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Twitter co-founder Biz Stone joins board of Mastodon's new US nonprofit | TechCrunch
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this post was submitted on 30 Apr 2024
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I would like to do more research on alternative non-profit governance structures. In my experience, non-profit boards seem to be just another mechanism by which the wealthy control decision-making in society. However, I don’t know what kind of structure would be better.
Workers co-op
I think workers coops are definitely better than private ownership but it seems like there should also be some involvement of the broader community being served (or negatively impacted in some cases) in the case of non-profits.
Cecosesola.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfE6Nsuaf50
Love me some Anark—I did watch this but I don’t remember seeing much detail on how community governance works. Is it in there and I missed it?
From what I understood after I watched it and looked into it a bit more is that individuals have roles within the organization and are able to decide their own actions on how to fulfill that role. The actions are informed by the collective understanding of their goals and norms that are formed during their frequent meetings (which are very different in vibes from regular corporate meetings).
This is how I understood it works for most decisions but there a few decisions that fall back on voting which after the vote occurs the individuals are expected to carry out whatever was voted on.
So like it says in the video it is a largely informal structure but one that seems to work very well.
Workers coops tend to fall apart when they're made of non business savvy workers who just want to do their job. They tend to delegate the business "chores" onto someone more savvy... who ends up simply stealing from them.
Source?
Primary.
So you don’t have one then? I’ve seen plenty of research on worker coops, and I’ve never seen any that supports this idea. Without any evidence I’m left to conclude that this is just capitalist apologia.
I have first-hand experience, actually too much of it. Feel free to conclude anything, you can even set up a worker coop and get your own data; be the change you want in the world, and all that.
So anecdotal? Have you worked in a worker’s coop? It’s hard to see how some workers taking advantage of others would be worse than the owner taking advantage of them but if you have seen it maybe you can explain how.
I've had family fund one, worked for some as a contractor, and had friends work for some more. They're all bankrupt now, and all of them for the same reason I've already explained.
It's worse than working for someone else, because they're funded by the workers themselves. When a worker's coop goes down, workers not only lose their jobs, but also all the capital they've put into it. Some fall into a sunken cost fallacy, try to refloat it... but without fixing the fundamental problem of having owners (workers) who don't care about the business, they eventually lose even more capital, often get in debt, and also lose their jobs.
When an owner takes advantage of a worker, at least the worker can look for another job without having to pay for the privilege.
Coops work well when members are business-savvy, and when they have a very limited scope with minimal capital investment, allowing members to leave at any time with minimal loss.
Ok, this doesn’t seem to be the overall picture in the economic literature but thanks for sharing your experience. Given that, I can see why you hold those views.
I don't know about literature, but both the lawyers and notaries involved, warned everyone of the risks. I was also an idealist and skeptical of their advice at the time... then spent several years trying, to no avail, to make people understand what was at stake... until the warnings became reality... and again, and again, and again.
If it's not in the literature, then it should be.
So the employees who are employed by donations, or all contributors? Not trying to throw a wrench in your suggestion, just wondering what this would look like for masto