How Our Co-op Structure Enables Us to Live Our Values
It’s easier for values to stick when the structure backs them up.
6 March 2026
March is both B Corp Month and home to International Women’s Day. For SSG, it’s a moment to reflect on how our cooperative model makes it possible to meet the rigorous ethics of B Corp certification, and to enable women and non-binary workers to be majority owners of our business.
With International Women’s Day in March and Earth Day in April, spring brings a predictable wave of greenwashing and pinkwashing from organizations keen to signal values they may not actually practice. It’s one thing to say you care about people and the planet. It’s harder to build a structure that keeps those commitments intact when deadlines loom or budgets tighten.
At SSG, we’re a Certified B Corp, a majority women and non-binary-owned business, and a worker co-operative. Each of those things matters on its own, and together they reinforce each other in ways that shape how we work. For us, the antidote to greenwashing and pinkwashing is a structure that bakes in our commitment to non-extractive and non-exploitative ways of doing business.
When the owners are the workers, the firm is no longer incentivized to prioritize returns over the people doing the work.
Ownership changes what gets optimized
Most business structures treat labour as a resource to be acquired, optimized, and if necessary, cut. The incentive to extract maximum productivity while minimizing cost is baked into conventional corporate logic.
Worker co-operatives offer a different design. When the owners are the workers, the firm is no longer incentivized to prioritize returns over the people doing the work. Worker-owners at SSG have a direct stake in how decisions get made, and they live with the consequences of those decisions. That creates a very different set of pressures than a structure where profits flow to people who are insulated from the day-to-day realities of the work.
That matters especially given the work we do. SSG supports communities to understand the long-term impacts of their decisions, particularly how taking climate action now leads to better outcomes for the people who live there. A structure that incentivizes cutting corners would hamstring our project teams from being able to go deep with communities to find solutions that work in their unique local contexts. Instead, those responsible for doing the work can advocate for an approach that they think will result in the most successful outcome for the communities they work with.
This is why our co-op model is inseparable from our climate work. Many of the crises our clients are grappling with are rooted in the same extractive logic that conventional business structures reproduce. By operating outside of that paradigm, we are deliberately not replicating the patterns that make this work necessary in the first place.
Our structure makes our B Corp scores achievable
The cry of the 99% demonstrated that profit maximization is efficient at generating growth and deeply inefficient at distributing its benefits or accounting for its costs. B Corp Certification exists as a response to that logic, holding for-profit businesses to rigorous, verified standards for how they treat their workers, communities, supply chains, and the environment.
For SSG, B Corp certification was a deliberate choice to demonstrate accountability beyond client satisfaction and financial sustainability. Our co-op structure is a significant part of why we’re able to meet B Corp standards. Through our shared ownership model, we’ve developed an equitable and transparent pay structure, a clear decision-making culture guide, and a governance and operational decision-making matrix. These practices, backed by policies that worker-owners have approved over the years, give workers genuine decision-making authority and a shared responsibility for making sure our work reflects our values.
Through our shared ownership model… we give workers genuine decision-making authority and a shared responsibility for making sure our work reflects our values.
We didn’t achieve our women and non-binary-owned status by setting a diversity target.
Diversity isn’t a bonus
At SSG, our commitment to recognizing and making space for different types of leadership is what has enabled the majority of our owners to be women and non-binary workers.
We didn’t achieve our women and non-binary-owned status by setting a diversity target. Instead, we built different pathways to employment and ownership that don’t require workers to conform to a narrow idea of what a leader looks like. When different leadership styles have genuine room to flourish, different people can access power, and the diversity of perspectives shaping SSG’s work follows from that.
Baking in accountability
We’re glad to be marking both B Corp Month and International Women’s Day this March. Together, they reflect something we care about deeply: transforming how business is done, and making space for the perspectives and leadership styles that have too often been pushed to the margins.
For SSG, our co-op structure is how we stay accountable to our values, keep diverse voices at the decision-making table, and build the kind of organization we actually want to work in. March shines a light on both of those commitments. Our model ensures they’re baked in for the long haul.
About the Author
Emi (she/they) champions SSG’s groundbreaking climate action work by coordinating the monthly SSG Newswire, managing external communication channels, and shaping SSG’s overall communications strategy.
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