Incorporation as ...?
Hi all, I’m a Cooperator with York Courier Collective (YCC), a member of the CoopCycle federation, we’re currently unincorporated. We currently offer scheduled delivery of goods and, now that the platform is maturing, in the early stages of on-demand food delivery. We’re aware of the precarious nature of this work, so in looking to create a more sustainable business we’re got underway with establishing a York Library of Things, the idea of which is to offer an on-demand delivery loaned item, tools, things, etc.
In summary, so far we’ve got:
York Collective - York Courier – Scheduled delivery
York Collective - Scoff – On-demand Food Delivery
York Collective - York Library of Things - On-demand Thing Delivery
In our minds, in an attempt to future proof, it makes sense to run everything under an umbrella, York Collective, to allow the cooperative’s branches to grow around the logistics, and e-commerce platform. This, hopefully, would allow anybody which wanted to start a cooperative, which integrated with our services, a way to avoid the immediate cost of incorporation, hassle of opening a bank account and so forth (basically the problems we’re facing now with a lack of funds.); much the same as Open Collective offers on a global scale, but under York Collective.
So, so far a workers’ cooperative seems to be the way to go, however we’re keen to involve user members in some capacity, so we’re considering multi-stakeholder cooperatives. The Library of Things should be driven by user demand, similarly offering restaurants membership has been discussed.
We’re open to thoughts and suggestions about our best way to incorporate, whether it’s something we’ve researched or completely different. Thanks in advance for any feedback.
Dave Hollings Thu 21 Nov 2019 6:48AM
You need to give more thought to what 'involving users in some ways' means. Do you mean users as co-owners with the workers, as co-producers of the services of the co-op, as supporters, as key stakeholders as providers of capital. Or any combinaiton of the above. The answers to this will drive the structure.
The other thing is to consider a structure that enables a number of separate but overlapping businesses to run in one co-operative. This probably means some way of collectively setting an over-arching framework within which every part of the co-operative must operate but a high degree of autonomy for each part to make decisions about their own business.
Philip Coulthard Thu 21 Nov 2019 10:21AM
Thanks for the links @Jeff Regino , I have come to a hurdle on my journey into the VSM that it could be a anarchist model for enterprise, such as that used by the Occupy movement, or it could be as Stafford Beer wrote a model of enterprise based on the science of variety, recursion and closure. The question left open in my mind is where would the power reside. Perhaps Fairshares could help in providing a model more distributive of power, as Stafford himself alluded to? These questions are so important at this time if we are to truly to move away from enterprises of decerebrated cats.
Jeff Regino · Thu 21 Nov 2019 5:50AM
Hello Matt, You might want to consider incorporating as a cooperative or company (and maybe an association later on) using the FairShares multi-stakeholder model: http://fsi.coop/about/
More details:
http://www.fairshares.coop/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page
https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/FairShares
Youtube here and here