Newsletters

This month's developments include:

• The release of our latest report, Cities Building Community Wealth, written by Executive Vice President and Senior Fellow Marjorie Kelly and Manager of Community Development Programs Sarah McKinley. The report will be the centerpiece of a convening involving mayors, directors of economic development, scholars and practitioners on January 29 2016, co-hosted by the CUNY School of Law School Community and Economic Development Clinic.
• The Next System Project released a collection of essays by Co-Chair Gus Speth entitled Getting to the Next System: Guideposts on the way to a new political economy. This second report in the Next System Project research series outlines the nature of system change, pathways forward, and a vision for a new American Dream.
• Sarah McKinley and Ted Howard visisted St. Paul, Minnesota to meet with Nexus Community Partners, a community development intermediary in the Twin Cities focused on building community capacity. Building on The Democracy Collaborative's economic development framework, Nexus recently published a report about designing and implementing a community wealth building strategy for St. Paul's East Side.
• Director of Special Projects Steve Dubb wrote an article for Shelterforce's blog Rooflines on the $1.2 billion social enterprise industry and delivered the keynote address at the North American Students of Cooperation (NASCO) conference. Manager of Healthcare Engagement David Zuckerman was interviewed by Catholic Health World about strategies hospitals can take to strengthen their local economies.
• The Democracy Collaborative congratulates our friend at Cleveland's Evergreen Energy Solutions (E2S) on their ranking in Fortune's list of the 100 fastest-growing inner city businesses.
• We are also delighted to welcome several new staff members to our growing team!

• Our latest report, Educate and Empower: Tools for Building Community Wealth, was profiled in Forbes magazine, Shareable, MassLive & Stanford Social Innovation Review (SSIR). The Democracy Collaborative also hosted a webinar on practical strategies to empower residents to participate in community economic development.

• Gar Alperovitz, co-founder of The Democracy Collaborative and co-chair of the Next System Project, published an article in the RSA Journal.

• Gus Speth, co-chair of the Next System Project and senior fellow, was interviewed as a feature in the “Change Agent” series of the Great Transition Initiative, where he discussed his own environmental background and the goals of the Project.
• Last month, Next System Project Executive Director Joe Guinan joined Social Capital Markets’ (SOCAP) Co-founder & Convener Kevin Jones and sociology Professor Juliet Schor to facilitate a twitter chat about the need for systemic change. 

• Steve Dubb contributed to Shelterforce magazine’s Rooflines blog on the subject of converting businesses to employee ownership, and Ted Howard recently had the opportunity to talk with Equitable Opportunity radio about the role anchor institutions and worker cooperatives play in building a more inclusive economy. 

• Thomas Hanna, director of research, and Marjorie Kelly, executive vice president and senior fellow, had articles featured by the Great Transition Initiative on public ownership & common wealth trusts.   

• The Atkinson Foundation released two reports in their series on community wealth building initiatives in Toronta: The Prosperous Province: Strategies for Community Wealth. 

• Cleveland’s Evergreen Cooperatives' highly innovative home-buyer program for employees was recently featured in Yes! Magazine, and Green City Growers was profiled in Crain’s Cleveland Business for its rapid growth. 

This month’s developments include: 

• We re-launch Community-Wealth.org website and release a new animated film explaining the community wealth building approach.

• The Democracy Collaborative is hiring for the following positions: Office Administrator, Communications Associate, Special Assistant to the Co-Founder,and National Coordinator of Teach-Ins on the Next System. 

• Gus Speth, Co-Chair of the Next System Project and a Senior Fellow with The Democracy Collaborative, speaks about the imperative of taking a systemic approach to confront the environmental crises facing us in The Leap. The Next System Project also released a new video featuring MIT Associate Professor of Urban Politics Phillip Thompson.

• We congratulate our partners in the Northwest Area Foundation-funded Learning/Action Lab for Community Wealth Building on several important milestones, as well as the Community Wealth Building Initiative for the launch of its first employee-owned company. 
•  An article in New Start Magazine examines critical success factors in the development of Cleveland’s Evergreen Cooperatives. Manager of Community Development Programs Sarah McKinley was interviewed in the Polish publication Magazyn Miasta (Cities Magazine).

• Democracy Collaborative Co-Founder Gar Alperovitz contrasts American and European urban challenges in City by City: Dispatches from the American Metropolis, a collection of essays co-published by the culture and politics magazine n+1
• Recommended reads: Locking in the Promise to Buy Local from the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston; Building Momentum from the Ground Up: A Toolkit for Promoting Justice in Policing from the The Center for Popular Democracy and PolicyLink; Increasing Financial Well-Being through Integration: Gaining and Sustaining Housing Stability from CFED; Land Banks and Land Banking: 2nd Edition from the Center for Community Progress.
• Featured websites: Wellspring Collaborative; Future Economy

This month’s developments include: 

• We release the public summary of our latest report, Healthcare Small Business Gap Analysis
• We announce the establishment of Anchors for Resilient Communities (ARC), a partnership with Health Care Without Harm and Emerald Cities Collaborative.
• The Next System Project is featured in The Nation, YES! Magazine and Orion Magazine. Articles in Grist and Next City  highlight The Democracy Collaborative’s work in Cleveland, Baltimore, and Rochester. The cities of Philadelphia, Toronto and Preston, England launch anchor-based community wealth building strategies. 
• New C-W City: Indianapolis, Indiana
• Recommended reads: Beyond Business as Usual: Putting Cooperation to Work in Austin, TX, Cooperation Texas; Our Kind of Town: A Financial Plan that Puts Chicago’s Communities First, The ReFund America Project, Roosevelt Institute; Successful Cooperative Ownership Transitions: Case Studies on the Conversion of Privately Held Businesses to Worker Cooperatives, Democracy at Work Institute and the University of Wisconsin Center for Cooperatives; Exploring Economic and Health Impacts of Local Food Procurement, Illinois Public Health Institute and the Crossroads Resource Center.
• Featured websites: Economics for Equity & Environment; Build Healthy Places Network