* Book: Assets in Common: Stories of Business and Community Leaders Remaking the Economy from the Ground Up. By Charity May, Jay Standish et al. Infrastructure for Shared Ownership, 2024

"We showcase examples that already work at scale, led by people who had the odds stacked against them. These leaders have taken risks few have been willing to take, and have done so at the rugged interface between communities in need and modern regulatory environments."

Contextual Quote

"The United States economy is overdue for a shift towards equity and democratic wealth building. As authors, we set out to reveal lesser-known corporate forms and financial structures that leaders can use to enable widespread transformation. We have compiled a curated selection of case studies that demonstrate outstanding examples of an alternative economic paradigm in action. In particular, we are excited about the potential of using shared ownership forms as the core instrument for business ownership and community asset stewardship.

This body of work is an attempt at figuring out how to scale steward ownership and shared ownership.

...

Throughout this book, we describe this in several ways. We use language like ‘connective entities’ and ‘networked businesses’ to describe what we call Infrastructure for Shared Ownership."

- Chelsea Robinson, from the Introduction

Description

"Some of the amazing companies profiled here include the Industrial Commons, Enspiral, Mondragon Corporation, Obran Cooperative, Goodworks Evergreen, Saradex, Sumitomo Group, Clegg Auto, and Calvert Community Investment.

One of the most intriguing aspects of the book is its discussion of what will be for many readers wholly new business models:

Employee-owned holding companies

Cross shareholding between banks and businesses

Business-to-business marketplaces and currencies

Municipal strategies for assets holdings

Non-profit ownership of business networks "

(https://solidarityhall.substack.com/p/the-power-of-moving-assets-into-the)

Twelve in-depth case studies demonstrate diverse examples of infrastructure for shared ownership. We have focused on the mechanisms and gritty details of how these operate internally. We have also captured their context, history, and use case. Almost all case studies were informed by those directly involved in the projects. These are stories of pragmatic leadership and succeeding against the odds.

Part III – Patterns, Mechanisms, and Challenges: An Analysis

Our analysis covers topics that have recurred across case studies. We unpack issues like mitigating the downsides of cooperation and explicate success factors like governance and culture. We have outlined trends such as shared service provision and liquidity through resource pooling. The analysis discusses the nuances of the case studies and also adds more examples.

Part IV – Opportunities for Action

We identify valuable strategies worth adopting. In this section, you will find recipes for action. We cover how to build a shared services company and how to design a holding company founded on stewardship. Finally, we advise on how funders can invest wisely in this space."

Excerpts

The Concepts Defined

Chelsea Robinson:

"Shared ownership and steward ownership are key concepts throughout the book, so let’s define them for you up front:

• Shared Ownership refers to business and property owner- ship structures that distribute equity and control among a wider group of stakeholders, such as employees, customers, or community members. Shared ownership models create more equitable and engaged economic participation through structures like cooperatives, employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs), and community land trusts.

Steward Ownership is a corporate governance model that

ensures enduring independence and mission-driven focus by placing a company’s shares in a trust or foundation. This preserves the organization’s purpose and values beyond the involvement of any individual leaders. Central to steward ownership is the strict separation of economic interest and governance. Rather than being privatized, profits are either reinvested in the business and its stakeholders or donated to charity. When shared and steward ownership are combined, we protect assets and businesses for the long term, align financial interests with mission and values, incentivize reinvestment instead of extraction, and build wealth for all stakeholders.

This book extends the powerful concepts of shared ownership and stewardship by envisioning the integration of these units into somethinggreater.

If we work together to build infrastructural institutions between our entities and assets, we can create competitive ecosystems that more and more entities can opt into. Building infrastructure for shared ownership will promote the development of an economy running on different incentives and principles. If matured, these kinds of ecosystems could offer resilient, scalable alternatives to the default financial system.

..

Even after leaders restructure their community assets or company into a stewardship format, they still experience the hostile pressures of the extractive economy. Because of this edge effect between shared and steward ownership formats and the rest of the economy, this book shows how we can build corridors of connection between institutions. Unlocking mutual support between entities can buffer against adverse pressures to place profit above all else. It is possible to build and share banking systems, currencies, employer-of-record companies, no-interest loan pools, warehouses, and heavy machinery libraries.

...

Conscious Consolidation: Many leaders are aggregating assets into unifying

entities like holding companies or multi-stakeholder cooperatives. Achieving this via typical structures can be a slippery slope to monopoly and cartel behavior.

However, when designed with shared ownership and stewardship, these can create value for stakeholders and long-term missions. Conscious consolidation can help with efficiency gains and greater influence in the market.

Shared Balance Sheets: Pooling assets in shared legal containers can cre-

ate mechanisms for resilience and liquidity at scale.

Putting many buildings, employees, business units, funds, or loans onto shared balance sheets enables pre-tax internal trade. These larger balance sheets can be leveraged for growth, acquiring capital, extending credit to allies, or buffering against losses and layoffs.

..

Companies Cooperating: Connected entities create infrastructure for shared

ownership. Methods like cross-shareholding, or co-investment in co-owned services companies create connective tissue between businesses and assets. Entrepreneurship typically focuses on developing and leading one project, but infrastructure projects require entrepreneurial creativity in managing relationships between entities.

Internal Network Trade and Complementary Currencies for Monetary Sovereignty: Monetary policy is typically considered the role of

the state. It determines how the central bank controls the money supply and promotes price stability. It involves managing interest rates, setting bank reserve requirements, and influencing credit availability in the economy. These kinds of policies can be generated within networks of businesses with shared resources. Complementary currencies or internal network trade can be opportunities to redefine the role and value of money. Sovereign economic spaces can encode new incentives and imbue meaning to money itself."

Pools and Closed Circuits: Infrastructure for shared ownership frequently

emerges within walled gardens. Limiting participants can help mitigate the downside while generating shared benefits. In the default economy, this is achieved through systems like credit scores. In contexts of shared ownership and stewardship, there may be criteria of ‘fit’ for participating in a pool. One business’ performance profile may make it more or less suited to joining a group of other businesses.

Seed Assets: In multiple case studies, people have used a seed

company or an asset base to start a network of entities. Seed assets may be a fully functioning, existing entity such as a profitable business or a piece of land.

Seed assets may already have monetary value in the default economy, which allows them to convert that value into starting a shared utility. Seed assets may also be of sufficient size and stability to invite other smaller entities to join their fray. Many business owners could consider whether their business can play this role. Many municipalities could consider whether their public assets can be carefully financialised for regional development. "

Beyond Cooperative Commonwealth to Stewardship Commonwealth

Chelseau Robinson:

"During our research, we were delighted to explore the work of political economist Jessica Gordon Nembhard5. We will briefly explain her work and ideas and how they offer a relevant vision. We will then add another dimension.

Nembhard is a scholar and activist whose work focuses on cooperative economics to empower marginalized communities and promote racial and economic justice. Her research highlights the often-overlooked history of African-American cooperative economic practices and their role in the struggle for civil rights and equality. Nembhard advocates for the development of cooperative businesses, credit unions, and other forms of collective ownership as strategies for fostering resilience. We appreciate how practical and urgent her voice is about what’s possible: “One of my pet peeves is that we keep thinking we don’t know what to do, but we do know because we have lots of models that have succeeded over the centuries, even over the last 20 years. There are lots of examples of cooperative solidarity economics that work, that deliver to people, that provide people a say, a piece, that operate in a business model that can make money for people. What we don’t have is enough will and enough education about how to do it.”

One of her proposals is the vision for a Cooperative Commonwealth.

The Cooperative Commonwealth is one of the few ‘full stack’ visions for a networked, equitable economy that we’ve found to be aligned with our ideas. The cooperative commonwealth implies many levels of society incentivized towards democratic participation, wealth building, reinvestment, and stakeholder control. To paraphrase Elias Crim, the Cooperative Commonwealth includes financial reforms such as the development of public banking and the widening of credit unions, processes to convert existing businesses to shared ownership, networks of affiliated businesses, and a lifestyle that “gives people time for caregiving, volunteering, and continuous learning.”

In Nembhard’s own words, “Risks are collectivized, skills are perfected, learning is continuous, and surplus is shared in equitable ways, through real democratic decision-making. In a system of shared prosperity, shared decision-making, and collective economic activity can spill over into other social and political spaces, and enrich civil society, families, and individual wellness. We do have examples of some of this. We have examples of sort of cooperative commonwealths where you have interlocking systems: a credit union that helps to develop worker co-ops and gives the first loan to the co-op store to buy its own building. And then the co-op store deposits its money in the credit union. And the credit union also helps the neighborhood to start a housing co-op. And the housing co-op members run their own security company and maintenance company as worker-owned companies that also service the credit unions and the co-op stores. The residents also have a co-op sewing factory, catering company, child care center, etc. So that’s the kind of idea we have: that everybody is part of several different co-ops, which service each other and provide products and alternative financing. Some of the surplus from one co-op venture can then be put into something else, like affordable housing or other kinds of provisions, like collective utilities. So the notion is that we don’t really have any one group, or one person running off with all the spoils, right? The spoils are truly recirculating in the community. And the community itself is the one who decides what happens to those resources”

The risk here is an over-emphasis on the ‘cooperative’ legal structure. We’re advocating for a wider variety of legal structures. The interconnectedness of entities in Nembhard’s vision is aligned with ours.

However, we believe that although coops have been a popular choice for shared ownership, they are not without issues. For example, coops are structurally incentivized to serve the wealth and health of their own members due to their governance arrangements. In our vision, we would like to see the vitality and resilience of communities and landscapes become part of the success criteria of business activity. Rather than the priority being the wealth-building of worker-owners, we see the priority as being an economy that generates public goods.

For this reason, there is immense value in utilizing steward ownership. If a local utility company is owned by a trust that legally requires it to provide high-quality services and advance the environmental protections of the region, that business will extend its mission far beyond optimizing for profit share of its members. We admire and want to highlight Nembhard’s extensive work in this area and also use this as an opportunity to distinguish the differences between a cooperative economy and a stewardship economy. For this reason, we offer the phrase ‘stewardship commonwealth’ as a possible iteration on this framing. We’re not claiming this concept to be the most memorable or memetically powerful phrase, but it could be a useful description in the interim as we all collectively articulate a vision for a better economy."

More information

Video: Derek Razo and Chelsea Robinson on Holding Assets in Common‎

Infrastructure for Shared Ownership

Assets in Common

Contents