Regional Rendezvous 2025 Sessions Include:
- Evicting our digital landlords: How we liberate our tech and build sustainable, democratically-run software
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Digital landlords are everywhere. Website builders (Wix/Squarespace); Financial platforms (Quickbooks/Stripe); Everyday-use software (Gmail/Airtable), and more. Their blueprint is simple: build a product, make you dependent, increase prices, degrade quality, and extract capital.
The co-op/open-source movements are trying to solve these issues, building alternatives for everything from Quickbooks to Etsy. Yet, with every co-op we serve, we see digital landlords, and time-and-time-again we see operations stall when landlords raise prices, cut features, and extract capital.
Can we protect ourselves in a world where tech is hostile towards our rights, wallets, and environment? We’ll share a path forward to identify digital landlords that threaten your organization, assess risk, design resilient processes, and protect your co-op. Examples: when to use open-source software, why you should own your data, and when to build/buy off-the-shelf.
Goal: Everyone gains a better understanding of their risks, and a toolkit for decision making.
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- Regional Co-op Climate Justice Planning
- Co-create a climate justice plan by and for our regional co-op community in this participatory workshop. Share what matters to you and hear from others. Tailor a plan for both your co-op and our broader co-op ecosystem to your community's interests, needs, concerns, and opportunities to strengthen our networks to prepare for climate change using a justice and solidarity lens.
- Co-create a climate justice plan by and for our regional co-op community in this participatory workshop. Share what matters to you and hear from others. Tailor a plan for both your co-op and our broader co-op ecosystem to your community's interests, needs, concerns, and opportunities to strengthen our networks to prepare for climate change using a justice and solidarity lens.
- Project 2025: Another Way is Possible
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While many organizations are rolling back DEI, the nINA Collective remains steadfast in our commitment to justice. To mark our five-year anniversary this year, we released a brief with our findings about what strategies can be truly transformational - even during tumultuous times. This brief reflects key insights from working with more than 80 organizations and over 200 individuals in sectors that span everything from women’s sports, healthcare, nonprofits, and local municipalities across 13 states and three counties.
In this session, we will share some of our high level findings from the brief, with a focus on the the strategies that are still supporting organizations in moving towards justice during this challenging moment. Together with other cooperatives, we hope to have a generative session focusing on a shared vision of co-liberation and the boundless potential of communities who dare to dream another way is possible.
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- Committees That Work
- This panel discussion will be hosted by several Worker Coops that have developed processes and policies for committees that work to make their organizations more efficient while retaining democracy.
- This panel discussion will be hosted by several Worker Coops that have developed processes and policies for committees that work to make their organizations more efficient while retaining democracy.
- Cooperative Veterinary Care - a conversion
- Discover what it takes to transition a traditional veterinary practice into a worker-owned cooperative. This panel brings together perspectives from the former owner, a current worker-member, and a technical assistance provider to share the story of their cooperative conversion. Panelists will discuss lessons learned in employee engagement, drafting bylaws, defining membership criteria, navigating culture shifts, and implementing operational changes—offering practical insights for others considering a similar path.
- Discover what it takes to transition a traditional veterinary practice into a worker-owned cooperative. This panel brings together perspectives from the former owner, a current worker-member, and a technical assistance provider to share the story of their cooperative conversion. Panelists will discuss lessons learned in employee engagement, drafting bylaws, defining membership criteria, navigating culture shifts, and implementing operational changes—offering practical insights for others considering a similar path.
- Costa Rica Co-op Immersion Tours
- This panel discussion will go into depth discussing the amazing Cooperative economy in Costa Rica. Recent immersion tours of Costa Rica stunned us, we were completely surprised, impressed, and even dumbfounded at times learning about the Cooperative businesses in Costa Rica - a country less than 1/3 the size of Wisconsin.
- This panel discussion will go into depth discussing the amazing Cooperative economy in Costa Rica. Recent immersion tours of Costa Rica stunned us, we were completely surprised, impressed, and even dumbfounded at times learning about the Cooperative businesses in Costa Rica - a country less than 1/3 the size of Wisconsin.
- Regenerative Practices for Thriving Cooperative Businesses
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Drawing from ecological principles where energy continuously flows and transforms, we'll explore how cooperatives can become regenerative ecosystems where all contributions nourish collective flourishing.
Key focus areas:
- Energy Flow & Renewal: Transforming member passion, insights, and conflicts into fuel for growth—identifying where energy gets trapped and creating flows that regenerate rather get wasted
- Regenerative Communication: Using rounds to elevate all voices, creating psychological safety, and treating feedback as fertilizer that enriches growth
- Ecosystem Interconnectivity: Viewing cooperatives as living systems where diverse participants thrive symbiotically, extending regenerative practices to solidarity relationships across the broader movement through principle #6Interactive format: Participants map energy flows, practice feedback-as-fertilizer techniques, and develop strategies for transforming "waste" into nourishment while strengthening interconnectivity within their workplace and across the cooperative ecosystem.
This addresses real worker-owner needs: preventing burnout, engaging members meaningfully, and cultivating thriving individual cooperatives and a resilient movement.
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- Developing Intentionally Sustainable Communities
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Explore strategies for shifting from a punitive system to unitive system that supports sustainable community connections, shifting the story from what is wrong, to what is possible.
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- Growing older & wiser as a cooperative: strategies for longevity and worker-owner satisfaction
- There are many areas to consider to make sure your cooperative is adapting to change. If your cooperative is exiting the ‘start-up’ phase and beginning to stabilize, you may be experiencing change in the size of your membership, or facing a need to onboard new members. If your cooperative is well-established, you may be facing a need to transfer leadership or institutional knowledge, or to skill up more members to serve on committees.
In this session, the USFWC Co-op Clinic will present frameworks for reviewing the pillars of your cooperative: decision-making, member engagement, profit distribution, professional development, and education & training.
The tools and considerations in this session can be applied to internal factors such as those listed above, or external factors such as the changes in an increasingly volatile economy, or a changing reality of business operations in your industry.
- There are many areas to consider to make sure your cooperative is adapting to change. If your cooperative is exiting the ‘start-up’ phase and beginning to stabilize, you may be experiencing change in the size of your membership, or facing a need to onboard new members. If your cooperative is well-established, you may be facing a need to transfer leadership or institutional knowledge, or to skill up more members to serve on committees.
- Dispatch from the Twin Cities Cooperative Scene
- What’s cooking in Minnesota’s Twin Cities? In the last five years, amidst a global pandemic, uprising, and political instability, the cooperative scene in Minneapolis and Saint Paul has expanded. In response to land speculators, retail vacancies, shifting work conditions, and a strong desire for better, less exploitative workplaces, more people are turning to cooperatives to improve their work-life conditions. With support from community development financial institutions, nonprofit cooperative developers, local government, and dedicated community members, a growing worker-owned cooperative and real estate investment cooperative movement is surging across the metro. Cooperative principles don’t stop at cooperatives – they also influence how groups are organizing, sharing resources, and building community wealth. Hear from various cooperators share what they’re most excited about in the Twin Cities cooperative and collectivist scene.
- What’s cooking in Minnesota’s Twin Cities? In the last five years, amidst a global pandemic, uprising, and political instability, the cooperative scene in Minneapolis and Saint Paul has expanded. In response to land speculators, retail vacancies, shifting work conditions, and a strong desire for better, less exploitative workplaces, more people are turning to cooperatives to improve their work-life conditions. With support from community development financial institutions, nonprofit cooperative developers, local government, and dedicated community members, a growing worker-owned cooperative and real estate investment cooperative movement is surging across the metro. Cooperative principles don’t stop at cooperatives – they also influence how groups are organizing, sharing resources, and building community wealth. Hear from various cooperators share what they’re most excited about in the Twin Cities cooperative and collectivist scene.
- Ledgers for the People: Co-op Bookkeeping Without QuickBooks
- Bring your bank statements, bank exports, or just your computer with logins, and you can use our template to build out financial reports that will suffice for internal/strategic reporting and external filing and fund-seeking.
- Bring your bank statements, bank exports, or just your computer with logins, and you can use our template to build out financial reports that will suffice for internal/strategic reporting and external filing and fund-seeking.
- Solidarity Economy Values
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Cooperatives are a growing phenomenon in the US. However, within our current economic system, they are difficult to implement in practice due to the different nature in values.
In this workshop, we will collectively compare the values of the solidarity economy versus the current economic system and explore ways on how to create alternative environments that support the creation and growth of cooperatives.
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We will begin at 9:30am on both days. • There is an optional co-op tour at 8:30am. You can select this when you register.
Each morning, we will have a brief session to start the day as a group. • At the end of the day, we will come together as a full group for activities, discussion, and planning next steps for our regional collaborations.
During every course block, there will be two workshops happening at the same time. One of these will have English/Spanish interpretation, and one will be monolingual. We will indicate this on the schedule.
There are three course blocks per day, one in the morning and two in the afternoon, with short breaks between them. • We will provide lunch in the middle of the day. • We will end by 6:30pm each day.
Saturday night party hosted by Isthmus Engineering!
We will have English/Spanish interpretation at the morning welcome and the afternoon full-group closing sessions.
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