Development

NASCO Co-op Organizer's Handbook

The Organizer's Handbook is a comprehensive guide to creating group-equity housing cooperatives. By explaining the cooperative movement, campus and community organizing, nonprofit incorporation, financing, and housing development, this important resource demystifies a challenging project.

Sample Co-op Bylaws

These sample bylaw can give you an idea of some simple boilerplate language for incorporating your coop.  Of course, a coop should get these bylaws looked at before submitting them, but these should give you a good idea of what you may want to do, and let you change things where you need to do so in order to make these match your needs.

Sample Articles of Incorporation

One of the first steps to getting your coop incorporated is to write articles of incorporation for your state.  Most states deal with this through the office of the Secretary of State, but a few don't.  Articles themselves, though, are a fairly simple document, even if the whole thing is in legalese.  One thing about Articles of Incorporation is that they are a brief document, and you can read through them in just a minute or so.  The contents are simple enough that you should be able to get an idea of what you would need to change in reading them, and then those changes can be run by

Tools for Co-op Home Ownership

This resource was contributed by Attorney David "Rosebud" Sparer for a workshop presented as part of NASCO's Developing New Co-op Track at the 2008 Cooperative Education and Training Institute . See NASCO Development Services for more information on developing new co-ops,