new working paper from The Next System Project was prepared as a framing document for the “After Fossil Fuels: The New Economy” conference held at Oberlin College in early October, at which our co-founders Gar Alperovitz and Ted Howard spoke.

September 2016

This month's highlights include:

  • Executive Vice President and Senior Fellow Marjorie Kelly contributed an article to The Hill describing how broad-based ownership models can help reduce income-inequality.
  • Senior Fellow Steve Dubb contributes a post to Shelterforce’s Rooflines blog in which he discusses universities’ growing interest in anchor institution strategies.
  • Journalist Jay Walljasper recently published a story in On the Commons magazine about a social enterprise endeavor led by Native American Natural Foods (NANF), a participant in our Learning/Action Lab for Community Wealth Building, a program to promote social enterprise and community ownership in Indian Country.

August 2016

This month's developments include:

  • We release Conversations on Community Wealth Building, a new book that features over 30 interviews conducted by Director of Special Projects Steve Dubb with leaders in the field of community wealth building.
  • The Evergreen Cooperatives in Cleveland, Ohio receive national news attention from The Nation, PBS Newshour, U.S. News, and The Huffington Post.
  •  We add another community wealth interview to our website, featuring activist and practitioner Elandria Williams of the Highlander Research and Education Center and Democracy at Work Institute.