Need to draft some legal documents but don't know where to begin? If you need sample bylaws, employee handbooks, and policy documents, then you're in the right place! These model legal documents are a great place to start if you're building a worker cooperative, worker self-directed nonprofit, solar cooperative, or housing cooperative from scratch!
JUMP TO Templates for: Worker Cooperatives | Worker Self-Directed Nonprofits | Energy Sovereignty Projects | Land Return and Housing Justice Projects | Miscellaneous
worker coops
The Law Center prioritizes cooperatives for a simple reason: We believe that enterprises and assets should be owned and controlled by the communities that depend on them for livelihoods, sustenance, and ecological well-being. Below are some templates to help you and your partners build a worker cooperative of your own!
Bylaws and Articles of Incorporation
✅ Use these bylaws and articles of incorporation if your coop will have a collective board.
✅ For coops with a representative board and community investors, use these bylaws and articles of incorporation.
Operating Agreements
✅ Use this bilingual (English/Spanish) template operating agreement for a worker owned LLC.
✅ Here is another example of a bilingual (English/Spanish) operating agreement for a worker owned LLC (but with cartoons)!
✅ For a more accessible version, try using this operating agreement with cartoons!
Employee Handbooks
✅ These templates will help your cooperative draft your own employee handbooks.
✅ Use this handbook if you are a worker-owned cooperative corporation.
✅ Use this handbook if you are a worker-owned LLC.
Disclosure Document
✅ Here is an example of a disclosure document for worker cooperatives.
wsdn
What do you get when you cross a worker cooperative with a 501(c)(3) nonprofit? A worker self-directed nonprofit!
As the movement for economic and workplace democracy continues to grow, we think it is vitally important that nonprofit organizations also internalize and practice workplace democracy. We've put a fair bit of thought into our own organizational structure and culture, and now we are working to provide resources like the templates below!
Bylaws
✅ Check out this template for bylaws for a worker self-directed nonprofit.
✅ For more advice on how to create participatory bylaws, try using our bylaws toolkit!
Policy Document
✅ This is the Law Center's Policy Document, where we record all of the policies we've adopted over the years.
radical real estate
We're incubating the East Bay Permanent Real Estate Cooperative, a new model of collective land ownership that mobilizes community capital to preserve affordable and democratically controlled housing and commercial spaces.
Bylaws and Articles of Incorporation
✅ Check out our template bylaws and articles of incorporation for our client and fiscally sponsored project EB PREC
✅ Visit EB PREC’s website for more information.
Sharing Agreement Template for Co-housing Projects
✅ Here are some questions you should ask each other before you start a co-housing project.
Sample Rematriation Easement (AKA “Kinship Conservation Easement” or “Cultural Easement”)
✅ As a potential model for future easements, this template is meant to be a seed that can foster growth of diverse alternatives to the parceled-up, exclusionary, extractive, oppressive, and isolating forms of “normal” property ownership.
energy sovereignty projects
Community-ownership of renewable energy enterprises is critical to a rapid and equitable transition away from fossil fuels. Energy is such a basic and important necessity that everyone should affordably access, own, and control their own clean energy -- that's why we need Energy Democracy.
Bylaws
✅ We incubated the People Power Solar Cooperative and helped them draft these bylaws.
Solar Site Host Agreement
✅ We also helped the People Power Solar Cooperative develop this solar site host agreement for its first project.
misc
Fair and Just Commercial Lease Template
✅ Here is a cartoon template you can use to negotiate your lease with your commercial landlord.