The New Economy Coalition is a membership-based network representing the solidarity economy movement in the United States. We exist to organize our members into a more powerful and united force, in order to accelerate the transition of our economic system from capitalism to a solidarity economy.
NEC’s members are a cross section of nonprofits, mission-driven businesses, grassroots community organizations, and sectoral associations. While many groups are focused on a particular strategy or are based in a specific geographic region, they join NEC to be part of a network that is cross-sectoral and national in scope. Together, we understand ourselves as part of an international social movement ecosystem that includes tens of thousands of groups using varied and different strategies to build a more just, liberatory, and democratic world.
NEC exists to support a just transition from an extractive to a regenerative economy by building the scale and power of the solidarity economy movement in Black, Indigenous, and working class communities in every region of the United States.
We envision a world where our lives are no longer dominated or determined by capitalism nor any other extractive system. We envision a world in which everyone has what they need, where people have collective agency and self-determination.
To get there, we must be interconnected and powerful together. In our vision, global economic transformation is built and led by regional solidarity economy ecosystems .
A solidarity economy ecosystem is an environment in which all of the things a community needs — like housing, schools, farms and food production, local governance, art and culture, healthcare, and transportation — are controlled and governed by the people, led by those most marginalized by our current economy, and building strong community roots.
Regions can be defined ecologically by land, climate, or watershed, politically through borders and voting boundaries, economically by markets and shared material conditions, or culturally, by our traditions, ethnicities, and migration pathways
Values are not just ideas written on paper, they are a daily practice. In order to make our vision real, we need to practice the following values — informed by the Jemez Principles for Democratic Organizing and Solidarity Economy Principles — in our work and everyday lives:
NEC was founded in 2012 on the heels of the Great Recession, in response to growing national interest in solidarity economy practices, values, and strategies for systemic change. It began as a think tank, modeled after the New Economics Foundation in the UK, based on the framework of “new economics” popularized by leaders at what had previously been the E.F. Schumacher Society in Western Massachusetts.
Over the course of several years and multiple rounds of internal organizing by staff, board, and members, NEC has evolved as an organization. In 2016, we began to shift from being a largely white, upper class organization to one whose staff and board are majority people of color, and significantly more geographically and socioeconomically diverse. We started to understand ourselves as a post-capitalist project on the political left, and we shifted our external communication and internal strategies accordingly. That same year, we shifted our membership governance structure to be more democratic, with board elections, and a deeper integration of members into our programmatic work.
In 2018, we began to shift our internal staff structure and policies to be more in line with our external values, including transitioning from a traditional hierarchical non-profit to a four-person co-directorship. By 2020, NEC began transitioning into a worker self-directed nonprofit, a governance structure that melds aspects of worker cooperativism into the 501(c)(3) structure. As a worker self-directed nonprofit, NEC does not have an Executive Director. Our General Circle manages most high impact personnel, finance, and program-related decisions. It is made up of elected staff representatives and member-elected board representatives, both of whom serve terms. The Board of Directors is primarily member-elected, and is an avenue through which we remain accountable to our membership
We see ourselves as on a journey together with our members to continue the work of building a truly liberatory and impactful organization that puts into practice the values of the solidarity economy.
