Evergreen Co-ops, Cleveland
Evergreen Co-operatives in Cleveland, Ohio, shows the potential for mission driven partnerships to create self-contained business support ecosystems that develop and sustain entrepreneurial activity, while enabling new business opportunities to evolve.
Evergreen run three separate but complementary worker-run businesses: Evergreen Cooperative Laundry (serving the health care sector); Evergreen Energy Solutions; and Green City Growers.
Investing in the inputs
Evergreen Co-operatives have harnessed local social capital and enabled their ecosystem to flourish by creating a self-contained support mechanism which re-invests in the next cohorts of businesses as prior cohorts grow and become sustainable. Click to read more about ‘Investing in the Inputs’
“Evergreen promotes, co-ordinates, and expands economic opportunity and community wealth building through a network of green, community-based, worker-owned enterprises in historically disinvested neighbourhoods of Cleveland.”
Evergreen improved the efficiency of their enterprises by creating Evergreen Business Services, which centralises and streamlines many roles and functions related to the management and growth of the co-operatives. When the businesses they support have scaled up and become financially sustainable, it is assumed they will spin off from Evergreen and internalise these functions. Evergreen will then provide the same services to a pipeline of new businesses.
The success of Evergreen Co-operatives perhaps points to the need to create local business support ecosystems that are easier to sustain through measuring and managing self-determined impacts. This is opposed to attempting to interface with regional or national agendas and funding, which come with pre-conditions and risks that, in some cases, are detrimental to the effectiveness of local support.
“The Evergreen Cooperatives have been providing high-quality employment and creating community wealth since 2008. Their model is expanding horizons for individuals and businesses alike in Greater Cleveland – achievements which are now having impact across the U.S.”
Ronald Richard, Former President and CEO of Cleveland Foundation