Accelerator for Black Community Wealth.

Applications Open March 12, 2025

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Applications Open March 12, 2025 〰️

Our Fall 2025 Accelerator is for Black-led cooperatives who want to get to the next level in their business. Using our Lean Co-op methodology, the Accelerator is designed to help you build both your business and ownership models so that your business can be sustainable and make a true impact.

Over 12 weeks of the Accelerator, the Start.coop team will work with you to:

  • Validate your business model

  • Validate your cooperative governance model

  • Develop traction for your businesses’ sustainability

  • Build a plan to drive sales and grow your revenue 

  • Explore different types of financing for your business

  • Develop your storytelling through your pitch deck

Who is the Fall 2025 Accelerator for?

With generous support through the Truist Foundation and others, we are able to provide support during this Incubator to Black-led cooperatives based in the United States.

We are open to all kinds of cooperatives, including but not limited to those interested in starting child care cooperatives, home care cooperatives, housing cooperatives and food-related cooperatives.

Not eligible for this Accelerator program? Please join us at one of our upcoming workshops and check out our Lean Co-op free online course.

Important Dates:

  • Applications Open: March 12, 2025

  • Applications Close: May 28, 2025

  • Interviews: July 2025.

  • Decisions Made: July 31, 2025

  • Program Dates: September 4- November 20, 2025

What You’ll Get

  • We provide a robust learning experience for entrepreneurs focused on building real world business skills so you can succeed. Each workshop has a hands-on activity designed to support your business development.

  • You’ll receive eight 1:1 business coaching sessions with an established cooperative developer.

  • You are connected with a cohort of values-aligned entrepreneurs with whom you can lean on for support as you build your businesses together.

  • We provide access to our online curriculum for on-demand modules when you need them.

  • We curate and secure discounted access to top business management tools and services (e.g. legal, accounting, CRM, and marketing tools) saving you time and money during the critical start-up phase.

  • We are able to provide a $10,000 grant per participating cooperative.

  • We will kick-off our time together by exploring cooperatives and developing your cooperative purpose

  • Cooperative leaders are facilitative. They bring out the best in people. In this workshop, we will explore facilitative leadership and how it can help strengthen your team.

  • In this session, we explore different forms decision making structures cooperatives use, and build your decision-making matrix.

  • When people think of cooperatives, they often think of the formal legal cooperative structure. Despite the myth of one official designation as a “cooperative”, there are many different legal forms. In this session, we will help you understand different legal frameworks used by cooperatives and reflect on what you can prepare before meeting with a lawyer.

  • Most cooperatives don’t fail due to lack of governance, lack of product, or lack of smarts, they fail due to lack of revenue. In this session, we will focus on how you will build sustainable revenue for your cooperative.

  • This session builds on our previous session as you dig in on how you will build a path of sustainability for your co-op.

  • Telling your co-op’s story to a variety of audiences is part of the work of being a Founder. In this session, we will provide a structured opportunity to help you build your deck in support of your storytelling and asks.

  • In this session we will explore how to structure a justifiable ask

  • Co-ops have unique funding needs. In this session, we will have a Q&A with co-op friendly funders.

  • In this session, we will discuss what makes a great story and practice telling your cooperative’s story.

  • Culture is Queen! It is the daily life of your cooperative. In this session, we will explore your cooperative values and how you plan to operationalize culture at your cooperative.

  • We will bring together the Start.coop community to celebrate you and to hear the story of your cooperative.

Session Preview

Program Eligibility

 

What We Look For

 

Our three baseline criteria for start-ups to be eligible for our general accelerator are:

  1. Share ownership with their community (workers, users, etc.) or plan to in the next 12 months

  2. Have at least three founding members and are led by majority Black founders.

  3. Based in the U.S.

As Start.coop works to lift up each year’s most promising entrepreneurs, our team uses the following criteria to evaluate applicants:

  • Social impact: What is the social impact of the business? Does the business have the potential to create a substantial impact for communities of color?

  • Financial viability: Does the business model make sense? Is it viable long-term?

  • Industry Experience: Does the founding team have relevant industry experience?

  • Ability to execute: Can the founding team execute on their vision?

  • Entrepreneur Passion: Are the founders passionate and dedicated? What skills do they bring?

Meet our Entrepreneurs

 FAQs

  • Our Fall 2025 Accelerator is for Black-led cooperatives. You can register your interest in future programs to be notified as other opportunities arise.

  • On a yearly basis, we ask our community to help us select the co-ops with the greatest potential so that we can give them everything we’ve got, from curriculum to mentorship to investment. We intentionally accept a small cohort in order to create a supportive and intense learning environment that we believe will foster the best outcomes for the entrepreneurs, the co-ops, and our society writ-large. Our belief is that by lifting up and bringing together the most promising cooperative entrepreneurs each year, entrepreneurs will learn more from each other, support each other, and increase their odds of success.

    Note that Start.coop is a selective program, so we also recommend that you check out our additional resources section and the list of cooperative developers who form the Cooperation Works network. To make things easier for you, we designed the application to cover everything that should be in an early-stage business plan. And if you are at the beginning stages of forming your business, you can consider using our application questions to help you build out your business plan.

    • The business is not cooperatively owned and/or has no intention of adopting a shared ownership structure

    • The business lacks a clear vision of how it will generate revenue

    • The business is located outside the United States

    • The business has no plans or path to scale

  • We get that you are a new business in planning, and that you may not yet have a finished business plan (most business plans are never really finished anyway). Please take a look at our application preview page for guidance on what we’re looking for, and you can use those questions as an outline for a business plan deck.

    Even if you are very early in the process, you are welcome to apply, as our application questions are designed to mimic a pitch process and include many of the questions you’ll need to be able to answer in order to build a business plan.

    We also encourage you to sign-up for our Lean Co-op online course for guidance on how to develop your business model and ownership model. We also encourage you to explore our Incubator program as an option. Lastly, you can also connect with regional co-op developers in your area for more help!

  • If selected, you’ll need to commit to attending at least 80% of all virtual accelerator sessions.

    Our virtual sessions are held every Thursday from 2-4pm Eastern and on many Tuesdays from 2-4pm Eastern.

    The estimated time commitment per week is 5-6 hours.