Worker cooperatives—businesses owned and operated by their employees—put worker and community benefit at the core of their purpose. These businesses also face unique challenges, including limited access to capital and financing structures, administrative burden, and a lack of legal support.
Since 2015, the City of New York has helped local worker cooperatives navigate these hurdles through the Worker Cooperative Business Development Initiative (WCBDI), under the oversight of the New York City Department of Small Business Services and with the support of community-based organizations.
Why This Matters
New York City is on the forefront of providing extensive and ongoing institutional support to worker cooperatives, small business owners, and employees who want to democratize their workplaces. Other cities seeking to create new initiatives or to enhance their existing supports for worker cooperatives can look to the WCBDI grassroots design as a model.
In New York, WCBDI partners are reflecting on the initiative’s first 10 years and looking forward to the next decade. This evaluation highlights key opportunities to expand the initiative’s reach and effectiveness. Stakeholders in the initiative can work together to more clearly define and focus on longer-term outcomes, and track and incentivize progress toward these outcomes.
Key Takeaways
Our evaluation highlights the initiative’s success relative to short-term outcomes. Data is limited at this time to assess the initiative’s effect on its longer-term goals of worker economic mobility, business resilience, and economic advancement at the community level because the initiative does not yet collect this data.
- WCBDI has succeeded in providing educational and technical assistance services to the New York City business community. Each year since 2022, the initiative has met or exceeded its goal for the number of service interactions it provides.
Sources: New York City Department of Small Business Services administrative data; Worker Cooperative Business Development Initiative (WCBDI), Annual Reports, 2015–2024 (New York: New York City Department of Small Business Services), https://www.nyc.gov/site/sbs/about/publications-reports.page.
- Worker–owners largely report positive experiences with the initiative, including improvements in business practices, workplace treatment, and economic outcomes.
- WCBDI provides varying degrees of support to businesses depending on their needs. Several businesses received a high intensity of support over many years.
Sources: New York City Department of Small Business Services administrative data; Worker Cooperative Business Development Initiative (WCBDI), Annual Reports, 2015–2024 (New York: New York City Department of Small Business Services), https://www.nyc.gov/site/sbs/about/publications-reports.page.
- Although WCBDI helped launch new worker cooperatives each year, the number of new worker cooperatives incorporated has not recovered to pre-pandemic levels, which peaked at over 50 cooperatives launched in 2019 and has since averaged approximately 10 per year.
How We Did It
We used a combination of administrative data collected as part of the initiative, surveys of organizations and businesses that received WCBDI services, and interviews with key stakeholders.
The evaluation team worked with an advisory board comprising community-based organizations and worker cooperatives to obtain input on the evaluation design, the surveys, and the interview guide.
