Cooperative Development Institute

The Cooperative Development Institute helps groups buy and run businesses and housing cooperatively. Its New England Resident-Owned Communities program works with manufactured home owners who want to purchase their community and manage it democratically, and CDI also runs employee ownership and water infrastructure support programs.

CDI stays with a group through the purchase and afterwards. Members describe being taught the structures and models of cooperatives a little at a time, building consensus among owners, and continuing to get help with governance once the co-op holds the property. CDI's news page reports Maine residents purchasing their community for $1 million, and a co-op board president describes a purchase that protects more than 275 residents who had been tenants.

CDI says it has helped form 190 cooperative businesses accounting for more than 914 new jobs in sectors including energy, food systems and childcare, and that it led 35 small businesses through conversions to worker-owned cooperatives, creating ownership opportunities for more than 600 workers. It works from a Northampton, Massachusetts mailing address, asks for donations to fund its work, and licenses its website content under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike.

Program eligibility and what CDI charges a group are not published: its services, training and request-for-services pages were behind a bot check when crawled. Contact CDI directly to confirm which programs reach a given state.