Mission and Values

The federation's purpose is to:
- Provide support for the continued success of democratic workplaces
- Create and encourage opportunities for new democratic workplaces
- Spread knowledge and awareness of democratic workplaces

The Federation is based on the values of:
- Self-reliance
- Cooperation
- Participatory Democracy
- Transparency
- Sustainable development

FWD-MN Projects include:

- Helping worker-managed organizations overcome obstacles through facilitation, resource sharing, and peer consulting.
- Group marketing efforts to inform people about FWD-MN members and the benefits of a democratic and sustainable economy.
- Using a discount card to encourage workers at member organizations to shop at FWD-MN businesses.
- Helping people start their own cooperatives and collectives.
- Building a library of materials on running a worker-managed business, consensus process, and cooperative economics.
- Maintaining a web site to serve as a resource point for members and interested parties.
- Holding classes, workshops, and roundtables on subjects useful to FWD-MN members, and for the general public.
- Providing information and contacts for regional and national networking, including the Network of Bay Area Worker Cooperatives, Portland Alliance of Worker Collectives, and the U.S. Federation of Worker Cooperatives.
- Outreach through tabling at events and making presentations to like-minded groups.
- Producing a directory of Minnesota’s worker owned and operated businesses.
- Encouraging communication and collaboration between FWD-MN members.

Thanks to a generous grant from The Cooperative Foundation, we are able to take on the following projects:

- Outreach to local unions by providing educational materials to union members, searching for common ground with union leadership, and encouraging FWD-MN members to consider creative forms of solidarity.
- Outreach to local universities by talking with faculty and students in departments with an overlapping interest in worker cooperation, self-management, or the social and economic impacts of democratic businesses.
- Informing the community-development community about the benefits of worker owned businesses by providing information and presentations about the business model.

In the future we might hope to:
- Invest in Minnesota’s rural areas through traveling workshops, and other ways of encouraging cooperative development.
- Seek greater clarification of existing laws that effect democratic workplaces and possibly new policy through lobbying at the local and state levels.