The ways in
There is more than one way to be here. Two of them you can start this month: come by, or take a desk. The third is ownership, and it arrives later, by invitation, after people know your work. Start wherever fits.
Ways you can start now
Two doors, both open to anyone: no invitation, no buy-in, and you can leave on reasonable notice. None of these makes you an owner of the cooperative, and none of them is a lesser version of one. Time spent here is how ownership begins, if it comes to that.
Community Participant
- Community access and participation
- Hub space access at Footing and above
- Full hub access at Standing
- Not ownership: no vote, and no share of what the cooperative earns
Co-working Participant
- Full desk and hub access
- Patronage is participation the cooperative counts: the work, presence, and custom a member brings. In a cooperative, benefit follows patronage rather than capital. Program Patronage credits tracked from the day the agreement is executed
- Not ownership: no vote, and no share of what the cooperative earns
The guild, from anywhere
A way to be part of this without being in Boulder: the directory, the gatherings, the record, and time that counts toward an invitation the same way time at a desk does. Dues would be self-chosen at $10, $25, $100, or $200 a month, with one standing at every amount.
There is nothing to sign yet. The Guild Participation Terms are not written, the amendment establishing the guild is drafted and unadopted, and there is no enrollment path. It is described here because it is being built in the open.
Becoming an owner
One class owns the cooperative and governs it. A Cooperative Member holds one vote, a A capital account is your stake in the cooperative, opened at $100 by the one-time share and grown by the allocations the members retain. On withdrawal it settles at its balance, not at par. Program Patronage that grows, and a share of what the work earns, allocated by the work each person does rather than by the money they put in. It comes by invitation, and it is the only way in that does.
Cooperative Member
- One vote on all governance matters
- Patronage allocation, proportional to participation
- Capital account, and an annual Schedule K-1 is the tax form a cooperative issues each member for their distributive share of its results. The cooperative intends to cover the estimated K-1 tax liability by a Tax Distribution policy. Membership Agreement section 3.3 says the cooperative intends to adopt one by board resolution; no such resolution is in the record yet. with a tax distribution that covers it
- Full financial information and inspection rights
Putting money in is a separate question. An Investor Member backs the work with capital and receives a share of the returns, and does not receive a vote: control follows people here, not money. How that works, or write to the board.
The rest of it
What each way in carries side by side, how an invitation actually happens, the timeline from first visit to ownership and out again, the words the instruments use, and which document governs what: the ways in, in detail.
Every instrument named on this site, with its status and whether signing it makes you a member, is on the legal shelf. Where a page and an instrument differ, the instrument is right.