Giving Compass' Take:

• Nonprofit Quarterly reports on the rise of worker cooperatives in the L.A. area, specifically one particular coffee shop where employees are empowered as business owners.

• Could this be a model for other cities? The co-op, as described in this piece, allows workers to share profits and business decisions, but the growth of similar endeavors has been slow across the U.S.

• It's not just in America. Women’s cooperatives are on the rise in rural Ethiopia.

Los Angeles, like most U.S. urban centers, is home to great wealth inequality, marked by a growing number of low-wage and gig economy jobs that undermine economic security, as well as rising housing costs propelled by gentrification. To counter these trends, entrepreneurs like Kateri Gutierrez and business partner Jonathon Robles are looking to worker cooperatives.

Gutierrez, who studied business at the University of California, Berkeley, and worked for Disneyland, left corporate life to return to her hometown of Lynwood in Southeast Los Angeles County. It is a working-class area that is marred by pollution from old railroad yards and manufacturing plants, but with vibrant immigrant communities.

Gutierrez saw an opportunity to spur economic change in her community through community-minded business development “in which workers shared management and ownership” — i.e., through starting worker cooperatives. With Robles, she started Collective Avenue Coffee, a pop-up coffee shop that has spurred a mini-movement of cooperatives in the area.

Collective Avenue Coffee is moving from pop-up to brick and mortar business as part of COOP LA, a 10-person collective venture of four co-located cooperative businesses. Along with the coffee shop, COOP LA includes De La Luna Catering, Salazar Landscaping, and Semillas Wellness. According to Next City, COOP LA is the first commercial space in California comprised entirely of worker cooperatives.

Read the full article about a worker co-op movement in Los Angeles by Karen Kahn at nonprofitquarterly.org.