Co-op Innovation Awards reaches two milestones: 10 years and $1 million in total grants

September 24, 2024 (Arlington, VA) – Four innovative organizations in four regions have received a combined $170,000 in catalytic grant funding from Capital Impact Partners’ 2024 Co-op Innovation Awards, which aim to increase cooperative development in disinvested communities. This year brings two significant milestones. These are the 10th annual awards. Launched in 2015, the program has now surpassed $1 million. In total, a combined $1.025 million in grants have been awarded to 30 innovative organizations across the country. These awardees have subsequently leveraged their awards to secure more than $13 million in additional funding from foundations, investors, and government agencies. 

The 2024 awards, issued by Capital Impact Partners and National Cooperative Bank, are providing catalytic grant funding to projects such as:

• Lowering the cost of school meals via group purchasing
• Creating more cooperatively-owned real estate projects
• Supporting more employee-owned restaurants nationwide
• Developing a food distribution hub for rural and Native communities

“Ever since Capital Impact Partners was founded more than four decades ago — as part of a federal effort to encourage co-op development — we have deployed more than $300 million in financial capital to worker-owned and resident-owned cooperatives,” said Ellis Carr, president and CEO of the Momentus Capital branded family of organizations, which includes Capital Impact Partners, among others. “The Co-op Innovation Awards have provided another key tool through our continuum of capital for building generational wealth while increasing access to quality jobs, healthy foods, affordable housing, and the other pillars that every community deserves in order to thrive.”

“Providing financial grants to spur new co-op development is critical in helping cooperatives grow and prosper across the United States,” said Casey Fannon, president and CEO of National Cooperative Bank. “We are proud to continue our support of the Co-op Innovation Award and to celebrate its 10th year in helping cooperatives thrive while improving the communities they serve.”

This year, the award pool was expanded through the participation of additional sponsors Rochdale Capital; Wells Fargo; Ford & Paulekas, LLC; National Co-op Grocers; and Gallagher Evelius & Jones LLP.

A total of 60 organizations applied for this year’s Co-op Innovation Awards. The 2024 awardees are:

• Community Purchasing Alliance Cooperative; Washington, D.C., $50,000
• Commongrounds Cooperative; Traverse City, Michigan, $50,000
• Red Emma’s Cooperative Corporation and Red Emma’s Education Fund; Baltimore, Maryland, $50,000
• Montana Cooperative Development Center; Great Falls, Montana, $20,000

Grants Will Help These Organizations and Their Communities

“It has been really exciting to witness what so many organizations have been able to accomplish over these past 10 years thanks in part to the Co-op Innovation Awards,” said Alison Powers, director of economic opportunities for Capital Impact Partners. “We’ve seen co-ops innovate, replicate their work, raise additional funding for their efforts, and become leaders in their field. I’m looking forward to seeing the impact that this year’s awardees will be able to provide for their communities.”The innovative projects from this year’s awardees are:

Community Purchasing Alliance Cooperative — a purchasing cooperative that reduces operating costs for schools, houses of worship, and other community groups — is being awarded $50,000 to conduct a feasibility study on the group purchase of school meals in new regions, including Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, and Washington state, to support student access to nutritious food at budget-friendly rates while shifting contracts to local and disadvantaged businesses.

“Kids can’t learn when they’re hungry,” said Shelby Legel, vice president of program growth and development. “Through this grant funding, CPA Co-op can expand its cooperative purchasing to public charter schools outside of Washington, D.C., in feeding their students more affordable, healthier, and tastier school meals purchased together from local MWBE vendors.”  

Commongrounds Cooperative — a real estate cooperative that is building empowered communities in Northern Michigan through cooperatively owned places — is being awarded $50,000 to fund a sister nonprofit. This sister organization will expand Commongrounds Cooperative’s work into additional areas of the state by incubating and providing technical assistance to future cooperative real estate projects serving underserved communities.

“Commongrounds Cooperative is honored by this recognition and enthusiastically looks forward to continuing to learn from our cooperative community locally and nationally,” said Kate Redman, co-executive director of Commongrounds Cooperative. “This award will help operationalize a sister 501(c)(3) organization to develop new projects and share what we’ve learned with other communities.”

Red Emma’s Cooperative Corporation and Red Emma’s Education Fund — a 20-year worker-owned cooperative restaurant and bookstore demonstrating the power of a democratic workplace, and an education 501(c)(3) established in 2023 — is being awarded $50,000 to create the first in-person, national convening of worker cooperatives in the restaurant industry that will focus on building inclusive, democratic workplaces.

“Running a worker cooperative restaurant is both incredibly rewarding and incredibly challenging — and as a part of Baltimore’s growing ecosystem of democratic workplaces in the food service sector, we’ve seen firsthand how vital it is to have spaces to share hard-won lessons with our cooperative peers,” said Kate Khatib, worker-owner and co-founder at Red Emma’s. “We’re excited and honored that the 2024 Co-op Innovation Award will give us the chance to create a space for this kind of mutual support and learning on a much bigger scale, by making it possible for us to host a historic first ever national gathering of worker cooperative restaurants here in Baltimore.

Montana Cooperative Development Center — which utilizes the cooperative business model to address community and economic needs — is being awarded $20,000 to support the development of the Montana Food Hub, a multi-stakeholder cooperative that aggregates, processes, and distributes raw produce and value-added products to rural and Native communities.

“We are grateful to Capital Impact Partners and National Cooperative Bank for seeing our vision of a regional food hub that will redefine how food hubs operate. This award will support our membership recruitment and will help us find and build out a perfect location for our distribution food hub center,” said Mike Vetere and Sara Mayben, commissioners for the Montana Food Hub.

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