We’ve got a great new testimonial from Rebekah Hanlon, a worker-owner at the very wonderful Valley Green Feast workers’ collective, about Co-opoly: The Game of Cooperatives. Check out what she has to say below about how awesome Co-opoly is and then, if you’re in the Pioneer Valley of Massachusetts, check out her collective’s site here!

For someone who isn’t terribly competitive, Co-opoly offered the perfect solution to all of those head to head board games. Instead of expending extra energy to try and outsmart my friends, I got to take part in a process that engaged everyone equally, highlighted the teams strengths and got us thinking in new ways. I was impressed with Co-opoly’s ability to create intelligent dialogue within the group one minute and in the next challenge us to act out the word ‘fuzzy’. Co-opoly the board game is accessible, educational, hilarious and truly unique, never have I played such a well rounded game!

You can purchase Co-opoly using the form below or visit our store here.

We want to thank everyone that’s contributed to our fund that allows us to share Co-opoly for free with organizations around the world doing important social and economic justice work. Because of you, far more groups of people have access to Co-opoly and can use it to advance their important work and efforts. In addition to Kranti in India, we recently sent free copies of Co-opoly to Occupy Wall Street organizers and we are just about to send free copies to organizers with the Yakima Food Co-op and the Brooklyn Launchpad. Now, most of you probably know about Occupy Wall Street, the movement that sparked mobilizations for economic justice across the country, but you may be less familiar with the two other recent recipients of free copies of Co-opoly. So, we’d like to take a moment to shine a light on them!

Yakima Food Cooperative is a start-up co-op in the Yakima Valley of Washington State. The Yakima region has one of the highest production of food products in the state while simultaneously having one of the highest rates of hunger. It’s this kind of food disparity and injustice that the Yakima project is seeking to correct. The co-op is just beginning their membership drive and they say that they’ve got their work cut out for them in order to get the necessary number of members needed to open up their store. The group leading the charge is organizing house parties as well as potlucks with the intent to create discussions around the power of local investment. While the region is incredibly agriculturally rich, the town has an extremely high poverty rate. They plan to use Co-opoly in order to “get the word out about how co-ops enrich communities.” We wish them the best of luck and hope that Co-opoly will be of use in their incredibly important endeavor!

The Brooklyn Launchpad is a non-profit offering free events to the public. According to their website, “LaunchPad is a creative gathering place focused on the arts, community programs, technology, and anything else that captures the imagination.” What’s more is that LaunchPad is dedicated to creating at least one new cooperative a year. Just recently, they launched their first co-op: the Brooklyn Yoga Co-operative. What’s neat about the Brooklyn Yoga Cooperative is that they operate on a sliding scale, just like TESA and Co-opoly! We hope Co-opoly can be a powerful tool in their organizing and education efforts.

If you want to help us give Co-opoly for free to even more organizations, schools, and groups doing amazing work, please use the form below to contribute to this fund. We can’t do it without you! In addition, if you know of another group that you think should receive Co-opoly for free to help with their organizing for social and economic change, get in touch with us. We’d love to hear your thoughts.

Contribute to Our Fund To Give Co-opoly Away For Free to Schools, Organizations, and Groups

You can also purchase your own copy of Co-opoly here!

We have some fantastic photos and a testimonial that have come in from Canada. The testimonial comes from Donna Balkan, a long-time cooperative and board game enthusiast.

As both a co-operator and a long-time player and collector of board games, Co-opoly is a dream come true. Educational games have a tendency to be long on learning and short on playability, but Co-opoly is a wonderful exception, combining the real-life challenges and opportunities co-ops face with solid game play. The Work cards, which require you to draw, act out a charade or describe a specific word or phrase, give Co-opoly a party game feel, while the roll-and-move mechanics make the game easy for players at all skill levels to learn. Like co-ops themselves, Co-opoly combines principle and practice: an appropriate initiative for the International Year of Co-operatives and beyond.

- Donna Balkan, Communications Manager, Canadian Co-operative Association.

Purchase Co-opoly

• NEW: Read about how you play Co-opoly!
• Read about our ethical production of Co-opoly here. Co-opoly is entirely made in the USA, primarily by other cooperatives, and mostly on recycled paper.

Help Us Get Co-opoly Into Schools, Community Groups, Organizations

We have started a fund that will allow us to provide Co-opoly for cheap or free to schools, community groups, and other organizations who might otherwise be unable to afford the game. If you are interested in contributing to this fund, use the box below and click Add to Cart. Any amount helps, even $1. (This is a gift, not a donation).

A new, great testimonial from two students who were unsure if a game could be both extremely fun and a learning experience:

Co-opoly is a great game! Admittedly, we were a bit skeptical at first about how fun it would be since it’s intended to be educational. However, once we began playing, it immediately proved to be very enjoyable. It has a lighthearted and social quality that you expect from a game, but also raises real life situations and encourages the players to think about how business and economy work. It incorporates both the positive opportunities and resources that arise for individuals and the entire co-op, as well as presenting everyday challenges that individuals and the co-op are sure to encounter. This helps put into perspective the difficulties of running a co-op, as well as illustrating the huge benefits it can offer. There are always several options provided for how to use the resources or deal with the challenges, and since the game is inherently collaborative, those decisions are always made as a group. Co-opoly is a multilayered game that was clearly very well thought out, but it is not overly complicated. As a first time player, it only takes a few minutes to pick up on the rules. Also, it incorporates other games throughout, such as charades, drawing, and unspoken, which keeps it playful and more accessible for anyone who knows those games. It’s just really fun and totally worth buying!

-Liz McGourty and Gillian Cannon, students at Hampshire College

Hey Co-opoly fans, did you know that we have a fund that you can contribute to so that we can provide Co-opoly for free or cheap to organizations around the world doing important work for advancing social and economic justice?

The first organization that we have sent a free copy off to is “Kranti,” based in India. Their mission is as follows:

Kranti puts the life choices of girls rescued from sex work back into their hands. At Kranti, we let the girls choose their career goals and provide them with the resources to achieve those goals.

The girls that come out of Kranti are therefore empowered by making the decisions for their own lives, successful professional women who are able to contribute to the economy and society.

Looking at these successful women, society will learn to value women for their capabilities and intellects and not just their bodies.

We truly hope that Kranti will find Co-opoly to be a powerful resource in striving to improve the lives of the girls and young women that are part of their program. Go to their website to learn more.

However, this was only made possible because people like you contributed to the fund. If you’d like to help us keep sharing Co-opoly for free with more organizations around the world, please consider making a contribution on this page or below.

Already we’ve raised a few hundred dollars, which is a great start, and will allow us to send more Co-opoly’s to organizations making an impact locally and globally. If you know of another organization that might be interested in receiving a free copy of Co-opoly to advance their mission, get in touch with us!

Help Us Get Co-opoly Into Schools, Community Groups, Organizations

Here’s a great testimonial about Co-opoly from someone who recently played the game, who was skeptical about a “cooperative game” and didn’t know much about cooperatives:

I didn’t know a thing about co-ops and was skeptical it was possible for a game about them to be fun. Then I played Co-opoly, and it was great—not only did I learn about the co-operative movement and get my feet wet running a co-op, I learned a lot about my friends and myself. The game incites both reflection and laughter and was such an enjoyable way to spend time with friends.

-Taliesin Nyala

Co-opoly is now available for purchase!

We’re a small cooperative trying to do big things. That means we don’t have the huge outreach power available to mega corporations. Instead, we’re relying on the help of grassroots supporters to spread the word about Co-opoly: The Game of Cooperatives.

If you’re interested in helping us do outreach, we’d love your support. In addition to telling friends, family, and peers about Co-opoly on social networks, in person, and via e-mail, other major ways to spread the word is to add a Co-opoly widget to your site (see below) and/or put a Co-opoly flyer up around your town (see below).

Widget

Add this .gif to your site. The code to do so is the following:

<p style=”text-align: center;”><a href=”http://coopolygame.com/store”><img title=”CoopolyBannerAd-Order” src=”http://coopolygame.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/CoopolyBannerAd-Order.gif” alt=”" width=”300″ height=”250″ /></a></p>

Flyer

Please also consider printing out this flyer in your co-op, at your coffee shop, and/or around your town.

You can download a high quality version of this poster here.

You can download a high quality version of this poster here.

Co-opoly, a powerful resource for cultivating democratic communities, comes at a time when people are struggling to envision a new world. This game has been hotly anticipated with pre-orders from around the globe.

Northampton, Massachusetts, Nov 28, 2011 – As the cooperative movement gains global traction, with 800 million co-op members and 100 million employees in 2011, the launch of The Toolbox for Education and Social Action’s (TESA) latest tool “Co-opoly: The Game of Cooperatives” marks another milestone for the cooperative movement.

Produced by TESA, a worker cooperative based in Massachusetts, Co-opoly is a new game of skill and solidarity: where everyone wins or everybody loses! While promising to keep players on their toes and in stitches of laughter, Co-opoly is much more than just a board game – it’s a tool that helps people break away from the ‘winner takes all’ mentality and discover the boundless possibilities that arise from cooperation.

Communally developed over a three-year period of playing, testing and revision, Co-opoly hits the stage not a moment too soon. From the Arab Spring to the Occupy movement in the U.S., people are demanding more democratic communities and economies. Frustrated by banks, businesses, and institutions that do nothing for the majority, citizens around the world are pouring into the streets looking for alternatives.

And Co-opoly provides just that. From the classroom to the factory, the farm, the independent start-up, the grocery store, and more, this tool offers players the chance to think outside the box of pure profit and imagine new ways of social organization. It’s perfect for educators trying to facilitate creative discussions about the world economy, for workers looking for ways to develop their own cooperative work-places, and for households that want to have a great time while creating true democracy. In fact, Co-opoly is launching just as cooperatives are stepping into the spotlight with the United Nations declaring 2012 to be the International Year of Cooperatives.

Already Co-opoly has received orders from countries on nearly every continent, from Massachusetts to Morocco and from Scotland to South Korea!

TESA aimed to reflect Co-opoly’s core values of democracy and a just economy in the game’s very production. Every component of the game was created in the U.S, using primarily recycled materials and produced predominantly by worker cooperatives, all of them within 70 miles of TESA’s location!

The ethical production of Co-opoly has made its manufacturing costs much more expensive than games produced in sweatshops. Yet, TESA is proud to keep the game’s price comparable to other independent board games. Co-opoly is for sale at CoopolyGame.com for a sliding scale price of $42 – $65. This means the consumer decides how much they pay! What’s more, free additional resources on cooperatives will come with Co-opoly, including lessons plans, Introduction to Cooperatives literature, and more!

Co-opoly's current game board

• Read testimonials from people who have played Co-opoly here.
• NEW: Read about how you play Co-opoly!
• Read about our ethical production of Co-opoly here. Co-opoly is entirely made in the USA, primarily by other cooperatives, and mostly on recycled paper.
• View photos from people who have played Co-opoly here.
• Watch Co-opoly’s overview video here.

Check out Co-opoly’s great box and board art below!

Co-opoly Box Cover - Front. Click to enlarge.

Co-opoly's game board. Click to enlarge.

• Read testimonials from people who have played Co-opoly here.
• NEW: Read about how you play Co-opoly!
• Read about our ethical production of Co-opoly here. Co-opoly is entirely made in the USA, primarily by other cooperatives, and mostly on recycled paper.
• View photos from people who have played Co-opoly here.
• Watch Co-opoly’s overview video here.

Note: In Co-opoly: The Game of Cooperatives, players collaborate to found and run a democratic business. In order to survive as individuals and to strive for the success of their co-op, players make tough choices regarding big and small challenges while putting their teamwork abilities to the test. This is an exciting game of skill and solidarity, where everyone wins – or everybody loses. By playing Co-opoly, people discover the unique benefits, challenges, and operations of the cooperative world – as well as the skills needed to participate in a co-op! Co-opoly is produced by The Toolbox for Education and Social Action (TESA).

We at the Toolbox for Education and Social Action (TESA) are incredibly proud that we have been able to produce Co-opoly: The Game of Cooperatives in an ethically and environmentally conscious way.  
At the core of Co-opoly’s mission is a desire for a more democratic and just economy. Yet, it’s not enough to simply design and sell a game that we hope will strengthen the cooperative movement – we must also live up to the ethical principles of this movement through the manufacturing process of our game. That’s why we’ve taken the following steps:

• All components of Co-opoly are created in the United States  (ranging from the dice to the game components and packaging)
• The majority of Co-opoly is printed by worker cooperatives.
• The majority of Co-opoly’s components are created in New England (where TESA is based), and the majority of Co-opoly’s components are created within 70 miles of TESA’s location.
• Almost all of the game components are printed on recycled paper or sourced through the Sustainable Forestry Initiative.

As far as we know, we are the only organization to manufacture a board game in this way – meaning we are paving a road in this industry, a long tradition of the co-op world. Yet, if there was any doubt, allow us to inform you that creating a product the right way is just as expensive as it is important.  Nonetheless, our goal is to provide Co-opoly at a cost for you that is comparable to other independent board games, and also allow us to continue to develop and produce Co-opoly in the future. Additionally, the surplus from Co-opoly will allow us to offset the cost of creating free educational resources that can be used alongside the game, which will be available for download on our website.

To manufacture our first pressing of Co-opoly, the total cost per unit is roughly $32 – a much larger cost than what people who have their games produced unethically pay.  For example, the dice we bought, which are from one of the only companies that makes dice from start to finish in the U.S., cost $750 for 1000. In contrast, if we had bought our dice from a supplier who bought their dice in China, it would cost between $40-$60 for 1,000.  And that’s just the dice! Certainly when we do larger pressings in the future, this cost will drop – but it will still remain much higher than games that depend on sweatshop labor.

We want to be able to sell Co-opoly at the most affordable price possible. Simultaneously, we must balance the need to be able to fairly compensate the many people who have worked so hard to make Co-opoly possible, ensure the continued success of our small worker cooperative, and be able to print the second edition of Co-opoly as soon as possible.  With all that in mind, we chose to price Co-opoly on a sliding scale of $38 – $70 (this means you choose how much you pay), with a suggested price of $55. This cost will allow us to reinvest in TESA, fairly pay those who worked on the project, and have a solid financial foundation from which we can build the second edition of Co-opoly as ethically and environmentally friendly as possible.

One thing to keep in mind is that we aren’t actually making that much money off of each game we sell, compared to the cost and time that goes into Co-opoly’s production. However, one advantage we have is that TESA is a worker cooperative – meaning we don’t have shareholders or a couple people at the top looking to reap as much profit as possible. Instead, the people who work in the business own it together equally, and so the amount we need to earn to consider a product “successful” is much less than what a normal corporation would “need.” In essence, our worker cooperative nature gives us the ability to spend much more on the production of the game to ensure both people and the planet aren’t exploited in the process. This means that we’re able to live up to the missoin of Co-opoly every step of the way.

If you have any questions or are interested in learning more about the cost or production of Co-opoly, please contact us at info [at] coopolygame [dot] com

More Information

Why Sliding Scale?

We’ve set a sliding scale for Co-opoly for a few reasons:

• We want to ensure Co-opoly is as accessible as possible to people and groups across socio-economic lines. This means making our price ranges flexible. In addition, if someone purchases Co-opoly at a higher rate, it will allow us to more easily offer the product for affordable rates to those who need them.
• People should have some say in how much they value a resource and therefore how much they want to pay for it.

• Read testimonials from people who have played Co-opoly here.
• NEW: Read about how you play Co-opoly!
• Read about our ethical production of Co-opoly here. Co-opoly is entirely made in the USA, primarily by other cooperatives, and mostly on recycled paper.
• View photos from people who have played Co-opoly here.
• Watch Co-opoly’s overview video here.

Help Us Get Co-opoly Into Schools, Community Groups, Organizations

We have started a fund that will allow us to provide Co-opoly for cheap or free to schools, community groups, and other organizations who might otherwise be unable to afford the game. If you are interested in contributing to this fund, use the box below and click Add to Cart. Any amount helps, even $1. (This is a gift, not a donation).

Help Us Make International Shipping Affordable

It’s an unfortunate truth that international shipping is expensive, which could set up barriers for people who would like to purchase Co-opoly across the world. (We’ve already received orders from Morocco, Argentina, the UK, Japan, and more!) That’s why we’ve started a fund to make international shipping affordable for those who might not be able to pay for the game and international shipping. If you are interested in contributing to this fund, use the box below and click Add to Cart. Any amount helps, even $1. (This is a gift, not a donation).