Most co-working and studio spaces provide a rental/lease structure that is oriented around carving up individual parcels of space for people to use individually. Costs and revenue are rarely transparent. Any decision-making and profits are enjoyed solely by the coworking/studio proprietor, not the renters.

PPAC, on the other hand, is structured as a membership cooperative where the space is collectively shared, operated, and governed by its own membership. This means that we share in important decisions about our physical space, management, programs, and money.

We often use the lens of stewardship to frame our cooperative responsibilities.

Yes, our cooperative membership application is open and voluntary to any person who is interested in joining our cooperative practice and cultivating intentional community service with us!

Currently, our cooperative members commit ~$400 per month and 1-2 hours a week.

A cooperative is an autonomous association of persons united voluntarily to meet their common economic, social and cultural needs and aspirations through a jointly-owned and democratically-controlled enterprise (read more about cooperative definitions, values, and principles at the International Cooperative Alliance website.) In other words, it’s a company whose members have intentionally organized their internal structure around shared responsibility, investment, governance, and incentive.

Here at PPAC, each member contributes money, time, and labor to maintain our lease on the guildhall, our shared enterprises, and our various community programs. We provide the joint decision-making, the elbow grease, and the dollars to keep this thing going. In doing so, we strive to make the variety of resources managed by the cooperative accessible to ourselves and, through each of us, to the communities that we serve. We also share a commitment to values-based practices of Sharing, Mindfulness, Compassion, Humility, Integrity, Forgiveness and Gratitude (see our “Cultural Constitution.”)

We borrow the word “Apprentice” from the medieval associations of craftspeople who organized to teach, collaborate, and elevate a particular craft. In our case, we are interested in the craft of intentional community service.

We also use the word ‘Apprentice’ to signify our dedication to learning from and growing with one another, which we often refer to as ‘peer apprenticeship.’

We are a cooperative of Peer Apprentices!

You can check out this fun New Yorker article about contemporary guilds!

YES! You should check out our Guild Collaborators Circle or, if you’re interested in nonprofit programming, check out Prime Produce Limited.

Yes! We’re always happy to share what we’ve learned. Don’t be a stranger: hello@primeproduce.coop

Because there is (kind of)!

Prime Produce is a grassroots collective of friends, family, and neighbors committed to intentionally serving our communities.

People within this collective founded Prime Produce Apprentice Cooperative (that’s us!) as well as Prime Produce Limited (a very cool grassroots 501c3 nonprofit incubator!)