As a kid, Nathan Schneider loved his grandfather’s belt buckle. Stamped into the metal, and now stamped into his memory, was the logo of a hardware distributor that he worked with.

Old documents Schneider dug up years later showed the company was actually a cooperative. For Schneider, it was the perfect find. The University of Colorado Boulder professor of media studies is the recent author of a book on cooperative businesses, “Everything for Everyone: The Radical Tradition That Is Shaping the Next Economy.”

Colorado has a long history of cooperative businesses flourishing in agriculture and other rural industries. Now, as socially minded employers start companies in other areas and with a champion of co-ops in the governor’s seat, cooperatives are seeing a revival.

“Colorado is the Delaware of cooperatives,” Schneider said, repeating a phrase popularized by co-op lawyers. “We have some of the best co-op laws in the country.” Delaware’s flexible corporate laws make it an attractive place for many companies to incorporate in.

The business model is similar to typical corporations, with one key difference: Cooperatives, popularly known as “co-ops,” are owned by members instead of shareholders or single owners. Members usually are employees or even customers and ownership can entail voting rights in company decisions and profit sharing arrangements. Employee ownership gives all members buy-in in their work, boosting morale and even helping alleviate stratification in companies, Schneider said.

“They are coming into fashion,” said Linda Phillips a longtime lawyer who works with cooperative businesses. The advantage for many of her clients is the ability to buy in bulk. With many members, a co-op can have greater purchasing power and ability to take advantage of an economy of scale without the need to raise capital through loans or investments.

In 2017, the latest year data is available, the top 100 revenue-earning cooperatives earned about $214.4 billion, according to the National Cooperative Bank.

Gov. Jared Polis, as a member of Congress, was on the Congressional Cooperative Business Caucus and penned a pro-cooperative opinion piece in the Longmont Times-Call supporting cooperatives in 2017. Cooperative proponents see a bright future for the business model with Polis as governor.

In it for the community

The women of the Mujeres Emprendedoras Cooperative started their small catering business for more than just themselves.

Matilde Garcia, one of the founders, worked for decades in nonprofits and community development organizations in her neighborhood of Westwood in Lakewood. She helped build community gardens, improve local businesses and work with other women to find empowering work. But as she helped her neighborhood, she watched it change.

Wealthier neighbors started coming to Westwood as rent prices rose and many of Garcia’s Hispanic neighbors were priced out of their homes. She knew change was inevitable, but the change she saw was moving fast and forcing out many of her friends, she said.

With four other women, she started the catering cooperative that translates to “women entrepreneurs” in June 2018.

“It was the best way to help the community,” Garcia said.

Now with 12 members, the catering business has been able to grow by word of mouth and cook for more events with the extra hands on deck. So far, the business has not turned a profit as they reinvest their earnings into more cooking equipment. One day, they also hope to add a line of salsa and other food products they can sell in grocery stores.

The end goal is to turn a profit for themselves but also grow their cooperative to include more women. With more members, Garcia hopes, they can improve “the economy of the home,” and help the lives of her fellow community members.

The community focus of the Mujeres Emprendedoras Cooperative is the type of business story Schneider hears often about co-ops. The professor sees cooperatives as an easier platform for people often marginalized from traditional industries to gain more access to opportunity, he said.

But it’s not always easy.

Fighting stereotypes

During the Cold War, cooperatives had to fight against the perception of being anything less than good old-fashioned American capitalism. Despite often being tools for traditional industries in Colorado such as agriculture and hardware supply, their reputation took a hit when fears of creeping communism swept the country.

“Coming out and talking about being a co-op was a little risky,” Schneider said, adding that in rural America co-ops have long been mainstream by necessity.

Cooperatives can still get over-represented as bastions of granola-selling, organic-toting food stores. But large corporations also employ the model. A range of companies from banks like CoBank, national hardware distributors like Ace Hardware, to local bike stores have structured themselves as cooperatives. Electricity companies like the Poudre Valley REA and others spread across rural Colorado are cooperatives, too. Large startup costs for electricity companies have made the cooperative model an easier way to raise capital with member buy-in.

Now, co-ops are spreading to sectors of the future. Namaste Solar, a Denver-based solar company, became an employee-owned company to increase its holistic approach to business, according to the company’s website.

Schneider also sees co-ops as viable options for gig workers to organize themselves.

With their history in Colorado and easy-to-use laws, Phillips has been busy incorporating more and more co-ops. Her workload has picked up in one particular sector: older business owners ready to retire without children to take the reins of their life’s work.

With their employees in mind, many of those owners are turning their businesses into member-owned organizations, Phillips said.

“It is a business structure that just allows for more economic equity,” she said.