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Cooperative Professionals Guild |
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Join us in 2024! CPG Memberships and Subscriptions
Take your commitment to cooperative development to the next level by joining the Cooperative Professionals Guild as a member or subscriber. We are the only national association dedicated to supporting the growth of cooperatives by advancing the professional development of cooperative professionals in the United States, especially those who are from or who serve marginalized or disadvantaged communities. We welcome attorneys, accountants, paraprofessionals and students in the fields of law and accounting with an interest in the cooperative model to join as governing members. We invite others with an interest in cooperatives to participate in our programming as subscribers. Register here.
January Coffee Chat, Jan. 26th: Chart CPG's course for 2024
We’re hosting a second of two member discussions to chart the course of the organization in the next year. We’d like to hear from CPG members about what you’d like to see CPG work on, and what we can co-create together. We’ll meet on Friday, Jan. 26th at 10am PT/1pm ET; register here.
We’d really like to hear your ideas and suggestions in writing as well: whether or not you’re attending this webinar, please consider filling out our survey. Thank you very much for sharing your vision; this helps us stay true to our identity as a member self-directed nonprofit.
January Webinar, Jan 11th: (Almost) Everything a Cooperative Attorney Needs to Know About Plant Patents
This webinar provided a broad overview of plant patents, plant-related utility patents, plant variety protection certificates, and trade secrets. A cooperative that has developed a plant is likely to want intellectual property protection, but when traditional foods are involved, a cooperative may be interested in making sure access to the plant stays unimpeded.
Cooperatives also have an interest in fair competition; no farmer in a cooperative wants to be at a disadvantage compared to other farmers who have an exclusive license to access a superior plant. The webinar was presented by speakers from the U.S. Patent Office, USDA, and the University of Madison, Wisconsin, including: Hasan Ahmed, a Patent Attorney with the United States Patent and Trademark Office’s Office of Policy and International Affairs; Kiki Hubbard is an outreach program manager in the Department of Plant and Agroecosystem Sciences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison; and Paulina Jenney, an Outreach Program Manager for the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who coordinates implementation of the Farmer Seed Liaison initiative, a cooperative agreement between the USDA and UW-Madison.
The recordings for past CPG webinars can be found in the Guild’s webinar library. The recording for this webinar will be available shortly. Members and subscribers have access to this library.
If you have suggestions for future CPG webinars, or if you would like to help us offer CLE credit in more states, please get in touch with the Webinar Circle at webinarcircle@professionals.coop.
CPG webinar library: Highlights from Dr. Ariana Levinson
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Cooperative Professionals Guild member Ariana Levinson, law professor at Louis D. Brandais School of Law, University of Louisville, has been awarded the Frost, Brown, Todd Professorship, effective January 1, 2024. Ariana credits the CLE webinars she provided to CPG in helping her successful application. She will remain in the post for three years. Please view Ariana's very engaging webinars on unions and cooperatives located on the CPG webinar library, including:
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October 22, 2022 - Union Co-ops and Labor Law
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August 24, 2023 - Union Co-ops II With Ariana Levinson |
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Sociocracy E-Book free for Members
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The Cooperative Professionals Guild is pleased to offer members a free e-book copy of Many Voices One Song - Shared Power with Sociocracy by Jerry Koch-Gonzalez and Ted J. Rau, co-founders of Sociocracy for All, a nonprofit dedicated to sharing egalitarian self-governance with everyone. Members received a link to download the e-book on January 17th.
This book is excellent preparation for those of you assisting cooperative enterprises that are implementing sociocracy and we highly recommend it for CPG members who plan to participate in one of the Guild's working circles. |
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Exit to Community Collective is organizing a community of practice with a few dozen consultants and advisors who are doing similar ownership conversion worldwide. Danny Spitzberg reports that the Collective's library of case studies is now live. See the brand new website at https://e2c.how/.
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The Wisconsin Economic Development Corporation announces the availability of $50,000 grants for co-op development in Wisconsin. Applicants may use the funds to cover consulting fees for business planning, feasibility studies, legal services, and accounting services to help new or existing cooperatives become established or further develop.Only projects related to development are eligible. Salaries and supplies are NOT eligible costs. Find more information on a one-pager available here. -
Courtney at Project Equity reports the following: “Over the last few months, we’ve developed a working partnership with Purpose Owned, Project Equity, and EO+WD. As part of our collaborative work to build the field for purpose trust ownership, we have created a database of service providers (lawyers, accountants, consultants, trustees, investors, etc.) who work on PPTs, EOTs, and steward ownership in the United States. It is an extension of the database of purpose trusts that some of us launched last year. Like that database, we have made this new database publicly accessible and aim to update it quarterly with additional providers. The database of service providers working on PPTs, EOTs and steward ownership in the United States is now live. We have also updated the list of known PPTs in the US to reflect recent additions. We hope that this will be a resource to CPG members and others in the field who are working to scale this work. Please let us know if you have suggestions of other organizations to include.
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Check out the short CCWBE video profile on Centro de Trabajadores Unidos (CTU), one of the City of Chicago Phase II Pre-Development Grantees! CTU’s Southeast Cooperative Business Incubator (SCBI) provides training to develop successful worker cooperative businesses in Chicago's southeast side and surrounding suburban neighborhoods. Use the Closed Captions (CC) button for subtitles in English and Spanish at vimeo.com/jennapollack/ctuchicago.
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Community upcoming events
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St. Mary’s University invites co-op professionals to consider joining its summer co-op study tour in Mondagón, in the Basque Region; five spots are currently available. St. Mary’s describes the experience: “Imagine witnessing first-hand the benefits of a vibrant co-operative economy - longstanding and complex co-operative systems, worker-owned co-ops celebrated around the world, principle six in action (co-operation among co-operatives)." Find more information at https://www.smu.ca/iccm/programsandcourses/internationalstudytours/.
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Participate in the Cooperative Professionals Guild
The Cooperative Professionals Guild is a growing network of co-op professionals created by us, for us. We’re currently volunteer-run. Here are some ways you can participate:
- Submit community listings for the next newsletter using this Google form;
- Send messages to the CPG network by emailing the CPG listserv at members@professionals.coop;
- Attend meetings or join governance circles. Circle members are also eligible to join the General Circle.
Governance Circles:
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