Legal Counsel for Cooperatives and Shared Ownership Enterprises
Your ally and advisor in designing, building, growing and financing cooperative businesses and other shared ownership enterprises.
A cooperatively owned and operated enterprise enables its member-owners to join together in organizing their work to meet their economic, cultural and social needs and those of their broader community.
Formation & Conversion
Create a solid foundation for your new cooperative enterprise or for converting a conventional business to employee ownership. Your bylaws, membership terms, ownership structure and governance process are the blueprints you’ll need to begin building and there are many other elements of constructing a successful organization to attend to before and after that.
Financing
Empower your enterprise with funds in many forms from many sources: members, friends and family, lenders and investors, suppliers and vendors, community and crowdfunding, grants and donations. You’ll want to consider your options, their impact on your organization and their alignment with your values and objectives, and then ensure that deal terms are mutually agreeable, clearly documented and compliant with securities laws.
Contracts and Partnerships
Grow your enterprise by building mutually beneficial relationships with your employees, customers, service providers, vendors, landlords, business partners, and collaborators through clear and thoughtfully balanced agreements.
Governance and Compliance
Build good governance, management decision-making and legal compliance practices into the everyday activities of your organization by implementing training programs, policies and procedures that reflect your values and articulate agreed upon expectations and consequences.
Working together
Shared values
Kathleen Gregg
I devote my practice to assisting people, organizations and communities who are working to build an equitable and environmentally sustainable economy for all through worker cooperatives and other forms of shared ownership of businesses, housing, social enterprises and community assets. I also mentor and provide senior of-counsel assistance to other attorneys engaged in this work.
Teaming Up
It takes a team to raise a business. When your legal, accounting or business needs require additional expertise, I can refer you to colleagues or partner with them.
Starting Points for Coopreneurs and Transitioning Owners
Ideas and Information
Converting a conventional business to employee ownership
Becoming Employee Owned, a small business toolkit
Learn all about the process of converting a conventional company to employee ownership at the Becoming Employee Owned website and get inspired by the many examples of employee ownership conversions happening in many industries and states.
Combining workers and customers in a multi-stakeholder cooperative model
Solidarity as a Business Model, a multistakeholder cooperatives manual
Explore what’s possible when different member groups come together to own a business or community enterprise through the case studies in this booklet published by the Cooperative Development Center at Kent State (2011).
Massachusetts state support for employee ownership
Massachusetts Center for Employee Ownership and the ICA Group
The Massachusetts Center for Employee Ownership provides business owners interested in converting to employee ownership with succession planning, training, education and technical assistance via its program administrator the ICA Group.
A FEW Examples Close to Home – Find a FULL LIST IN This MCEO Directory
Local Inspirations
Worker owned brewery cooperative
Democracy Brewing
Democracy Brewing is a popular worker owned brewery and restaurant in Boston’s downtown crossing. As their website says: “Our mission is to re-create the traditional public house, brew the best beer in Boston, pair it with tasty food, and serve it to you in combination with two great American ideals: democracy, and owning your own business.” – And they do just that.
Worker owned greenhouse cooperative
Wellspring Harvest
Wellspring Harvest in Springfield is the largest urban greenhouse in Massachusetts and provides on-the-job training and ownership opportunities for low-income city residents. It is part of the Wellspring Cooperative‘s network of worker owned businesses in the Springfield area that bolsters small cooperative startups by rafting them together in a peer support system with some centralized services.
Worker owned waste management cooperative
CERO Cooperative
CERO is a worker-owned cooperative that has been providing commercial and residential organic waste management services in the Boston area since 2012. In addition to pioneering a zero waste approach, they were an early pioneer of using a direct public offering to raise funds from community supporters. Their mission: “to foster economic empowerment and create pathways to prosperity for people of color, working-class individuals, immigrants, and LGBTQ+ communities through the power of worker ownership, all while promoting green practices and sustainability.”
KATHLEEN GREGG, Attorney at law 