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The mission of the Cooperative Development Institute is to create and sustain democratically owned, cooperative enterprises and ne...Learn more

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Dorchester Food Cooperative is fundraising
8-15-25: DONATE to keep Dorchester Food Co-op Open!
This effort is part of a collaboration between the Cooperative Development Institute (CDI) and the Dorchester Food Co-op (DFC) to build a more just, sustainable and resilient food system in the Boston neighborhood of Dorchester.

The mission of the DORCHESTER FOOD CO-OP is to challenge the traditional food system by building a community and worker-owned asset that nourishes, employs, and reinvests in the local community.

~ We believe that everyone has the right to wholesome food ~

~ Cooperation is our approach. Justice is our goal! ~

8-15-25: Urgent: DFC is facing Closure in two months if sales do not increase. (click HERE for all communications)

Each week, the Co-op needs an increase in sales or else the cash reserves for operational costs will run out in two short months!

Here’s what you can do starting today:

Shop Your Values First – Make The Co-op a regular grocery stop. Every purchase grows sales.

Spread the Word – Tell friends, neighbors, and co-workers about our store and mission.

Give What You Can – Make a monthly pledge or one-time donation, for any amount, to help raise $500,000 to supplement sales for the next year.

Order Catering – Choose the Co-op for community-made food for all your events. For catering, call Sandra at (617) [phone redacted].

Special Bulk Orders – email [email redacted] , “SUBJECT: Special Bulk Order request” to order products by the case. (*bulk case orders receive a 10% discount.)

Attend the Next Board Meeting: Monday, Sept. 8, 6:30-7:30pm - in person or on Zoom. See future emails for details.

We invite all who believe in our mission to be part of this food justice movement.

Dorchester Food Co-op, Boston's only food co-op, opened Oct. 14, 2023.

Come shop at DFC, located at 195 Bowdoin St. Dorchester MA. 02122

Open Daily, except major holidays. Mon - Sat. 8a-8p; Sun. 9a-8p.

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Sign up to receive newsletters HERE

Visit our Linktree, Instagram and Facebook regularly for updates!

Not a member yet? No matter where they live, EVERYONE is welcome to become a member-owner, not just Dorchester residents. And the store is open to the public, so EVERYONE can shop there, not just member-owners.

Click HERE to learn how to become a member-owner.

Please share this Go Fund Me page on your social media to spread the word!

DOUBLE YOUR IMPACT WITH A MATCHING GIFT

Many companies match the donations their employees make. This means that you can double your impact after you give to Dorchester Food Co-op just by requesting a matching gift from your employer. Companies usually match donations at a 1:1 ratio, but some match at a 2:1, 3:1, or even a 4:1 ratio! Please check with your employer or HR department for details. If they provide a matching gift claim form, please complete it and send it to us at: Dorchester Food Co-op, PO Box 240231, Dorchester, MA 02124.

(Please do not send mail to the street address.)

READ MORE ABOUT DORCHESTER FOOD CO-OP

In 2012, neighbors gathered to discuss the policies and practices that cause limited food access and the lack of investment in our community. Through a series of resident-led planning meetings, we developed a vision of a cooperative market that will:

    ~ reflect and build power for local residents while working with

          partners to strengthen a robust, local food system.

    ~ weave educational programs around food, health and social justice

          into the culture of our co-op.

    ~ recognize the unequal impact of climate change on

          Communities of Color

For the past 10+ years, we created a strong cooperative led by member-owners and Board Members who represent Dorchester's and Boston’s racial and cultural diversity. We’ve built a strong plan, developed partnerships, and organized programs to increase food access, economic investment and public health in our community including:

    ~ Boston’s first "Winter Farmers’ Market" right here in Dorchester at Codman Sq.

    ~ “Fresh Fridays” outdoors summer café

    ~ Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) in partnership with urban farms

    ~ “PopUp” farm stands at senior centers

    ~ “Green New Deal Dance Fest,” featuring climate justice work in our communities.

Shop with us! Spread the word! Volunteer! Donate!

Thank you for your support!

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329 supporters
Happy Little Paradise Child Care Cooperative is fundraising
Support Happy Little Paradise launch!

Happy Little Paradise Childcare Cooperative

"A place that feels like home."

Happy Little Paradise is a start up cooperative childcare project focused on every-child centered, culturally-linguistically supportive, affordable child care in the Lewiston-Auburn community in the state of Maine. At Happy Little Paradise, we celebrate culture, love, and commitment with each other and the community as some of our core values. Our message to the community is that no matter what you might have been through, you still can control your life and be able to find happiness in life. This is our message and we want the children to see and understand that in our practice.

We ask you to support us in reaching our fundraising goal of $100,000 to pay for the necessary renovations of our 115 Pine Street location, a space we plan to lease-to-own for a permanent childcare space in Lewiston.

We have a bill of $150,000 in renovations, $50k already covered by a generous grant from the Elmina B. Sewall Foundation, leaving us with an $100,000 funding gap to get started. this includes the following expenses:
- Property renovations to be licensed: $80,000 (Including fire safety sprinkler system: $60,000, an assessment from an architect: $8,000
Emergency Crib Ramp: $5,000
- Bring a second bathroom up to code: $7,000
- Furniture and playground equipment $35,000
- Office and classroom supplies: $20,000
- Start-up supplies: $3,000
- Pre-opening wages: $10,000
- Insurance: $2,000

We envision a childcare business where:
- Quality matters
- Parents can be involved, feel assured and respected, and share in the care process
- Childcare Business Owners can do what they love, working directly with the children as providers
- Employees have great jobs with room for growth and learning, and a share in the ownership and decision making
- Group Training is built in the the way we work and develop our team as a peer learning cohort of business owners, care providers and small center directors

As a Member co-op, we aim to both educate and explore how cooperative business can support a community driven effort to alter the childcare paradigm in our area to that of quality AND affordability instead of the need to choose between the two. Culturally and Linguistically supportive, affordable care are all needed, and we seek ways to bring this together.

Here is a wonderful video put together by Happy Little Paradise's Assira Ferriera of some of the members taking their CPR training under COVID-safe guidelines this past winter:

Meet the team: Here is how we have been doing much of our business planning and childcare service provider training during COVID-19 over Zoom:

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27 supporters
Caledonia Food Coop is fundraising
Help us make our Caledonia Food Co-op a REALITY!
Thanks to you, generous donors and Caledonia Food Co-op community, on April 10, 2024, we purchased the building at 502 Railroad St. in the heart of St. Johnsbury! It’s ours! But now, let’s turn our building into our Co-op!

At present, our building stands empty, awaiting the plans, produce, products, and people that will soon fill its coolers, shelves, aisles, and spirit! But, to outfit our building, to create this hub for local food, health, wellness, and community gathering, we need your support!

Just imagine!

healthy food for a growing community, including organic and conventional food

a dedicated market and support for local farmers and producers

community ownership and support

new jobs and living wages for Co-op workers

a strengthened local economy

new community connections

an anchor store as part of an empowered and growing downtown

inspired celebrations throughout the year

environmentally responsible practices

expanded food access and education opportunities

a local business, cooperatively owned by 1,256 (and counting!) people

…and more!

Please make your tax-deductible donation today, right here through our GoFundMe campaign. Thanks to our 501(c)3 non-profit fiscal sponsor, the Cooperative Development Institute, who supports and fosters the cooperative economy throughout the Northeast, our Co-op is able to accept tax-deductible donations.

There are other ways to give, too! Support us by:

becoming an investor and joining our Preferred Stock offering (at $1,000/share)

send a check (either tax-deductible or direct)

becoming a lifetime Founding Member

To check out all of these giving options and to learn more about the Co-op, visit our website: https://www.caledoniafood.coop/

Please donate today!

Thank you for your support, and thank you for being a champion of community, sustainability, and healthy living. Together, we are so close to making this incredible Co-op vision happen!

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158 supporters
The Good Tern Co-op is fundraising
Save the Good Tern's Refrigerators and Freezers
The Good Tern's 20-year old refrigeration and freezer equipment is failing beyond repair – threatening the co-op and its ability to provide the fresh locally farmed produce, dairy and meat, and many other products that our community depends on.

A hard-won USDA grant gave us money to purchase this indispensable new equipment, but we need more funds to cover (rising!) construction costs of the new (big!) walk-in cooler/freezer as well as increased retail space that will serve our membership and other patrons for years to come.

You are invited to LOVE YOUR CO-OP! We need to raise $165,000 in the next two months. Please make a tax-deductible donation now to see the project through.

Many thanks to our fiscal sponsor, Cooperative Development Institute, for helping to make this campaign possible!

About the Good Tern Co-op:

We are a community-focused cooperative: Since 1980, the Good Tern Co-op has served as the only cooperative, member-owned grocery store in Knox county offering locally farmed, sustainably grown food in Rockland, Maine and surrounding communities.

We are a primary hub for local food commerce:

The Good Tern provides key support of local farmers and food producers. Fifteen regional farms provide vegetables to our co-op including root crops, greens, mushrooms, alliums, microgreens, and seedlings. Cow and goat dairy products come from eleven local producers including cheeses, kefir, milk, and yoghurt. Maine sea vegetables are harvested by two small Maine businesses and sold dried and in packaged tea. The co-op purchases between 35 to 50 pounds of tofu per week, depending on the season, from a local family-owned tofu company. And products from more than 20 local suppliers are offered in the Health and Beauty Aisle including soaps, oils, tinctures, and syrups. Many of the Good Tern’s suppliers are local businesses owned and operated by women – we work with six women-owned farms, a woman-owned goat and and sheep dairy, and two women-owned local companies which sell medicinal herbal products and tea.

As a consequence of our work with local farms and producers, we are a hub for food security in the region: during the pandemic we were able to support and sell locally produced food at a normal rates in spite of national supply chain shortages.

Our Co-op runs programs to make sustainable and local food affordable to more people:

Rockland has a poverty rate of 15.4%, slightly higher than the state average, and greater Knox County has a poverty rate of 9-10%, with poor food security. Our region is also home to one of the oldest populations in the country – some 20% of Knox County residents are over the age of 65. With respect to these conditions, the co-op makes it possible for families and seniors to purchase quality food at the coop at reasonable prices by offering a standard discount to members and higher discounts to working members. Good Tern accepts SNAP benefits and also works with the Maine Farmland Trust’s Farm Fresh Rewards Program through which every $10 spent on local foods with SNAP benefits earns a shopper $5 in vouchers toward local fruit and vegetable products. We are also members of National Co-op Grocers, a national co-operative buyers conglomerate that allows us to purchase and sell a wide array of products at competitive prices.

The Good Tern regularly contributes to community service programs:

Every month we raise money for a different nonprofit or local cause with our Register Roundup program. We also are a regular sponsor of the yearly Harbor Cleanup volunteer day. The Good Tern offers regular classes as well, on diverse subjects such as cooking, gardening, raising chickens at home, knitting, etc.
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42 supporters
Belfast Community Co-op is fundraising
Belfast Community Co-op Store Renovation Project
After years of work, the Co-op is excited to say that we’re finally at a place where we have an affordable project that will meet the current and future needs of the Co-op and our community.

In addition to cash on hand and a bank loan, $1.5 million dollars will be raised through interest-bearing loans from Belfast Community Co-op member-owners by April 16, 2023. If you are interested in making an interest-bearing loan contact: capitalcampaign at belfast.coop.

While only member-owners can make a loan, anyone can make a tax-deductible donation to our capital campaign of less than $500 through this GoFundMe site. Donations will be funneled to the Co-op's fiscal agent, the Cooperative Development Institute, and will be returned to the Co-op in the form of grants.

Tax-deductible donations of $500 or more can be sent directly to the Cooperative Development Institute (CDI) at this address:

P.O. Box 1051

Northampton, MA 01061-1051.

Include our project in the memo line: “BCC Renovation Project”

Among the top priorities for the renovation are:

Reopening the much-missed café and making it better than ever, with new services, new equipment, an updated menu, and an improved seating area, while keeping the natural light and materials everyone loves

Continuing the Shop For Me service, which allows us to expand our accessibility

Adding an additional 33% of retail square footage by relocating offices, prep spaces, coolers, and vents to other locations off the sales floor

Expanding the bulk section with sanitary pull-down handle bins

Reorganizing the parking lot to make it more pedestrian-friendly

Investing in our infrastructure to keep the facility safe for all

Check-in to www.belfast.coop/renovation for news and updates about the project!
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31 supporters
Sam McCormick is fundraising
Assabet Co-op Market Bridge the Gap Campaign
What’s the Idea Behind the Plant Our Future Project?

As part of our larger construction work, we’re excited to announce Plant Our Future, an initiative to restore the beautiful Assabet Riverside behind our community-owned grocery store and support our fundraising needs!

This is a chance for you, our co-op supporters, to join your environmental values with our co-op’s significant funding needs. We know the donation levels for this initiative do not reflect the actual costs of each planting. Each donation is an opportunity to double our impact, planting a vibrant riverside ecosystem and moving our community-owned grocery store closer to Opening Day 2023. And the need is real…

As most folks know, we’re building a grocery store that is 100% community-owned and prioritizes local farms and producers. But manufacturing delays and an 80% increase in construction costs have left a $1.75 million funding gap. More than 2,000 owners, including dozens of local farmers, are counting on our co-op. We must close this gap before we open our grocery store to avoid significant debt and achieve our mission.

Please see the images below to choose your donation category, a beautiful native tree, shrub, birdhouse, pollinator plant, or seed packet. Donations will be recognized (that’s my tree!) and are tax-deductible. Then, join us in Spring 2023 for a community planting celebration!

Donate here and please leave a note about which plant you’re gifting. To donate by check, DAF, or other financial vehicles, please email [email redacted]p.

Let’s Plant our Future Together!

*Your donation ensures this riverfront restoration is completed, with the balance of gifts applied to our overall building project.

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The Co-op is launching our Bridge the Gap Fundraising Campaign, an opportunity to make tax-deductible donations to help raise an additional $1.75 million so we can open our doors.

The Challenge

We recently learned that a delay in the manufacturing/shipping of our refrigeration equipment will push our opening to Spring/Summer 2023.

Our Co-op is also experiencing explosive increases in construction costs, approximately 80%, since the completion of our Capital Campaign at the end of 2021, which have also been seen in building projects across the country. We have the resources to complete construction this fall, but it leaves us without the funds to hire staff, fill our shelves, and meet our operational needs.

It is essential that we raise an additional $1.75 million in donations to open our Co-op on solid financial footing. We can do this! It is not the first time our amazing community has banded together to move us toward opening this store!!

With the launch of this fundraising campaign in September, we are committed to building a cooperative grocery store that is as strong on Day 1 as Day 1,000.

What Will Our Donations Do?

The Bridge the Gap Campaign is an opportunity for all Massachusetts residents, including co-op owners and non-owners, to make tax-deductible donations that specifically support:

• Covering the difference in cost overruns on construction, to hire staff, and purchase product

• Raise the pre-open cash that we need to function for an additional six months before opening

To Donate Now

Click DONATE NOW to make a tax-deductible donation through our fiscal sponsor, Cooperative Development Institute.

Thank you for your support!
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240 supporters
Omar Hassan is fundraising
New Roots Cooperative Farm
We are Jabril Abdi, Seynab Ali, Mohamed Abukar, and Batula Ismail. We are farmers who came to the United States as refugees. We have faced many challenges including not being able to work due to barriers faced by New Americans. We didn’t speak the language or have the education to work a regular job in a society that’s not forgiving for individuals who do not have the technical skills to work in many jobs. This fundraising campaign gives us the opportunity to make our dreams a reality, own land, and finally make a home for ourselves in Maine.

As African, Somali Bantu, Black, Muslim farmers we grew up in our culture farming and we are honored to farm in Lewiston, Maine. We are respected by our community and have received support from our loyal customers since we came to the United States and started farming in 2006.

In 2016, after 10 years of farming in Lisbon, New Roots Cooperative was officially formed.

At this time, we began farming a 30-acre farm on College Street in Lewiston. Since then, we have been making improvements to the land including clearing new areas for farming, installing solar panels, and building hoop houses to expand our growing options. We work hard to nurture this land and grow vegetables for our loyal CSA and farmer’s market customers as well as other organizations in the surrounding community.

Purchasing our land will enable us to continue building a sustainable farm, provide food to the community, and improve the food economy in the local area. As an agricultural cooperative, we are stronger, being able to work together with the support of many organizations including Cooperative Development Institute and Cultivating Community.

We are grateful for the support we have received from you, our community, and other organizations throughout Maine.

It is now time to move forward with our biggest endeavor to date-purchasing our farmland! We are counting on your support to make it happen.

Your support of this fundraising campaign will enable us to continue growing and pursuing our goals which include:

- Purchasing the 30-acre parcel that we have been farming and developing since 2016 (cost $87,000)
- Purchasing equipment to open up areas of the land not currently suitable for farming in order to improve the scale of our operations (cost $72,000)
- Completing soil amendments necessary for long-term sustainability and health of the land (cost $15,000)
- Completing infrastructure improvements and upgrades necessary to efficiently utilize the land to its full capacity including increasing solar capacity, expanding irrigation systems, building storage sheds, and building farm roadways (cost $26,000)

We are grateful for your support and look forward to continuing to provide you with delicious, fresh, local, chemical-free vegetables for many years to come!

We invite you to follow along on Instagram and Facebook as we share our journey and our successes along the way.

Thank you for your support!

The New Roots Cooperative Farmers,
Jabril, Seynab, Mohamed & Batula

Visit the New Roots Cooperative Farm website
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470 supporters

About Cooperative Development Institute

The mission of the Cooperative Development Institute is to create and sustain democratically owned, cooperative enterprises and networks in the Northeast that grow a prosperous and equitable economy.

PO Box 1051NORTHAMPTON, MA 01061-1051

Find Cooperative Development Institute at

Causes

Community and economic development

Established

1995

Verified on GoFundMe

2022

Tax ID

04-3241596

NTEE code

Management & Technical Assistance

Cooperative Development Institute is a 501(c)(3) public charity, EIN 04-3241596. Donations are tax-deductible. Select content is provided by GuideStar.

Recent Donations

LC Clark donated to 8-15-25: DONATE to keep Dorchester Food Co-op Open!
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