Meet Paul Bindel
Originally from New Mexico, Paul first witnessed the power of cooperatives first hand during graduate school at the University of Oregon when he lived in and served as President of the Student Cooperative Association. Paul has extensive experience in cooperative development and support, including co-founding Queen City Cooperative, a limited-equity housing cooperative, and the Colorado Solidarity Fund, a grassroots investment club focused on locally-owned cooperative businesses.
Paul’s business background includes copywriting, video storytelling and digital marketing strategy. He has helped place-based organizations, city agencies, nonprofits and small businesses achieve their business goals through strategically executed content. He brings careful thinking, a vision for social equity and inspired energy to each project.
Paul leads the Democratizing Ownership strategy, reaching traditionally underserved communities and supporting the creation of worker-owned and resident-owned enterprises at Center for Community Wealth Building.
"What drives me every day is the redistribution of
wealth and power and the flow of energy that is
released when that happens. I am here for all
the people I touch and for myself to feel more
liberation.My belief is that there is too much
money in the world that is misplaced and we
need to take back local control of finances.
Most things are possible given time."
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MISSION
We seek to invest in locally-owned cooperative businesses and to build economic education among our members.
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VISION
At Colorado Solidarity Fund, we envision a Colorado where collective economic power is maximized and transforms the economic landscape–where our investments thrive and businesses contribute to the economic, social and environmental well-being of our community.
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SEEKING
Coloradans who want to grow and strengthen the solidarity economy.
Paul’s Story
Paul is originally from Carlsbad, New Mexico, a small rural community tucked away three hours from any major city. He taught community college and 10th grade English. It was during this time that he went to the New York Stock Exchange as part of an education program with his students that allowed him to do a deep dive into financial education, which grew into a passion.
During an educational movement, Paul started organizing with a small group in Colorado to form a study circle. It was during this time that he befriended Matt, who had formed an investment club in Minneapolis. The idea really resonated, and it was soon after that Paul started working with a legal clinic to understand the bylaws and securities compliance needed to form the Colorado Solidarity Fund (CSF).
CSF is an investment club of more than 60 Coloradans who seek to grow and strengthen the solidarity economy in Colorado. By combining their resources, they make patient capital more easily available to co-ops for start-up, conversion, and expansion. Members can contribute as little as $20/month and the investment club (set up like a co-op) votes on allocation of investments. In 2018, they had 41 members (now 62) and have been able to pool about $50,000 per year. Paul continues to look for ways to add the most value to his community with this work.
We’re breaking away from the traditional path of
inequitable, unrepresentative, and inaccessible
business and corporate securities legal services
by going even further and creating a dynamic,
multidimensional, culturally representative law firm
dedicated to providing creative, representative legal
and business strategies to BIPOC-owned
businesses, nonprofits, cooperatives,
and investment companies.
Q & A
We recently sat down with Paul Bindel to find out more about his passions, his calling and generally dive in deeper to get to know him.
1
ICC has grown to over 250 practitioners and allies, all deploying a range of debt, equity, and real estate instruments to support BIPOC entrepreneurs and catalyze community wealth. How did you discover ICC and what drew you to become a partner?
One of our members is on the board of Zebras Unite, and some of our members attended the original conference, so that is how I found my way to ICC. CSF is a complete volunteer-run project, with no staff. It is something we all do because we care about the work. We are relatively small in the ICC world, but are always eager to connect with other organizations and find opportunities for us to better engage and champion our work.
2
What are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced in your work over the last few years?
One of the biggest challenges is that we did not meet in-person for two years, which was difficult because a lot of why people join is to meet others and feel that sense of connection. As many other organizations, we shifted to 100% zoom meetings and really just pushed through the challenges. We launched in 2018, and officially started making loans in 2019. 2020 was the first real year that we could make significant loans. We made an equity investment of $25,000 that year, which might not seem like a lot but is big for us!
3
Developing alternative business models to the startup status quo has become a central moral challenge of our time. These alternatives want to balance profit and purpose and put a premium on sharing power and resources.
Why is getting investments in this alternative model crucial for those who seek it?
Giving people the ability to allocate resources more effectively to help them live better lives by either saving them money or helping them make money creates community benefit. 62% of our owners and operators are women, and 46% are BIPOC. By sharing risk, cooperatives make business ownership possible for entrepreneurs of all backgrounds. They financially stabilize their local economy, resulting in stronger resilience during economic recession. Cooperatives are successful because they provide valuable services and save consumers money. Since the primary goal of cooperatives is to meet needs, not generate profits, they can serve members at low cost.
4
How do we shift the narrative about the role of capital in BIPOC communities and reframe the perceptions of the risk involved?
What we did as a group is calibrated our expectations and goals. We sent out a survey to everyone that was very educational. As we were going through it, we were asking questions like who gets paid back if a business fails, what is your openness to risk, could you lose all your money tomorrow and would it be okay. This really helped us learn as a group. Our average members are putting in $50/month, so when you look at that amount it’s easy to take on more risk. If we were to experience a default on a $25,000 loan, the most someone could lose would be less than 5%, so collectively we are reducing the risk of loss. We have never had a default, and we always emphasize with our borrowers that we are very accommodating and want to work with them. We are distributing risk between 60 people, so that allows us to operate in a different framework–60 people can put their mind to it and make it happen.
5
What are the top three pieces of advice you would give to BIPOC entrepreneurs, who are dedicated to both purpose and profit, as they are starting or scaling their business?
Listen deeply to your customers. If you are developing a business and you have an idea, I think there is room in the business development process for simplification. Your customers will guide you to that and help you focus on what is needed the most.
Find ways to let go of perfection and attachment to needing to be perfect before you can act. I’ve learned so much about the value of taking action and doing something every day, and pursuing even a small result. Even if it is not perfect or complete, the effort to take action really does generate a return.
What in your business has the power to give you the most leverage? Identifying something that makes your life easier.
6
What is the call to action for investors who seek to promote social justice through investment solutions?
Spend time deconstructing your relationship to money because that is actually the stranglehold that is around most of us. It is going to take internal work. There is a spiritual path you can pursue where you understand what is happening within you and unlock certain things for yourself and others. There is a political path that you can pursue where you understand how your values can create some sort of change or social impact in the world. There are so many default ways our society thinks about money that are actually against our community’s best interest. Spending time deconstructing money could have a lot of power for our society. Everyone has the power to create some difference in their community.
You are committed to creating sustainable
and equitable businesses through
collective action and ownership.
JUST: We create products and processes that uphold “nothing about us without us.”
RESPONSIVE: We listen to and build with multiple, diverse perspectives.
RADICAL: We commit systemic change by injecting restorative justice into Finance.
COOPERATIVE: We co-own and co-build this work through participatory processes.
HOLISTIC: We value the uncounted resources of lived experience and whole people.
EMERGENT: We listen and learn, adapt and modify, and value “done” over “perfect.
ABOUT US
Team members across two locations and back office: 22
Number of transactions: 76,505
Payroll and benefits total for location workers since acquisitions: $512,878
Lawyers and law students trained: 5+
Total program partners: 10
Sales since location acquisitions: $1,134,063