We are closed

Carolina Common Enterprise was North Carolina’s cooperative development center. A 501(c)(3) tax-exempt nonprofit funded primarily from USDA Rural Development sources, CCE provided training and technical assistance to cooperative and community owned businesses across our state. Our approach of “helping people help themselves” supported community-based entrepreneurs to address local economic and social needs through a mutually owned enterprise.

Cooperatives are a global movement, founded on the values of self-help, self-responsibility, democracy, equality, equity, and solidarity. We are people organized to exercise greater control over our own economic, social and cultural lives. We are not ruled by any government or financial institution. We do not depend on any particular organization or agency. CCE is closed. The mission and movement continues.

Cooperatives are people-centered enterprises owned, controlled and run by and for their members to realize their common economic, social, and cultural needs and aspirations.

A cooperative strategy allows communities to exercise greater control over their own economic circumstances. Any co-op is at root a business that is owned and democratically controlled by the people who directly benefit from its activities. “Co-opreneurship” supports individual wealth creation and economic assets that are anchored in their communities. Rather than extracting wealth for the benefit of private capital, co-ops recirculate money locally.