Democracy Collaborative Reports and Publications

Hospitals Building Healthier Communities: Embracing the Anchor Mission

David Zuckerman, with contributions from Holly Jo Sparks, Steve Dubb, and Ted Howard

The Democracy Collaborative’s latest report, Hospitals Building Healthier Communities, provides an in-depth look at six hospitals in five cities that are rethinking their economic and community engagement strategies. These hospitals have recognized that health is more than just treating the patients that come through their doors and are beginning to adopt an “anchor institution mission” that can help build not only more prosperous, but also healthier communities.

The Anchor Mission: Leveraging the Power of Anchor Institutions to Build Community Wealth

Farzana Serang, J. Phillip Thompson and Ted Howard

This report from The Democracy Collaborative and the Department of Urban Studies and Planning at MIT focuses on the path-breaking Vision 2010 Program implemented in Cleveland and Northeast Ohio by University Hospitals System. Over a five year period, the initiative targeted more than $1 billion of procurement locally to create jobs, empower minority- and female-owned businesses, and create a “new normal” for responsible, community-focused business practices in the region.

Owning Our Future: The Emerging Ownership Revolution

Marjorie Kelly

As long as businesses are set up to focus exclusively on maximizing financial income for the few, our economy will be locked into endless growth and widening inequality. But now people across the world are experimenting with new forms of ownership, which Kelly calls generative: aimed at creating the conditions for all of life to thrive for many generations to come. These designs may hold the key to the deep transformation our civilization needs.

To understand these emerging alternatives, Kelly reports from across the globe, visiting a community-owned wind facility in Massachusetts, a lobster cooperative in Maine, a multibillion-dollar employee-owned department-store chain in London, a foundation-owned pharmaceutical in Denmark, a farmer-owned dairy in Wisconsin, and other places where a hopeful new economy is being built. Along the way, she finds the five essential patterns of ownership design that make these models work.

The Road Half Traveled: University Engagement at a Crossroads

Rita Axelroth Hodges and Steve Dubb

Authored by Rita Axelroth Hodges and Steve Dubb as part of Michigan State University Press' series on Transformations in Higher Education, the book features ten in-depth cases and examines how universities, by pursuing an anchor institution mission to improve surrounding communities in cooperation with community partners, can positively impact the welfare of low-income residents.

Leveraging Anchor Institutions for Local Job Creation and Wealth Building

Ted Howard and Steve Dubb

Co-published by two research centers of the University of California, Berkeley, this paper from the Democracy Collaborative explores the impact of anchor institutions on wealth building and job creation in low-income communities.

America Beyond Capitalism

Gar Alperovitz

How thousands of co-ops, worker-owned businesses, land trusts, and municipal enterprises are beginning to democratize the deep substructure of the American economy, with a new introduction by the author, Gar Alperovitz, and a new foreword by James Gustave Speth.

Climate Change, Community Stability, and the Next 150 Million Americans

Thad Williamson, Steve Dubb and Gar Alperovitz

Curbing carbon emissions requires far more than technical know-how. We must change not only our energy use and transportation practices, but also where and how we work and live. It also requires ending the commonplace economic practice of treating built communities as disposable items that can be abandoned when market conditions change.

The challenge is daunting. Yet it also presents an opportunity. Putting forth a vision of green community wealth building, in which community-anchored enterprises, linked to sophisticated and decentralized planning, support stable and sustainable local economies, this study outlines how truly integrated approaches can help America meet the sustainability challenge.

Growing a Green Economy for All: From Green Jobs to Green Ownership

Deborah B. Warren and Steve Dubb

This Democracy Collaborative report provides the first comprehensive survey of community wealth building institutions in the green economy. Featuring ten cases, the report identifies how policy and philanthropy can build on these examples to create "green jobs you can own."

Rebuilding America’s Communities: A Comprehensive Community Wealth Building Federal Policy Proposal

Gar Alperovitz, Steve Dubb and Ted Howard

Anyone concerned about the state of America's communities today must give serious thought to how public policy can support on-the-ground practitioners. This report from The Democracy Collaborative outlines an ambitious 10-year strategy to meet that goal.

Linking Colleges to Communities: Engaging the University for Community Development

Steve Dubb and Ted Howard

How can universities leverage their resources for community benefit? This report from The Democracy Collaborative outlines a comprehensive strategy to meet that goal.

Building Wealth: The New Asset-Based Approach to Solving Social and Economic Problems

Democracy Collaborative

The first across-the-board survey of innovative, asset-based strategies that are advancing social purposes.

Community Wealth Building in Jackson, Mississippi: Strategic Considerations

Community Wealth Building in Jackson, Mississippi: Strategic Considerations

Drawing from the inspiration of the Jackson-Kush Plan and the vision put forward by the late Mayor Chokwe Lumumba, Cooperation Jackson emerged as an independent organization focused on developing a cooperative economy in Jackson in the summer of 2014. As an aspiring network of cooperative enterprises, Cooperation Jackson aims to reduce income and wealth gaps, generate living wage jobs with quality healthcare, and ensure the provision of adequate housing through the growth of worker cooperatives and other democratically owned enterprises.