The Gist of it:
Black Coffee is a worker’s cooperative, café, community space & infoshop in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Seattle. Black Coffee serves specialty coffee & tea, vegan food & pastries, and delicious beer. In addition, the Black Coffee Co-op hosts all sort of community events, maintains a small public library, and has a selection of independently produced literature.
The first two years of the cooperative have been spent at 501 E. Pine St in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Seattle. Over that time the co-op has GROWN, from infancy to toddlerhood, We have made leaps and bounds, and now we are ready to grow some more! We want to grow our capacity to serve our
communities, and we need to move into a long-term home where we can
build for years to come. Black Coffee Co-op is looking for funding to help with the deposit and build-out costs associated with moving into a new space.
What We Need & What You Get
The details. We need to raise money to offset the costs of the following:
- Accounting and permitting fees to help with move-in logistics
- First months rent, last months rent, and deposit on a new beautiful space
- A storage unit to house our equipment while we do construction on the new space
- Construction costs, specifically: carpentry, plumbing and electrical, counters, and sinks!
Further details. Why should you donate:
- For the swag! Perks include black coffee mugs, t-shirts, free drinks, and stickers
- 10% off all your purchases for a month
- Coffee classes. Learn how to brew with the best of em
- The individual who shares our IndieGogo with the most friends, who then also donate, will get a drink named in their honor!
- Keep it in the community, So far we have received amazing support from our local community and families. We haven't borrowed any money from big banks! Lets keep this a truly community supported project, the only investors we want to answer to are YOU!
Stretch Goals. If we exceed our goals we will spend any extra money on:
- Expanding our inventory. We support local artists by buying their work and selling it in our retail store. Any extra money raised will allow us to invest back in the community and grow our retail inventory.
- Black masks for everyone!
The Impact
Black Coffee pushes forward a new way of thinking about work & the economy: worker cooperatives eliminate hierarchy and increase the level of personal fulfillment for all workers. This in turn keeps the value of the business in line with the values of the workers, and by extension the local community as well.
Black Coffee Coop is committed to a non-hierarchical structure of work & a not-for-profit model of commerce. In creating the Black Coffee Cooperative, the individuals that currently comprise it work to create a number of beneficial tools, for example:
> Physical space for culture and community, from fundraisers to film screenings, book releases to belly dancing, skill-shares to silk-screening. Black Coffee is a hub for events, meetings, or just drinking a brew with comrades.
> A non-hierarchical workplace, where we truly work together, and share the fruits of our work equally.
> A “Safer-space,” This means we actively attempt to keep the space free of oppression & intimidation (look over our Safer Spaces Agreement). This also means we are always open to learning how to become more safe and welcoming.
> An info-shop and mini-library.
>A home for other projects such as Anarres Press
>Support for other coops. We buy from other cooperatives whenever possible. For example we source our coffee from Equal Exchange and Just Coffee.
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Your contribution will not only help create a cafe that the whole community will enjoy, you will empower fellow Seattlites to create fulfilling work for themselves and for future workers, & you will help inspire a new, grassroots economy that values
people over profits.
The (A) Team
You can trust that this project will be a success because we've got a crew with all the right talents and experience. Black Coffee’s team is made up of six committed individuals who come from a background of activism, community organizing, small-business, non-profit management, catering, conflict resolution, art promotion, and of course, coffee! We’ve got a bold, determined, and responsible team that is more than ready to take this to the next level.
Other Ways You Can Help
We value all the ways our community contributes to the cafe, not just financial. So don't worry if you can't contribute in that way right now, we've got other ideas for you.
- Send this page to 5 individuals you think would donate
- Share this page on your facebook
- Got skills? We need folks with trucks and strong arms to help us move, folks with strong wrists to help us paint, folks with strong fingers to draw cool posters for fund raising parties, you get the idea. Let us know what you can do and we'll find a way to plug you in ;)
- Acts of solidarity are also appreciated! ;)