Raport CCWBE

• Goal: Run a train-the-trainers program for staff of emerging worker cooperative developers We held the launch webinar for the Chicago Worker Cooperative Developer Fellowship, introducing participants to the program, defining worker cooperatives, dispelling myths, and exploring how cooperative development is rooted in Chicago's long history of community organizing and solidarity economics. 11 fellows attended the webinar (Maricela Estrada at CTU and Nurul Eusufzai at ChiCommons were unable to attend). We have since confirmed two new participants to the fellowship: Stacey Sutton from UIC and Deandra Cadet from Liberation Labs. Our fellowship now comprises 13 individuals from 12 organizations. We have begun planning for the in-person workshop in March, shaping the agenda, session content, and inviting speakers. This 2.5 day retreat will focus on the cooperative development roadmap, shaping mission statements, setting impact metrics (in alignment with the city's metrics), coop development models and lessons learned, and ecosystem assessment to leverage strengths to address resource and skill gaps. We also prepared for our second webinar in February on business model canvases. • Goal: Partner with local CBOs to hire, train and support local cooperators and other partners to co-execute stakeholder education and engagement work We have further refined our ecosystem education plans with input from UIC and other partners. We have begun meeting with business service organizations to understand their work, introduce them to worker ownership, and identify their interest and needs in attending our upcoming workshops and events. We specifically met with: Greater Englewood Community Development Corporation, Kola Nut Collaborative, the Illinois Small Business Development Center at the Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce, Center for Changing Lives, and Greater Ravenswood Chamber of Commerce. We are working on content and speakers for our upcoming worker cooperative webinar series focusing on small business resource centers, CDFIs, and accountants and bookkeepers. • Goal: Support CCWBE and the City of Chicago in assessing the impact Finally, we have worked closely with the Chicago Community Wealth Building Ecosystem at UIC to shape tools and processes for collecting impact metrics. We specifically worked on 5 data collection templates for phase 1 and phase 2 grantees and walked through these tools and shared our best practices for metrics collection on an 'office hours' call with grantees hosted by the Chicago Community Wealth Building Ecosystem at UIC. 47 people were invited, 19 attended. We have offered to meet with phase 1 and 2 grantees to address their questions about the templates or how to implement them with their own internal data systems.

Several of the business service organizations we met with shared that they were unaware of the city's Community Wealth Building Initiative. While this is to be expected with a new initiative, it does mean that we will need to further socialize the purpose of the initiative and how it can align with the broader business service community's priorities and concerns. This is both a current limitation of the initiative's saturation but its also a major opportunity to invite important organizations into this work. Our vision for ecosystem education is on the right track but we recognize that some of what we have proposed has been attempted in the past and did not bear fruit. Our partners at the Chicago Community Wealth Building Ecosystem at UIC support our plans but feel like it needs to be further refined to ensure that these efforts lead to lasting connections. We are working closely with them over the next two months to build a program that strongly establishes connections between the worker cooperative ecosystem and the business services community. This will require partnership development and practical and shovel-ready projects for service providers to support. We are addressing this on two fronts through the worker coop developer fellowship and our ecosystem education work. A planned January meeting with the Mayor's Office and the Department of Business Affairs and Consumer Protection to discuss municipal interest in a legacy business preservation initiative was cancelled by the city. We plan to circle back in February to restart the conversation and be a partner in shaping a right sized approach to business preservation including support for transitioning to worker ownership as a succession option.

We've been reaching out to the city's Neighborhood Business Development Centers. We've also connected with several phase 1 and 2 grantees such as Cutting Edge Counsel, Kola Nut Collaborative, and Center for Changing Lives to inform content and program design for our ecosystem education work and to coordinate outreach to business service providers.

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Greater Englewood Community Development Corporation, the Illinois Small Business Development Center at the Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce, and Greater Ravenswood Chamber of Commerce.

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Center for Changing Lives, Kola Nut Collaborative, Upside Down Consulting

Chicago Worker Cooperative Developer Fellowship and our ecosystem education work.

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