Co-op ownership?

[Mark Nolte]

Are any of your coworking spaces a cooperative in legal structure? We are considering this model of shared ownership and would appreciate anyone offering up their thoughts on pros and cons of such a model
Thanks Mark. Mno...@iowacityarea.con

Sent from my iPhone

[rachel young]

I love co-ops, and I'm a member of a few. I think they work well for many types of business. We considered starting our space as co-op, but changed our minds. I've set up a co-op before, and (here in Ontario, at least) it was a tremendous amount of red tape and government involvement for something that can be just far easier when registering as a private business. So instead we try to operate as much as possible like a co-op by involving our members in decisions and soliciting feedback from them as much as possible, and profits have gone back into what the space needs.

However, we did propose the idea of a co-op to a group of folks that joined us for our first town hall meeting when we were doing our initial outreach to the community, and one private comment from the crowd stood out for us, which was something along the lines of "I struggle to make my own business work; I can't help to run your business too." He was just one person, but we know the rule that if one person says something there might well be several who are thinking it. So, that combined with my experience in setting up a co-op changed our minds.

Plus there's the issue with that pesky hyphen...  :-P

r.

____________________
rachel young
rac...@camaraderie.ca

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[Ken Janke]

I have found that in the state of Connecticut, how the coop is taxed can be a real headache. I would recommend looking into the tax laws in the city you are opening to see what the ramifications might be.

Good Luck,
Ken

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[Alex Hillman]

Our decision to be a for-profit LLC is one of sustainability. Decision making as a large group means more people need to be aligned in order to make important decisions quickly. Once you get past 3 people, that speed tends to become a relative impossibility. I'm always dubious of the notion of a "board" existing before membership in any community, since I've yet to be around one that actually moves as quick as the community needs it to.

By keeping our legal ownership small and aligned, we remain agile and able to do remarkable things when necessary because we know that there are only two of us, and we're making decisions based on core values not on ego... 

By making sure that the legal owners (Geoff and I) are aligned with the members, we've been able to work to make sure that the sense of ownership that counts, the sense of pride and stewardship for the community, is more valuable to the members than actual ownership.

http://dangerouslyawesome.com/2010/11/coworking-as-a-business-it-has-nothing-to-do-with-profit/

The fact of the matter is, there's not a lot of actual benefit to being an owner of a coworking space. There's more benefit to being a member, in my experience. 

So I'd flip the desire to turn members into owners on its head and say - what's a model where the owners are motivated to be active members of the community.

One final thought - ownership creates a stratification, even if it's only mental, amongst the participants. A quote from a book I'm working my way through right now seems appropriate:

"In communities, even the leaders aren't your bosses. They are your peers."

-Alex

   
/ah
indyhall.org
coworking in philadelphia

[Angel Kwiatkowski]

+1 what Alex said. You can get lots of participation, discussion and a
sense of ownership without burdening members with the niceties of
legal entities. I'm the only owner/manager of Cohere, LLC. Keeps us
nimble and there's no bureaucracy!
-Angel

On Apr 25, 7:30 am, Alex Hillman <dangerouslyawes...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Our decision to be a for-profit LLC is one of sustainability. Decision
> making as a large group means more people need to be aligned in order to
> make important decisions quickly. Once you get past 3 people, that speed
> tends to become a relative impossibility. I'm always dubious of the notion
> of a "board" existing before membership in any community, since I've yet to
> be around one that actually moves as quick as the community needs it to.
>
> By keeping our legal ownership small and aligned, we remain agile and able
> to do remarkable things when necessary because we know that there are only
> two of us, and we're making decisions based on core values not on ego...
>
> By making sure that the legal owners (Geoff and I) are aligned with the

> members, we've been able to work to make sure that the *sense of ownership
> that counts*, the sense of pride and stewardship for the community, is more

> valuable to the members than actual ownership.
>

> http://dangerouslyawesome.com/2010/11/coworking-as-a-business-it-has-...

> > *____________________
> > rachel young
> > *rac...@camaraderie.ca
>
> > *
> > *