About Us
Our Mission:
We mobilize workers to achieve economic security
through cooperative business ownership, generating
wealth and power in communities most affected
by inequality.
We engage our community in training and education in cooperative economics and do work to grow economic democracy and an ecosystem of cooperatively owned enterprises in Buffalo.
We support the start-up of new worker cooperatives and conversions of existing businesses to worker ownership that meet the criteria of our Values Filter. We offer technical assistance to other cooperatives when we can.
We circulate capital to cooperatives in a non-extractive way through the Seed Commons Community Wealth Cooperative. We are also building out a local loan fund based on the Seed Commons principles.
Cooperation Buffalo is led by Buffalo cooperators: community members with experience launching and working in worker cooperatives, housing cooperatives, and community land trusts. Cooperatives that receive support from Cooperation Buffalo join the governance of the organization and the loan fund, participating in democratic decisions regarding loans, long-term strategy, and what services to provide.
Our Affiliations
Seed Commons is built on the bedrock of The Working World. Place-based organizations from across the US have come together to build a national infrastructure of co-op lending and non-extractive finance.
The United States Federation of Worker Cooperatives (USFWC) is the national grassroots membership organization for worker cooperatives, including more than 350 members representing 10,000 US workers.
Workers to Owners Collaborative, a national collaborative of co-op developers and support organizations working together to bring worker ownership to scale through conversions of existing businesses.
The Crossroads Coalition, a coalition of community based organizations that operates at the intersection of climate, economic, and racial justice, fighting for a Just Transition to a New Economy in Buffalo, New York.
The New Economy Coalition is a membership-based network representing the solidarity economy movement in the US, focused on the transition of our economic system from capitalism to a solidarity economy.
The NYS Community Equity Agenda calls for policies and actions that transform our fundamentally unjust social, political and economic systems, putting racial and economic justice front and center.