Rochester’s Market Driven Community Cooperatives Corporation

This report details the city of Rochester’s (NY) project to coordinate and develop worker-owned cooperative businesses in their strategy for comprehensive wealth building. The project had six crucial functions, including engaging in strategic partnerships, ensuring the success of the workforce development mission, and overseeing the development of for-profit, majority employee-owned businesses, among other things. The policies used towards this project included partnerships with anchor institutions and community stakeholders, as well as supplying training and connecting employees to existing social support services. The ultimate goal was to create a community-owned, cooperative business development corporation, whose purpose is to build wealth in low-income neighborhoods in Rochester.