Boston Center for Community Ownership
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About Us

cooperative development from the grassroots

We are a worker, self-directed non-profit co-op development center rooted in community organizing.

We provide organizing support in English and Spanish for startup co-ops and co-op conversions, as well as ongoing training and technical assistance for existing cooperatives.  

We believe in a worker-led approach to cooperatives and community economic development. Communities of color and working class communities provide the organizing strength to mobilize resources, workers bring skills, experience, and a drive for self-determination, and BCCO brings the right tool at the right time so that those workers and communities can create the future they envision.

We are members of the US Federation of Worker Cooperatives, Cooperation Works!, the Greater Boston Chamber of Cooperatives, the Massachusetts Coalition for Worker Ownership and Power, and the Association of Cooperative Educators.

Our Approach

We are part of the field of Cooperative Development, but we’re different from other Co-op Development organizations.

Co-Op Organizers
Our work is rooted in community organizing, and we see ourselves as Co-op Organizers, more than Co-op Developers.  Our process always begins with the workers.  We learn about your needs and aspirations, and help build trust and solidarity among your team.  We bring information and resources to the table, but understand that the process of researching, designing, and launching a co-op will be most effective when carried out by the future co-op members for their own benefit.
We believe in the peer-to-peer approach that the people best suited to giving assistance with a business are those who have done it themselves.  Our Co-op Organizers have spent many years working in co-ops and small businesses in the roles of: bookkeeper, sales, business manager, project manager, and board member.  We speak from personal experience with a wide variety of industries, and have real-world knowledge of the nitty gritty details involved in running a co-op.  This includes plenty of knowledge about what can go wrong!  We bring our experience to the table so you don’t repeat mistakes others have made for you.
Our responsibility is to the co-ops we serve, not to funders or lenders.  We don’t control the co-ops we help incubate – all our clients are independent businesses right from the start.  When you choose to work with us on your co-op project, you are in charge of the relationship, and can give us feedback and direction, or ultimately fire us if you are not happy with our work.

Staff & Board

We're Hiring!

Learn More

Stacey Cordeiro is a Co-op Organizer and founder of the Boston Center for Community Ownership.  She provides training, facilitation, and technical assistance to worker co-ops and other community owned businesses.  In this work, she uses popular education methods to build upon the knowledge and experience of the members, includes team building and leadership development to build personal and collective power, and translates complex business and economic concepts into plain language so that co-op members can be responsible and savvy entrepreneurs.  

Stacey holds a Masters in City Planning from MIT, and provided technical assistance to cooperatives through the Cooperative Development Institute and Cooperative Economics for Women, before launching BCCO.  In addition, she has worked to further the field of co-op development as a founding member of the Democracy at Work Network (DAWN) through the US Federation of Worker Cooperatives, and by developing the open-source curriculum now used by the Worcester Roots Co-op Academy.  Stacey believes deeply in grassroots organizing and peer-to-peer learning, and for that reason was an organizer for many years for the Worker Owned and Run Cooperative Network of Boston (WORC’N), and is a co-founder of its successor organization, the recently organized Boston Chapter of the US Federation of Worker Cooperatives.  

Sadie Modi (she/her) is a Co-op Organizer for the Boston Center of Community Ownership. Sadie graduated from the University of Massachusetts with a degree in Business Administration. Sadie has a passion for community building and social entrepreneurship. She has worked as a financial consultant for the Center of Student Businesses by helping student-run coops on the UMass campus. She has also served as a Community Director for a cancer prevention organization called Protect Our Breasts during their time in college. Sadie is a first generation American raised in Lynn, MA with family from Sierra Leone and South Sudan. 

Recent Clients

Tierra Fertil
This community of new farmers from Central America had a vision of growing healthy food for their community, while providing some extra income for their families. BCCO, in partnership with the Democracy at Work Institute, helped the co-op members create their first business plan and financial projections, and facilitated the process of developing their operating agreement with their lawyer. See their website.
CERO Co-op
BCCO created the Co-op Academy that provided the base of education and training needed for low-income Boston residents to launch CERO Co-op. Since its founding, we have provided support to CERO, in partnership with CFNE and Ujima Boston, in governance, financial planning, and finding financing. We created a participatory budgeting process to involve workers at every level of the organization to help shape the financial goals of the co-op, and supported the process of raising the initial capital for the co-op through a direct public offering. See their website.
Boston Cleaning Collective
When Marina Maldonado had the idea to improve her own working conditions by starting a cooperative cleaning company, she shopped around for the help she needed, and found willing partners in Teamworks Institute and BCCO. With funding from the City of Boston On-Site Technical Assistance Program and the Catholic Campaign for Human Development, we helped Boston Cleaning Collective streamline their sales and operations by setting up a field service software platform that handles customer requests, invoicing, and scheduling, and integrates directly with Quickbooks. We also helped the co-op develop a financial projection and an easy-to-read dashboard of KPI’s so important financial and operational information is accessible to all the co-op members. With the appropriate use of technology, as well as ongoing training, the members are empowered to make the best decisions for their co-op. See their website.
DMA Health Strategies
When the owner of their company announced his plans to retire, employees of DMA Health Strategies wanted to explore continuing the business as a worker-owned cooperative. After running into a dead end at their local SBA office, they found us. Over the course of 16 months, BCCO led the future worker-owners through a process of planning and preparing for the conversion, which included an assessment of the company’s financial performance, management structure, and policy documents. We worked with Jessica Manganello at New Leaf Legal to create the bylaws for the new co-op, and walked the members through each step of the deal, until they emerged as the new co-owners of their employer. See their website.

We want to hear from you!

Have an idea for a new co-op? Or would your organization would like to support its members?

We partner with individuals, grassroots membership organizations, and municipalities to transform co-op ideas from vision to reality – No matter what stage of development you are in!