If you have ever come to our events or seen an IG Reel, you’ve heard us mention Seed Commons several times. Seed Commons is the national network of non-extractive loan funds that BRED belongs to. If you want to learn more about Seed Commons, this video created during the All Network Gathering is perfect for you. We hosted all our peer funds here in Baltimore for three days of learning from and supporting each other. Enjoy!
Author: Nia Hunter
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Fresh Cup Magazine Highlights Coffee Cooperatives In Baltimore City
Common Ground Cafe is featured in this article along with Red Emma’s and Thread Coffee, which are all worker-owned cooperatives who receive funding from us. Fresh Cup Magazine wrote an article about coffee cooperatives in Baltimore City and how the co-op ecosystem has grown over the last six years. It’s a good light read for these heavy times. Read here!
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2025 BRED Jumpstart
Picture this.
It’s Saturday morning. You’re drinking a cup of coffee, maybe eating a light breakfast, and learning all about cooperatives with curious minded people. Where are you? BRED’s 2025 Jumpstart taking place at Impact Hub!
Who is this event for? If you are co-op curious, a business owner that wants to sell to your employees, have a co-op and are interested in learning more about cooperative tools to implement in the day to day structure of running a co-op, this event is for you.
Join Baltimore Roundtable for Economic Democracy for a fun-filled day of conversations and workshops about co-ops! Starting up, co-op basics, day-to-day decision making, business models, and so much more! We are ready to help you on your journey. March 8, 2025 10-4pm register here. Childcare available – apply here by March 1st.
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Want To Help Support BRED?
BRED Team Giving Tuesday is fast approaching and we’re hoping you support Baltimore Roundtable for Economic Democracy! BRED was founded in 2015 to provide much-needed technical support and funding to support the cooperative economy here in Baltimore, and beyond. We know how important sustaining and growing a healthy business ecosystem is here in Baltimore City, and we know that cooperatives are a vital part of that health. We ask friends, supporters, and comrades to share this post and donate to our Donor Box today. We want to keep providing services and resources to Baltimore and you can help us do that.
Throughout the day we will be sharing and tagging stories of cooperatives in our network that we would also love your support. So check us out on Instagram , give us a follow and share these co-ops with your people!! Thanks for all your support!
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Baltimore Co-ops, and BRED, In The News
We recently helped The Wine Source convert from a traditional business into a cooperative. We are so happy for this group of amazing workers and what they have accomplished! Please take a moment to read this Baltimore Fishbowl article to learn more about The Wine Source’s process and about us!
https://baltimorefishbowl.com/stories/from-red-emmas-to-the-wine-source-baltimore-a-hotbed-of-local-worker-cooperative-financing/
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Emily
Emily is a co-founder and worker-owner at Mera Kitchen Collective in Baltimore, Maryland. Established in 2018 as a way for new friends and neighbors to come together to share story-worthy food from around the world, Mera Kitchen has grown from small pop-ups and farmers market stalls to their first brick-and-mortar restaurant. Before moving to Baltimore, Emily spent 7 years with Doctors Without Borders, engaged in field operations throughout Central and East Africa and Southern Asia. She received her Masters in Public Health from the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health and her Masters in Accounting from the University of Colorado. Emily intended for her stay in Baltimore to be a short one, but that quickly changed as the city became her favorite place to live.
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Kate
Kate is a co-founder and worker-owner of Red Emma’s, a cooperatively-owned restaurant and bookstore in Baltimore that helped to catalyze a city-wide ecosystem of worker-owned businesses over the last decade. In 2015, she helped to found the Seed Commons cooperative and its Baltimore peer, the Baltimore Roundtable for Economic Democracy, and in 2018, became co-director of the Seed Commons network, with Brendan Martin. She currently serves as BRED’s Senior Fellow and a member of the staff collective. She received her PhD from The Johns Hopkins University, her MPhil and MA from the Universiteit van Amsterdam, and her BA from the University of Pennsylvania. She lives in Bolton Hill with her partner, her son, a border collie, and three bad cats.
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Cooperative Real Estate Series
Are you interested in learning how you can pursue real estate but want to know what your options are to stay grounded in the community? We are hosting this free 3-part series to help cooperatives and cooperative centered communities learn more about what it takes to form, maintain, and and build different types of real estate models such as: -Community Land Trusts -Real Estate Cooperatives -Community Investment Vehicle*** This is a 3-part series so feel free to attend one or more session ***
Join us May 23, June 6, and July 11 from 5-7 pm. Register HERE
May 23rd: 5-7 pm
Red Clover Collective – Housing Collective
Red Clover Collective is a small intentional community and cooperative, with horizontal democratic governance. For 20 years they have been dedicated to building relationships and lifestyles centered around sustainable living, social justice, and centered values in artistic creation. Christina and Nicholas, members and residents of the community will be presenting this session to dive deeper into the history of Red Clover and how this structure has been a resource for their community.South Baltimore Community Land Trust (SBCLT) – Community Land Trust
Founded in 2019, SBCLT is a community-led organization that believes in dignified housing. Their focus is on environmental justice and housing in the process of developing homes to be owned in the Cherry Hill and Curtis Bay areas. They develop quality homes that stay affordable and offer support to homeowner applicants to prevent involuntary displacement within communities that face risk. Makayla, who is involved with the Housing Stewardship will be sharing the in and outs of what this organization does, and offer other resources to connect people to education on Land Trusts within their communities.June 6th: 5-7 pm
Network for Developing Conscious Communities (NDCC)
A spiritually based leadership and community development network organization. Their focus is in creating strategic-planning efforts to lead a diverse perspective in strengthening the Black governed community development ecosystem. Ron Hantz will be leading this conversation and it will focus on low-income cooperative housing strategies.July 11th: 5-7 pm
Invest York Road (IYR)
A local project to create community-owned commercial real estate for the purpose of revitalizing the York Road corridor and building community wealth. Join Stephanie Geller and learn about how this Community Investment Vehicle helped the surrounding neighborhoods of York Road as they developed and maintained this project -
Jim
Jim has worked in small businesses and micro-enterprises for over forty years, and has spent over twenty of those years working with and for worker co-ops and other types of co-ops. From 1999 thru 2009 he served at a DC-area worker co-op as a software engineer, worker-owner, and co-facilitator of its conversion from a conventional enterprise. He’s been a full-time free-lance co-op developer since 2009, actively providing technical assistance to worker co-ops, start-ups, and conventional businesses exploring conversion to worker-ownership. Jim is also a co-founder of the Democracy at Work Network, the technical assistance service of the US Federation of Worker Cooperatives from 2011 thru 2018, and supported DAWN as a Peer Advisor and Governor.
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Nia
Originally from Colorado, Nia (they/them) has lived in Baltimore since 2005. BRED has been a part of their life since 2017 and they are also a worker-owner of Red Emma’s. Red Emma’s is a cooperatively-owned bookstore, coffee house, and restaurant located in Baltimore Maryland. Through both types of work they hope to provide spaces where statistically marginalized groups of people can feel safe, be seen, and grow through the resources provided by both businesses. Nia is also a muralist and a custom art maker, centering her art around wild and domesticated animals, queerness, and nature. They are a graduate of University of Maryland Baltimore County and currently live in Seton Hill with their daughter and their rescue animals.