Organization: The Food Rescue Alliance (FRA) is a peer learning network for emerging food rescue organizations to be able to share information, ideas, projects, values, and create an overall collaboration between people developing innovative models of food recovery.
Project: Develop a business + financial model to help the Alliance envision a cooperatively-owned software platform that can strengthen both the governance model and the financial health of their network.
Year(s): 2018
Role: Student Consultant- The Atlas Institute
Major Responsibilities: Lias with FRA, Understand platform cooperativism, Build organizational capacity
Process: Research, Design + Deploy, Capacity Building
Research: Cooperative business model and governance; Platform Cooperativism, Change facilitation methodologies
Design + Deploy: Developed nonprofit, platform cooperative financial model + narrative
Capacity Building: Designed and delivered 1.5 hour webinar entitled “The Business of Platform Cooperativism” to FRA members; As of 2022, sit on a sustainability committee for FRA and the software platform
Outcomes:
- Ongoing exploration by FRA of platform cooperative model
- Ongoing efforts to identify a viable revenue stream for a cooperatively-owned software
- Iterative development of Rootable (by a staff developer), a new food rescue a redistribution software used by FRA member organizations
- Ongoing collaborative fundraising to develop Rootable, $500,000+ raised to date
- 2022 Rootable is live!