Community-Wealth.org is a project of The Democracy Collaborative at the University of Maryland.

The Democracy Collaborative was initiated by the University of Maryland in 2000 to advance a new understanding of democracy for the 21st century and to promote sustained and widespread democratic practice. The Collaborative is an enterprise specifically designed to incubate, sustain, and catalyze efforts toward these ends by leveraging the resources (intellectual, human, financial, and otherwise) of institutions of higher education toward civic and democracy building purposes. We believe that university engagement with communities, grounded in the needs and aspirations of local citizens, is a powerful, underutilized resource to stimulate and sustain social change and civic life.

While administratively based at the University of Maryland at College Park, the Collaborative is a consortium of more than 20 leading democracy-focused academic centers in the United States. Representatives of these “academic affiliates” actively participate in the Collaborative’s research projects, conferences, organizing efforts, and general strategic development. Because we believe that scholar-activist interaction and learning is crucial to the task at hand, we also foster working partnerships with practitioner, intermediary, and non-academic organizations.

One of the Collaborative’s major research and action programs focuses on asset-based approaches to building community wealth. In addition to having developed Community-Wealth.org, we are involved in a broad range of research, publishing, networking, and educational programs that explore and promote democratic forms of community-based economic development. This project is directed by Gar Alperovitz, Lionel R. Bauman Professor of Political-Economy at the University of Maryland. Dr. Alperovitz is author of the recently published America Beyond Capitalism: Reclaiming Our Wealth, Our Liberty and Our Democracy (Wiley & Sons). To learn more, visit www.garalperovitz.com. Jessica Gordon Nembhard, a professor in the African-American Studies Department, also plays a leading role in this effort, focusing in particular on urban cooperative development and work-place democracy.

For general information about The Democracy Collaborative, visit www.democracycollaborative.org