We are a 501(c)(3) nonprofit social enterprise promoting, servicing, and resourcing cooperatives and research for advising policy changes.
What?
Everyone lives off labor, their own and others’. The labor strictly their own is not enough but it is all they have without family, friends, and community. Nobody could live the life as accustomed without them. Still, people deserve to decide toward what they labor, but why? To what end should anyone have decision? The alternative is tyranny and opposite American values. For all the lauding of the power of “voting with the pocketbook,” “voting with labor” should necessarily carry more weight. Labor is primary to existence and its expenditure an order of magnitude greater importance than any “pocketbook” used in proxy. What you work for matters to you, it matters to your life, and it matters to your community, friends, and family.
Who?
A 501(c)(3) nonprofit social enterprise, American Cooperatives Institute services and resources small and cooperative businesses. The goal is to promote formation, innovation, opportunity, and organization of individual, family, and worker-owned businesses and cooperatives. We do this pro bono as social entrepreneurs, studying the cooperatives we help and using the data extracted for research purposes in advising incorporation and policy changes, nationally, locally, and internationally. American Cooperatives Institute welcomes any legal donations and grants.
Why?
Cooperatives and small businesses are better. These organizations do the good that “traditional” large corporations cannot and they (usually) do not do the bad that corporations should not. There is a need for more ethics and less corruption in American business, so there is a need for more cooperatives and small businesses.
How?
By servicing and resourcing cooperatives, American Cooperatives Institute hopes to invigorate the sector and encourage growth by driving down costs associated with market entry and overhead. Servicing and resourcing small businesses does much good in itself through their benefit while also facilitating their local engagement of more ethical larger organizations in the form of cooperatives owned and ran by neighbors! It is because cooperatives are more ethical that they need smaller family owned and sole proprietorship companies and vice versa. This is good for everyone!
Summary
Unity of the American nation scaled up to the local community, it is Together To Scale.