Bureaucrats, confirmed, Administrators
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Platform cooperatives are businesses like Uber, but owned by the participants.
{{Company_Name}} is building a Platform Cooperative around MediaWiki so that third-party users of the technology can not only benefit more greatly from the technology, but also control it's future and destiny as one of history's greatest collaborative efforts.
What do we mean by building a cooperative? (Aren't you just trying to control things, and get rich?) We mean like the [https://loconomics.com/#!/learnMoreProfessionals loconomics] example in San Francisco.
How do we make decisions as a group? Well, for one, we will probably be using [https://www.loomio.org/ Loomio] for that, and following the [https://loomio.coop/ sage advice in their handbook]. But also, we have [https://discourse.equality-tech.com open discussion forums]<ref>Will shortly be converted to multi-tenant so that we can separately provide forums for each member</ref> and shared workspaces like Phabricator and Wikis where we can sort out the issues.
== Reading and Resources ==
* [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platform_cooperative Platform cooperative] (Wikipedia)
* [https://medium.com/@trebors/platform-cooperativism-vs-the-sharing-economy-2ea737f1b5ad Trebor Sholz] (Medium)
* [https://civic.mit.edu/blog/natematias/what-is-platform-cooperativism-and-why-is-it-important civic.mit.edu]
* [http://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Platform_Cooperativism P2P Foundation]
* [https://platform.coop/about/consortium Platform Coop Consortium]
* [https://platform.coop/directory Platform Coop Directory]
== Quick Comparison with other business structures ==
The coop business model is obviously different from the traditional 'C-Corp' model (whether shareholder, or sole-proprietor, LLC, or other variants of the 'incorporated business'). But, it's also different from the 'B-Corp' model - which stands for Benefit Corporation <ref>"Benefit corporations are a new legal tool to create a solid foundation for long term mission alignment and value creation. It protects mission through capital raises and leadership changes, creates more flexibility when evaluating potential sale and liquidity options, and prepares businesses to lead a mission-driven life post-IPO." - http://benefitcorp.net/businesses </ref>.
== Accounting ==
Need accounting services for your Coop? There's a coop for that: https://bookkeeping.coop/
== United States ==
* [https://usworker.coop/home-2/ United States Federation of Worker Cooperatives]
== Local Groups ==
* The [https://www.boston.coop/ Greater Boston Chamber of Cooperatives] includes '''worker co-ops''' (businesses owned by the employees), '''consumer co-ops''' (businesses owned by customers), and '''housing co-ops''' (housing owned by residents).
== Funding ==
http://www.cooperativefund.org/
{{Company_Name}} is building a Platform Cooperative around MediaWiki so that third-party users of the technology can not only benefit more greatly from the technology, but also control it's future and destiny as one of history's greatest collaborative efforts.
What do we mean by building a cooperative? (Aren't you just trying to control things, and get rich?) We mean like the [https://loconomics.com/#!/learnMoreProfessionals loconomics] example in San Francisco.
How do we make decisions as a group? Well, for one, we will probably be using [https://www.loomio.org/ Loomio] for that, and following the [https://loomio.coop/ sage advice in their handbook]. But also, we have [https://discourse.equality-tech.com open discussion forums]<ref>Will shortly be converted to multi-tenant so that we can separately provide forums for each member</ref> and shared workspaces like Phabricator and Wikis where we can sort out the issues.
== Reading and Resources ==
* [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Platform_cooperative Platform cooperative] (Wikipedia)
* [https://medium.com/@trebors/platform-cooperativism-vs-the-sharing-economy-2ea737f1b5ad Trebor Sholz] (Medium)
* [https://civic.mit.edu/blog/natematias/what-is-platform-cooperativism-and-why-is-it-important civic.mit.edu]
* [http://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/Platform_Cooperativism P2P Foundation]
* [https://platform.coop/about/consortium Platform Coop Consortium]
* [https://platform.coop/directory Platform Coop Directory]
== Quick Comparison with other business structures ==
The coop business model is obviously different from the traditional 'C-Corp' model (whether shareholder, or sole-proprietor, LLC, or other variants of the 'incorporated business'). But, it's also different from the 'B-Corp' model - which stands for Benefit Corporation <ref>"Benefit corporations are a new legal tool to create a solid foundation for long term mission alignment and value creation. It protects mission through capital raises and leadership changes, creates more flexibility when evaluating potential sale and liquidity options, and prepares businesses to lead a mission-driven life post-IPO." - http://benefitcorp.net/businesses </ref>.
== Accounting ==
Need accounting services for your Coop? There's a coop for that: https://bookkeeping.coop/
== United States ==
* [https://usworker.coop/home-2/ United States Federation of Worker Cooperatives]
== Local Groups ==
* The [https://www.boston.coop/ Greater Boston Chamber of Cooperatives] includes '''worker co-ops''' (businesses owned by the employees), '''consumer co-ops''' (businesses owned by customers), and '''housing co-ops''' (housing owned by residents).
== Funding ==
http://www.cooperativefund.org/
