As our work unfolded, team members identified a desire to share the good, the bad, and the ugly of what we've learned in our co-op development journeys - especially the things we learned through trial and error because relevant materials were not available at the time. We wanted to make this hard-earned knowledge accessible to folks designing union co-ops and other co-op businesses, and also make it clear that nobody has all the answers. So much has been learned about co-op development during the last decade. We believe that self-organized groups should be able to guide their own co-op development efforts, engaging with developers and other outside experts on their terms. The Facilitation Guide is aimed at supporting that work.

The Facilitation Guide was developed with co-op founders and self-organized start-up co-ops in mind, particularly those groups that want to center antiracism and confront multiple forms of oppression as part of their approach. Informing our orientation to creating the Facilitation Guide was a desire to reduce barriers that keep people from communities that will most benefit from participating in the solidarity economy from accessing the tools, knowledge, and guidance they need to succeed.

Additionally, we have found that many co-op development tools are offered with an ideologically neutral position that tacitly centers whiteness. Consciously, we use language and build a framework that represents our shared beliefs in collective liberation, that is anti-capitalist, and that calls each of us in - across race, gender, class, and other identities - to recognize how power and privilege flow and move together in ways that uplift values of care, love, and equity.

Of course, this toolkit is not perfect. You’ll also find that in using it there is some pre-work to do before jumping into some of our modules. But don’t worry! We’ll tell you where to look to get that pre-work done. In the future, we hope to continue filling these gaps by building additional resources. For now, we've tried to point those engaging with the toolkit to additional resources both in the areas we cover and those that we don't.

Developing a co-op is a journey. So is challenging racism and other forms of oppression. As we think about larger, ongoing struggles for economic democracy and racial justice, there's so much learning we all have yet to do. And we should expect that, as we learn more, some of the old ways and tools won't support us going forward. That's okay. We hope this set of resources can evolve and grow together with the beautiful movements it aims to support.