Cooperative Origins
LEAF Focuses on Shared Ownership
LEAF provides financing for food cooperatives. Food cooperatives create jobs and make healthy food accessible in rural and urban communities. In addition, food co-ops promote environmental stewardship, support small-scale farmers, and build local economies.
LEAF’s affordable housing loan product provides flexible financing for low-income housing cooperatives and Community Land Trusts across the United States.
Since its inception, worker co-ops have been in LEAF's DNA. LEAF focuses its lending on cooperatively-owned businesses and social enterprises. They in turn provide living wage jobs for low-income individuals and entire communities. Worker co-ops operate on a one-member, one-vote principle and build equity for their members.
What if Everyday Stakeholders Were the Investors?
What if?...
Co-op Market – Alaska’s First Food Cooperative (Fairbanks, AK)
In Alaska, grocery shopping is often expensive and products can be scarce since most of the products must be shipped in the state. It is not uncommon to see empty shelves and produce and staples double the price of what is offered in continental US. It is even more difficult to find specialty food stores,…
LEAF Helps Build the Cooperative Economy Across the United States
LEAF gives everyday folks the opportunity to become cooperative owners: in their workplaces, their residential communities, and their local food & energy systems.
While American capitalism has generated incredible wealth, prosperity, and technological progress, it has blind spots. Investors’ interests, maximizing profits, often do not align with the needs of workers, tenants, and consumers who are the source of that profit.
Democratic governance brings balance to an organization. It aligns the interests of the owners with the people who work, live, or shop there. Democratically controlled by the membership and reinvesting profits into the organization and its community means financial profit is a community benefit.
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