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.
Our Vision:
We envision a vibrant economy rooted in care, sustainability, and democracy in which all people have the resources they need to lead meaningful, dignified, and sustainable lives.
Our Values:
Within our Staff Assembly, our Board of Directors, and in our relationships with cooperatives, coalitions, partners, affiliations, and neighbors, we center these ideas:
Deep Democracy
Workers and communities have control over the decisions that affect their daily lives.
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Anti-Racism and Anti-Oppression
We work to identify and eliminate intersecting oppressions by changing systems, organizational structures, policies, practices, and attitudes, so that power is redistributed and shared equitably.
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Non-Extraction
Finance is subordinated to the needs of people. The returns to the lender do not ever exceeding the wealth created by the borrower using the capital. A borrower will never be worse off than before working with us.
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Cooperation
We unite voluntarily to meet common economic, social, and cultural needs and aspirations, and make democratic decisions in the best interest of the whole. See also the 7 Cooperative Principles
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Solidarity
We commit to the practice of interdependence and strive for collective liberation. See also the Solidarity Economy Principles
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Stewardship
Our role as leaders, teachers, and community members is temporary and is outlasted by the lifespan of an organization, a cooperative, a community, and the natural environment. We engage in responsible management of the resources entrusted to us.
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Our Work:
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 and Western New York.
We support the start-up of new worker cooperatives and conversions of existing businesses to worker ownership that meet our Values and Shared Principles. We offer technical assistance to other cooperatives when we can.
We circulate capital to cooperatives in a non-extractive way through our membership in Seed Commons, a national financial cooperative that is dedicated to financing democratically owned companies, particularly for workers who have been undervalued and pushed to the margins of the economy due to race, origin, economic or immigration status, gender, and age.
Since our launch in 2016, Cooperation Buffalo has been led by Buffalo cooperators. Our Staff and Board are a mix of working class organizers, queers, femmes, movement leaders, and workers with experience launching and participating in worker cooperatives, housing cooperatives, and community land trusts. By design, cooperatives that receive support from Cooperation Buffalo are able to join the governance of the organization and the loan fund, participating in democratic decisions regarding loans, long-term strategy, and what services to provide.
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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 convened by Democracy at Work Institute (DAWI), works together to bring worker ownership to scale through conversions of existing businesses.
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.
Partnership for the Public Good is a community-based think tank that builds a more just, sustainable, and culturally vibrant Buffalo Niagara through action-oriented research, policy development, and citizen engagement.