Upstream Solutions

12/24/2024

I could start a

10/08/2021

Morning laugh. I love the look in his eyes.

11/22/2020

Co-ops can offer a space free of corporate ownership while providing sustainable services that philanthropies cannot. That’s why journalists at The Devil Strip are well aware that they are part of a tiny but growing national experiment in cooperative ownership of local journalism. What if the country’s vast local news deserts were filled by newspapers—sustainable, salary-paying newspapers—owned not by hedge funds or distant philanthropists but by readers and reporters themselves? What if those newspapers could provide even better coverage than the ones they replaced?

The small but growing trend of co-op media outlets could be the future of local news.

06/05/2020

Very thought-provoking piece.

Visit http://TED.com to get our entire library of TED Talks, transcripts, translations, personalized talk recommendations and more. The coronavirus pandemic ...

05/12/2020

"There may or may not be any malicious intent behind big banks’ reluctance to fund small businesses compared with their smaller peers. But there are structural reasons why big banks have relatively less incentive than community banks to meet the credit needs of small businesses or other smaller borrowers for that matter."

The saga of the Paycheck Protection Program has shed a dramatic light on what it means to have lost so many community banks.

04/29/2020

“We are so dependent on outside forces, and we are exporting [our] money to them,” says Moriarty. “What if we produced locally, kept money locally, so retail could keep local? … [Then] everybody starts to understand it’s not us versus them, it’s helping our neighbors adapt to needs.”

At a time when businesses pivot from making booze to hand sanitizer, and from sewing t-shirts to facemasks, we look at the cities that have already successfully re-localized industry.

02/21/2020

"Mondragón’s recipe for success? The employees manage the company by themselves. Instead of being owned by any shareholders or billionaires, Mondragón employees own their company and make their own decisions. The profits of the company are not paid to any offshore accounts in tax swamps. They go to those who have made the profits: the workers."

Mondragón is the largest cooperative in the world and one of the most successful companies in Spain. The workers of Mondragón own the company.

01/26/2020

"The coalition, which in addition to building housing connects people to healthcare and jobs, is a partner in Denver’s pilot social impact bond program. The social impact bond program aims to save money spent repeatedly arresting and jailing people experiencing homelessness or caring for them in emergency rooms. In that program, financed in part by private investors with a social mission, the coalition and the Mental Health Center of Denver use police arrest data to identify people experiencing chronic homelessness, then get them housing and health care, food, transportation and legal support."

01/14/2020

Making the best of fragmented systems.

***
“If we’re not looking at the whole person, or how some of their medical diagnoses may be the result of short-term or long-term social determinants, we’re not going to cure them,” Colasanto said. “We’re not even going to repair them.”
..

Nonprofits that work alongside acute care facilities have reported better connections since the online system was launched.

“What’s been challenging is the feedback loop with health care entities. My staff would spend a significant amount of time making sure we could let the hospital know that a patient had connected with us,” said David Morgan, president of the nonprofit TEAM Inc. in Derby, which helps people access food, housing and other services.

With the digital system, “it happens seamlessly,” he said. “You can immediately see that people are getting services, and it saves a lot of time.”

Doctors have long acknowledged that social factors like transportation and housing influence people’s health outcomes.