Five organisations have received a combined $205,000 in grant funding from Capital Impact Partners’ 2025 Co-op Innovation Awards, which support innovative ideas through pre-seed funding.
The fund is aimed at organisations that use the co-op model to foster economic opportunity and address issues facing their community. This year’s awards were issued by National Cooperative Bank and Capital Impact Partners.
Since 2015, a combined $1.23m in grants have been awarded to 35 organisations across the USA. These organisations have subsequently leveraged their awards to secure more than $15.2m in additional funding from foundations, investors and government agencies.
“The recipients of this year’s Co-op Innovation Awards are helping to strengthen communities by creating jobs, increasing the availability of affordable housing, expanding access to child care, and providing more of the opportunities that people need to succeed,” said Ellis Carr, president and CEO of Capital Impact Partners and CDC Small Business Finance, both of which are part of Momentus Capital.
“Supporting co-ops has been a pillar of our work since Capital Impact Partners was founded more than four decades ago as part of a federal effort to encourage co-op development,” he added. “We have deployed more than $300 million in financial capital to worker-owned, consumer-owned (such as grocery stores) and resident-owned co-operatives.”
“In celebration of the International Year of Cooperatives, I am proud to continue our support of the Co-op Innovation Award,” said Casey Fannon, president and CEO of National Cooperative Bank. “Providing financial grants to spur new co-op development is critical to helping co-operatives grow and prosper across the United States.”
This winners, chosen from a field of 83 applicatnts, are Farm Generations Cooperative of Cooperstown, New York ($50,000); Fideicomiso Comunitario Tierra Libre of Los Angeles ($40,000); Nashville Equitable Housing Cooperative ($50,000); Prospera Community Development of Oakland, California ($35,000) and the US Federation of Worker Cooperatives ($30,000).
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Farm Generations Cooperative was formed to create a farmer-owned marketing platform for producers selling food directly to their communities. It has helped to provide access to healthy food for families living with low incomes by developing accessible technologies for farmers to accept SNAP, WIC, Double Up Food Bucks, and produce prescriptions. Farm Generations will use the grant to replicate and expand the programme regionally in addition to documenting the success of its food access work for farms across the country.
“The Co-op Innovation Award will allow our cooperative to document and share the amazing, creative strategies that farmers leverage to provide healthy, affordable food to their communities,” said CEO Lindsey Lusher Shute. “This project will support both the financial resilience of small farms and the food security of communities — advancing our mission of increasing economic empowerment through co-operation.”
Fideicomiso Comunitario Tierra Libre is a nonprofit community land trust dedicated to creating and preserving permanently affordable housing for residents living with low incomes in the LA neighbourhoods of Boyle Heights and East Los Angeles. Through FCTL, the Tonalli Tenant Association will use the grant to create East Los Angeles’ first housing co-op, fostering long-term economic sustainability through collective investment, shared governance, and community co-operation.
“The 2025 Co-op Innovation Award is a vital opportunity for the Tonalli Tenant Association to launch the first resident-led housing cooperative in East LA,” said board member Quetzal Flores. “This award would provide the catalytic support needed to incorporate the co-operative, finalise bylaws, and establish a governance agreement with FCTL to secure long-term affordability through land stewardship.
“As a long-term strategy, Tonalli will serve as a replicable model, demonstrating how low-income communities lead in keeping families in place.”
Nashville Equitable Housing Cooperative is a coalition of grassroots organisations advancing co-op housing solutions across Tennessee. In 2024, NEHC developed its first 60-unit limited-equity affordable housing co-operative, a major achievement in a state where co-op resources and funding are scarce. To build on this success, NEHC will use the grant funding to develop the Cooperative Community Playbook to document Tennessee-specific strategies, legal frameworks, and engagement tools that will expand affordable co-operative housing.
“The 2025 Co-op Innovation Award is deeply meaningful because it helps us advance our mission to expand affordable housing options,” Carlina Bell, executive director of the William Franklin Buchanan Community Development Corporation, which is a sponsor of the co-op. “With thoughtful partners, we have led an effort to establish Nashville’s first limited equity housing co-operative, honouring the legacy of innovation and shared ownership. With support of this grant, we will create a playbook that provides a replicable model for a residential co-operative ecosystem across Tennessee, equipping communities statewide with tools to design sustainable, resident-led housing solutions.”
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Prospera Community Development’s mission is to partner with entrepreneurs to launch businesses that foster co-operation, economic independence, and wellbeing in communities. Prospera recently launched Comunidades Prospera, which is a structured series of courses presented in Spanish that enable community-based organisations to advance co-operative entrepreneurship, financial autonomy, and collective leadership within their communities. The grant will enable Prospera to scale Comunidades Prospera by creating outreach materials and new strategic partnerships with organisations that are deeply rooted in the community.
“The 2025 Co-op Innovation Award allows Prospera to expand opportunities for our community to launch and grow businesses rooted in cooperative values, creating pathways to economic independence and collective well-being,” said executive director Claudia Arroyo. “It affirms that our voices, ideas, and cooperative models are essential to building the economy.”
The US Federation of Worker Cooperatives (USFWC), serves as the only national membership organisation focused on advancing economic opportunities through co-operative worker ownership. USFWC will use the grant to launch the Win-Win Child Care Initiative, which pilots a scalable model linking unions and worker co-ops to incubate childcare businesses. This initiative will deliver quality care, quality jobs, and a replicable path for leveraging union assets toward economic development for childcare workers.
“The Co-op Innovation Award seeds USFWC’s new initiative to bridge connections between labor and cooperative business development,” said executive director Esteban Kelly. “The award illustrates how unions are positioned to incubate childcare worker co-ops by leveraging the education and organising opportunities of the union co-op model.
“Establishing union members themselves as anchor clients of new childcare union co-ops, the initiative aims to take care of union families while creating high-quality jobs, ones rooted in worker-ownership and co-operative values. The initiative demonstrates what it can look like to design a win-win model for the future of care work.”
