The Broke DIY Punk’s Guide to Starting a Worker Co-op

So you want to start a worker cooperative for your side hustle? Work on a project you really care about, make a little money, and do some good for the community? But the problem is you are broke… Well, it is still possible to get started and slowly start your side hustle while working another full time job. Below are some quick tips on starting a worker cooperative as a broke punk.

So how did I learn these things? Well, in 2020 with some of my friends, we started a Nuts & Bolts Nursery Co-op, a worker cooperative perennial plant nursery, based in Smithfield, Rhode Island. We gather seed from wild trees and shrubs across the state and then grow them into baby trees for people to plant in their backyard. We are getting people to grow their own food again while helping to pull carbon from the atmosphere to help climate change and improve air quality. Before that, some of us used to live in a DIY Punk House together.

The DIY community is a really incredible community where people are able to do so much with so little. Our friends scrapped together money to share a PA system among 5 different house venues. We got lights and decorations from thrift stores to make a magical ambience in our basement. We printed posters at the library and taped them up around town. And we engaged people politically, encouraged consent practices at every show, taught people to respect pronouns, and shared radical zines around. So many of the lessons we learned from being in the DIY community we took with when we started our worker co-op. So as promised here are 4 tips on starting a worker co-op as a broke punk.