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Small business and non-profits

Patagonia “Exits to Climate”: A Win for Capitalism, But a Mixed Bag for Stakeholder Governance

I, like most, was delighted to read the news that Patagonia’s shareholders decided to give away ownership of the company to benefit the climate and not private equity, a strategic buyer, or public capital markets. We’ve written extensively on mechanisms for mission protection in corporate entities.   It appears that the Chouinard family, which owned …

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Thoughts from a new economies’ attorney: distinguishing cooperative governing structure

In my previous posts, I discuss how traditional businesses and cooperatives diverge from a capital (and return on capital) point-of-view. Another common misconception is that cooperatives function like nonprofits, typically from the perspective of governance structure. They don’t. Cooperatives are businesses, and, as such, business principles and governance, and business governing structure apply to them. …

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Mandatory Business Owner Reporting

The federal government has passed some new legislation that will require small businesses to report personal information about the business’s owners to a database controlled by the Securities Exchange Commission.  The legislation is called the Corporate Transparency Act (the “Act”), adopted as Title LXIV (64) of the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act.  The purpose of …

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A Leap forward for the Cooperative movement

As a cooperative attorney nothing is more exciting than stumbling on the odd article sharing a cooperative success story. Some days though, it’s more than the random, obscure news story, some days it’s an announcement that makes it feel like the movement is going mainstream. Today is one of those days. Today Evergreen Business Services …

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Limited Cooperative Associations and Early Stage Financing

Cooperatives are the original social enterprise business model and Colorado is emerging as the “Delaware of cooperative law,” thanks in no small part to limited cooperative associations (LCAs), authorized by C.R.S. Title 7, Article 58. The limited cooperative association is a relatively new entity type, adopted in Colorado in 2010.  It offers a balance of …

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