Evergreen Cooperatives — Cleveland's Anchor-Institution Worker-Cooperative Network

Evergreen Cooperatives is a network of worker-owned businesses launched in 2008 in Cleveland's Greater University Circle, a set of six neighbourhoods with a median household income under $18,500. The model, developed with the Cleveland Foundation and the Democracy Collaborative, persuades large 'anchor institutions' — the Cleveland Clinic, University Hospitals and Case Western Reserve University — to redirect a share of their procurement spending from national suppliers to locally owned worker cooperatives.
Three cooperatives were built around anchor-institution contracts: Evergreen Cooperative Laundry (2009), Evergreen Energy Solutions (solar installation) and Green City Growers (a 3.25-acre hydroponic greenhouse). By 2016, laundry worker-owners earned a blended wage close to $20 an hour with an average profit-share payout of over $7,000, about 30% of workers lived in the target neighbourhoods, and a further third came through re-entry programmes for the formerly incarcerated (Rutgers CLEO case study, 2022; Fifty by Fifty, 2021).
Growth has been slower than planned: the original goal was 5,000 sustainable jobs, but by 2021 the umbrella Evergreen Cooperative Corporation held 10–20% ownership stakes in businesses employing around 320 people, and critics have noted that entry-level pay in some cooperatives started below the $15 minimum the Cleveland Clinic itself pays, and that worker-owners do not hold a board majority at Evergreen Cooperative Laundry.
The anchor-procurement model has since been adapted in other US cities (Rochester's ARISE, Richmond, and Cooperation Jackson in Mississippi) and directly informed the UK's 'Preston Model' of community wealth building, making it one of the most widely cited templates for linking large local institutions to worker ownership.

Read the full analysis: https://www.fiftybyfifty.org/2021/03/evergreen-cooperatives-adapt-and-grow/