Back Office Support Pilot

Since 2021, CCWB has developed nine startup worker cooperatives with more than 30 worker owners, the majority of whom are Spanish-speaking women of color. Groups like Bella Creación Latina (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x3DcTbcI7_4), Cooperativa Mano a Mano, and Plantas Organicas Medicinales y Aromáticas have developed their bylaws, created group norms and boards, started websites, completed industry training, and even opened storefronts, but few have been able to earn enough revenue to support each of their members with full time work.

Many small business owners, especially those from historically marginalized communities, face significant challenges that limit their ability to grow and compete in larger markets. Some of the most pressing issues include:

• Limited Financial Resources – Many entrepreneurs lack capital to invest in essential business services such as bookkeeping, marketing, and compliance.

• Lack of Culturally Relevant and Responsive Administrative and Operational Support – Without culturally relevant support, including in their native language, immigrant entrepreneurs and entrepreneurs of color struggle to find the resources and administrative support they need to operate efficiently, which can limit their earning potential.

• Barriers to Government and Corporate Contracts – Small businesses often lack the capacity or social networks to navigate complex certification and bidding processes, limiting their opportunities for large-scale contracts.

• Risk of Economic Displacement – Many businesses in low-income communities are at risk of being pushed out due to large-scale development projects, without support to adapt and remain competitive.

By addressing these challenges, the Back Office Support helps create economic stability, job growth, and wealth-building opportunities for cooperative entrepreneurs who have historically been underserved.

CCWB’s solution is to develop a service that will bring low-cost, bilingual, and co-op knowledgeable back office service providers together to form a one-stop in-house shop, providing bookkeeping, tax preparation, and business development support. By offering sliding scale services, we will support emerging entrepreneurs and business owners in building business infrastructure, growing their businesses, and increasing their self-sufficiency.

We believe that increasing revenue and entreprenuer skills have the highest return on investment, and, thus, our approach with an initial grant of $20,000 is to pilot offering business development support and coaching to at least three cooperatives whose gross revenue is still less than $50,000. Over three months, we will contract with Spanish-speaking and culturally informed service providers who will support the cooperatives in setting up their sales and customer acquisition systems, who will demonstrate how to use these systems to drive business development, and who will coach the entreprenuers in how to use these systems. We recognize that these three steps may ultimately take longer than three months to fully implement, but with this minimum viable pilot, we want to understand and track the highest impact activities and to measure what change in revenue emerges from targeted investment.

We will use the learning from this pilot to inform the larger buildout of the Back Office Support program. In the near future, we hope to expand the back office services to include accounting and compliance functions. Many of our cooperatives are in care industries that qualify for medicaid reimbursement and state subsidies, but not all cooperative members have been able to access these systems. We also anticipate providing services on a sliding fee scale. As cooperatives gain market share and grow their customers, they will gradually be able to afford market rates. If the service providers we are working with are open to it, CCWB may eventually support them in spinning off this service as its own worker cooperative business.

The Back Office Support Pilot works to create a lasting impact on entrepreneurs, small businesses, and the broader community by fostering wealth-building opportunities and economic resilience. We expect three outcomes:

1. Strengthened Cooperative Capacity & Sustainability, measured by increased business longevity and enhanced strategic planning. We expect the systems set in place will lead to higher survival rates for these small businesses, and with this added support, cooperative entrepreneurs will gain business coaching and tools to scale their operations effectively.

2. Greater Access to Economic Opportunities, measured by increased number of contracts and customers and increased marketing presence.

3. Financial Stability & Economic Mobility for Entrepreneurs, measured in higher business revenue & profit margins, improved business financial literacy in co-op founders, and, in the long term, cooperatives transitioning from survival to scale. We aim to see our cooperatives move byeond bootstrapping so they can invest in sustainable growth.