# 11 Questions for a Lawyer

Since the co-op is considering incorporating in some form, we have been talking to Beloved Community Incubator (BCI) for legal support with this. As a next step, they asked us to answer 11 questions.

This proposal is to get consensus and agreement on how we'll be answering these 11 questions. We've discussed these questions in a couple of meetings, and already had agreement in several of them.

1. **How do you want the coop to be managed? By an elected board, by the members themselves, by one or more managers?**
    1. Relevant [membership agreement](https://greensandbeansgrocery.com/books/internal-operations/page/membership).
2. **How will major decisions be made? Majority vote, super majority, consensus, modified consensus?**
    1. Relevant [governance proposal](https://greensandbeansgrocery.com/books/archive/page/formalizing-the-proposal-and-voting-process).
3. **What are some decisions that you think should be considered “major”? For example: Deciding when to buy more paper towels vs. deciding to convert your coop bakery into a coop bowling alley.**
    1. The current list from the [governance proposal](https://greensandbeansgrocery.com/books/archive/page/formalizing-the-proposal-and-voting-process) is: "proposals that would increase costs to members, use the cooperative's funds, or make changes to the membership agreement."
    2. To ask lawyer: is what we have enough? Are there other major categories/principles we should consider.
4. **Do you want to have committees? What sort of committees might make sense?**
    1. We do currently have committees (working groups): 
        1. Social & Comms (onboarding)
        2. Products (getting the things)
        3. Governance
        4. Finance (two co-treasurers)
        5. Business Development
5. **Will all workers be members? (i.e. will there be employees that never become members?)**
    1. General agreement that paid employees should be members, but would need to be a different category of member (e.g., might not be required to contribute additions labor or pay dues). Would this pose any issues with labor laws? How would this impact which path we choose for legal incorporation?
6. **Will there be a probationary period before a worker can become a member? What is this period?**
    1. Relevant [proposal](https://greensandbeansgrocery.com/books/archive/page/trial-period-for-new-members) on probationary periods. Note that we've also discussed re-evaluating proposals regularly.
7. **Will all the workers have the legal right to work in the U.S.?**
    1. We want anyone to be able to receive payment for if we decide to pay people to do work. Generally in favor of paying employees but want to be able to do so. We don't yet know if these workers will be employees or worker members.
8. **How do you intend to pay your members? Salaries? Commissions? Profit Distributions? Some combination of these?**
    1. At the moment we don't intend to pay members, unless (as mentioned above) we hire employees (salaried but also an owner class?). Then they would be salaried. At the moment we don't think we'll be do profit distributions, preferring to re-invest all profit into the co-op.
9. **How will you decide whether to admit new members?**
    1. Relevant [membership agreement](https://greensandbeansgrocery.com/books/internal-operations/page/membership). They must also pass the probationary period.
10. **How will you decide whether to remove/expel members?**
    1. Relevant [membership agreement](https://greensandbeansgrocery.com/books/internal-operations/page/membership).
11. **Is it important to you to use the word “cooperative” in your name?**
    1. No

The vote in this proposal is a simple Yes / No on accepting these answers and taking them to BCI to talk to a lawyer.

<span style="text-decoration: underline;">**Results**</span>

- The total number of eligible voting members was 20, so the number of votes needed for the proposal to be approved was 11.
- The number of ballots cast was 14 ballots (14 valid ballots, 0 empty ballots), all 14 of which voted to approve the proposal.
- Thus, the proposal passed.

[![image.png](https://greensandbeansgrocery.com/uploads/images/gallery/2025-11/scaled-1680-/image.png)](https://greensandbeansgrocery.com/uploads/images/gallery/2025-11/image.png)