Drivers Cooperative - Colorado is an example of social co-op in the United States. DCC photos courtesy of Rocky Mountain Employee Ownership Collective.

While a few green shoots are beginning to sprout, social cooperatives, also known as social co-ops, are still a relatively new concept to many Americans. 

That means their special characteristics, as we find them in the countries where they operate, are not yet well understood here in the U.S. 

If we take the definition offered by the International Cooperative Alliance, a social co-op has the following characteristics:

• An explicit purpose to serve the public good, beyond just member benefit;
• The status of a non-state entity, independent from government;
• Multi-stakeholder membership (workers, users, community members, etc.);
• A democratic workplace, with substantial representation of worker members at every level of governance;
• Non- or limited distribution of surplus revenues (i.e., some or all revenues are set aside for special purposes).

Social co-ops, a type of worker co-op, emerged in Italy in the 1970s as a community response to government cutbacks around social care for people with disabilities. They operated without formal government recognition until the Italian government finally passed a law granting them tax breaks and other advantages over their conventional commercial competitors. Since then, places like Québec and South Korea developed health ecosystems of social co-ops, to name only two of several. 

So here’s a trick question: what do the following three organizations have in common? 

SABSA is a team of nurse practitioners and social workers in Québec City. A few years ago, they noticed that there was a group of people on the street with addictions, HIV, and even Hepatitis-C, who were not getting care because they simply refused to go to a hospital. Additionally, many of them did not have an insurance card from Québec’s healthcare system. The SABSA team decided to start offering treatment nonetheless, working out of a mobile clinic which provided safe injections and supervised drug consumption (i.e., a harm reduction approach).

In 2016, SABSA faced pushback from the local doctors’ association and Québec’s Ministry of Health, as their nurses were taking on many of the tasks typically performed by a general practitioner. The SABSA team responded by pointing out that this was the only care the patients were receiving. Finally, the health ministry saw the value of this work and created a new category of “super-nurse” for these types of street clinics. 

Pandora is a team based in Milan that works with returning citizens and people with former substance use disorders to train them for work. In anticipation of the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan, Pandora acquired a small company called Steeteat, a mobile restaurant. Pandora plans to incorporate Streeteat into their model, including offering innovative services in the catering sector.

Suara is a large organization (€133 million in revenue) based in Barcelona. Suara offers homecare services, hospice care, housing for people with disabilities, nursery school, and a variety of other social services. It is owned by its 1,574 working members (almost 90% of whom are women). Over 65% of Suara’s members participate in the decisions made in live assemblies, with 90% participation in virtual meetings. 

So now here’s the answer to the “trick question”: all three organizations are social co-ops, a type of enterprise which allows them to deliver social care in ways U.S. non-profits (and sometimes worker co-ops) are either unable or less able to do. 

Here’s what we mean.

SABSA is neither a government agency nor a typical business and thus is not constrained by regulation or procedures—it is free to operate as it wishes. It was able to take a calculated risk with its offering of services to uninsured people, presumably in violation of the rules surrounding methods and places of treatment. As a social co-op, SABSA prides itself on social innovation, not merely providing social services. Because its care is co-created with patients and other types of members, it can offer something which neither government nor the private sector can match.

Pandora, as an Italian social co-op of 100 employees and workers (70% of whom come from marginalized groups), is not subject to the non-profit/for-profit wall that divides us in the U.S. Thus, there were no obstacles to its acquisition in 2022 of another company, Streeteat, which had its own line of revenue. Such an acquisition would not be typical for a U.S. provider of workforce services. It is also typical of the entrepreneurial mentality common in Italian co-ops—they are not merely service providers but solution engines.

Finally, Suara’s high degree of member participation is linked to its status as a democratic workplace, another typical feature of social co-ops, but not of most U.S. non-profits. 

Additionally, most U.S. care co-ops don’t utilize a formal multi-stakeholder model, with member categories including family members, community members, and volunteers. 

Social co-op pilot projects in the U.S.

Perhaps the leading U.S.-based group in the social co-op field is the Rocky Mountain Employee Ownership Center (RMEOC) in Denver. Executive director Minsun Ji, an academic and a former immigrant labor organizer, assembled the team that launched Driver’s Cooperative—Colorado (DCC) several months ago. 

Perhaps surprisingly, DCC is not merely a worker-owned taxi company; it is a rideshare platform that also functions as a social co-op due to two key features: first, its workers are almost all immigrants, and second, its rideshare services include non-emergency scheduled rides for people with special needs in the Denver area.

The RMEOC is planning the launch of a second social co-op next year, a home healthcare business, which also will be based in Denver. 

Given the troubled condition of the social care sector in the U.S., adopting the social co-op model could offer several key advantages:

• Social co-ops are worker-managed workplaces in which worker and client wellbeing takes priority over the needs of capital;
• Social co-ops typically co-create their social care through a collaborative process–i.e., workers get to co-create the care they deliver with their clients and others;
• Social co-ops are governed by a multistakeholder framework, allowing them to have a broader, community-based perspective beyond just that of the workers;
• Social co-ops are highly localized businesses that cannot be “exported” and do not require government subsidies. 

To fully develop as a new type of corporate formation, social co-ops will need favorable federal legislation and state statutes. We also lack the funding mechanisms found in other countries, a problem common to all types of co-ops in the U.S.

Another possible obstacle is our unfamiliarity with the blended revenue model of social co-ops—one that utilizes both philanthropy and earned income in entrepreneurial ways. 

However, as the pilot projects above suggest, social co-ops are poised to emerge in the U.S., and—perhaps more importantly—the sooner the better.

For more information about social co-ops, the Rocky Mountain Employee Ownership Center has recently launched a social co-op program, with a monthly Social Co-op Community of Practice and another round of the Social Co-op Academy, beginning this fall.

And to learn more about DCC, check out “Driving change: The story of the Drivers Cooperative – Colorado” by Erika Iacono on Shareable.