#democracy collaborative

Walking Within Wisdom #36 - Majorie Kelly - Democracy Collaborative

September 24, 2019 

“When families possess assets — valuable skills, social networks, a home, some savings, an ownership stake in a business — they enjoy greater resilience, and are better able to withstand occasional shocks like unemployment or illness. They can plan for their future, send a child to college, feel secure in retirement. A job may start or stop. It is assets, of various kinds, that yield greater stability and security. As this is true of families, it is also true of communities. Jobs may be drawn into a community, but then leave without warning. And if attracting jobs means degrading community assets — through pollution, low-wage jobs, or the loss of tax income through excessive tax breaks — a seeming gain can in fact represent a net loss.” ~Marjorie Kelly author of Owning Our Future: The Emerging Ownership Revolution

For some background, I spent a couple of years working with some amazing local organizations like Rocky Mountain Farmers Union, Colorado Enterprise Fund, RE:Vision and Rocky Mountain Employee Ownership Council around the idea of Community Wealth Building.  

Community wealth building is: a fast-growing economic development movement that strengthens our communities through broader democratic ownership and control of business and jobs. It builds on local talents, capacities and institutions, rebuilding capital to strengthen and create locally-owned family and community owned businesses that are anchored in place, that aren’t moving.

The community wealth building field includes a broad range of models and innovations that have been steadily growing power over the past 30 years or more: cooperatives, employee-owned companies, social enterprise, land trusts, family businesses, community development financial institutions and banks, and more. One powerful team of local partners are anchor institutions, like hospitals and universities. They are often the largest economic drivers in their communities. Increasingly they see the synergy between restoring local health and wealth with their success.

I have been needing a boost around the difficult work that we have been facing in Walsenburg Colorado. Much of our work is community wealth building, so today I walked and listened to Dr. Tiffany Jana interview Marjorie Kelly the Senior Fellow and Executive Vice President of The Democracy Collaborative (TDC) a non-profit research organization founded in 2000. TDC is a research and development lab for a democratic economy. Ms. Kelly is co-founder of Fifty by Fifty, a network initiative to catalyze 50 million employee owners by 2050, for which she has led research on Next Generation Enterprise Design.

Dr. Tiffany’s initial question was why should the world be looking to create a “people first economy”   

Marjorie Kelly answered… “It may well be the most important question of our time

We now have a capital centered economy creating short term wealth for the few that is the structure that is putting the planet at risk and growing inequality.”

She went into discussing how the design of enterprise fits into a people centered economy and how we must design for “the next generation enterprise” 

A Next Generation Enterprise is:

Mission-led and employee-owned

Ownership is broadly held: ESOP, worker co-op, trust. At least 30% employee owned

Authentic mission of creating public benefit

May institutionalize mission as B Corps or benefit corps

An innovative enterprise design for a new era of environmental sustainability and social equity

Ms. Kelly went on to explain that system structure is the source of the system behavior and in a  democratic economy institutions seek to build, not just financial wealth, but community wealth. This is NOT about just reducing poverty, instead it is about building wealth. It’s about building many kinds of community wealth: Youth skills, community ties, home ownership, healthy ecosystem, family assets. Possessing assets is very different from receiving social services 

Kelly then went on to describe the “Principle of Inclusion - creating opportunity for those long excluded” and the “Principle of Sustainability - protecting the ecosystem as the foundation of all life” in order to create a next generation enterprise where there is:

Broad-based employee ownership

Embedded mission

Ethical Leadership

Worker engagement

Governance

Ecological practices

Today there are more than 50 next generation enterprises 

Next Generation Enterprises are the best of the best. 

Among the 45 employee-owned B Corps, 82% were named Best for the WORLD.

So I wonder with this being climate action week, and hearing some CLEAR actions we need to be taking right now, doesn’t community wealth building just make sense? 

Maybe you want to walk with me and discuss this???