A non-profit coop? Hmmm. Really?

A different world is possible

Some people have noticed that we introduce ourselves as a non-profit organisation. Since cooperatives by definition are not non-profits, we were asked what do we mean by that, are we really a non-profit and are we registered as such.

Yes. We are a non-profit organisation. In our foundation documents members have decided that profits can not be payed out. All profits we make are accumulated in Solidarity fund, used to finance socially beneficiary projects. To be honest, we still have to try to register as a non-profit organisation and it will be interesting to find out what the state thinks about us.
An organisation should be observed by criteria what does it do with surplus value. Does it go to somebody or is it used for organisations' goals. A good example are NGO's. They can create surplus value, but have to use it to achieve their goals. Slobodna domena uses the same principle. We have explicitly decided not to accumulate profit for our members but to initiate and support projects based on our values: struggle for common goods, just distribution of surplus value, protection and promotion od equality, democratic decision making and fight against discrimination.
From our colleagues from ZEF (Cooperative for ethical financing, ethical bank) we learned that they managed to register as a non-profit. On the other hand, probably the most well known Croatian social coop, Humana Nova, did not make it. It's yet to be seen how we'll do.