Claudia Bach

I was at a civic leadership gathering yesterday that focused on issues of community. A couple of things mentioned got me trying to connect ideas I’ve not thought of as being interconnected and trying to imagine how they might play out in support of smaller arts organizations. Since these are just percolating ideas – or really questions – bear with me.

Cooperatives, as a business model, have been around for over 150 years. Here in the Northwest we have a nurtured a number of interesting cooperatives including the hugely successful REI, Group Health (one of the first health care cooperatives), as well as a strong array of food co-ops, some apartments that use that structure, and a smattering of artists’ co-ops including the stalwart Soil Gallery. 

Might cooperatives be a method for augmenting business services connected to fiscal sponsorship for smaller arts groups? Could a group of arts entities, sharing a fiscal sponsor, actually be members of a cooperative providing services (such as bookkeeping, data management, etc) as well as management information and guidance? Could it provide a financial structure that would permit access to collective capital that might smooth cash flow and other financial challenges?

When I looked it up I learned from the National Cooperative Business Association that there are multiple forms of cooperative businesses but all:

•    Are owned and democratically controlled by their members-the people who use the co-op’s services or buy its goods-not by outside investors; Co-op members elect their board of directors from within the membership.
•    Return surplus revenues (income over expenses and investment) to members proportionate to their use of the cooperative, not proportionate to their “investment” or ownership share.
•    Are motivated not by profit, but by service to meet their members’ needs or affordable and high quality goods or services; Exist solely to serve their members.
•    Pay taxes on income kept within the co-op for investment and reserves. Surplus revenues from the co-op are returned to individual members who pay taxes on that income.

Would “Cultural Resource Co-ops” be worth exploring? Has this been tried?