Community Wealth Building
with Neil McInroy of The Democracy Collaborative
Howdy Y’all,
Thank you for being part of the growing Redneck Gone Green community! A friendly reminder that in addition to this weekly writing, we also broadcast live every Monday at 3pm pacific, 6pm eastern on the Democracy at Work YouTube channel.
Our next live show will be Monday, June 2nd at 3pm pacific, 6pm eastern. Our guest will be Neil McInory of The Democracy Collaborative. You can join the conversation and make live comments on YouTube by clicking here
I really encourage you to join us live if possible, which will allow you to make live comments on YouTube. All you have to do is click here. If not, you can always access the recording (both video and audio) by becoming a subscriber on the Redneck Gone Green Youtube channel by clicking here.
Below my signature is a short essay about Neil and his work, which serves as a “deep dive” companion piece to the live broadcast.
Onward to the world we deserve,
David Cobb, The Redneck Gone Green
Neil McInroy is The Democracy Collaborative’s global lead for community wealth building. He has been involved in progressive economic and public policy for more than 25 years. Named as one of the most influential people in local government in the UK, Neil has collaborated with a range of local, regional, state and national governments across Europe, Asia, North America, and Australasia. He is presently a community wealth building adviser to the Scottish Government.
For the past two decades, Neil has served as the CEO of the progressive “think and do” tank Centre for Local Economic Strategies (CLES), based in Manchester, UK. Alongside a range of pioneering economic policy and practice work in UK and beyond, Neil was instrumental in leading the organizations activity on community wealth building (CWB). This included a critical role in the development of the “Preston model” and the subsequent advancement of a range of tools and expertise that has seen CWB grow in many locations across the UK.
On March 20, 2025 “The Community Wealth Building Bill” was introduced in the Scottish Parliament. If passed it will promote community wealth building across Scotland. This approach focuses on retaining economic wealth within local communities by leveraging "anchor" organizations like local councils and health boards. The bill places duties on local authorities and public bodies to form CWB partnerships, create and implement CWB action plans, and consider CWB guidance when developing their own strategies. The Scottish Government is also tasked with producing guidance on CWB implementation.
Key aspects of the Bill:
Purpose:
To reduce economic and wealth inequality and support economic growth across Scotland.
Action Plans:
Local authorities and public bodies must develop and implement CWB action plans, potentially in partnership with other areas.
CWB Partnerships:
Local authorities and public bodies are required to form CWB partnerships to work on these plans.
Guidance:
The Scottish Ministers will produce guidance for action plan development and CWB implementation.
"Due Regard":
Certain public bodies must consider CWB guidance when developing their corporate plans.
Anchor Organizations:
The bill aims to harness the influence of anchor organizations to create jobs, retain wealth, and strengthen local economies.
Retention of Wealth:
The core intention is to retain more wealth within local areas by creating and sustaining jobs, growing local firms, and increasing local asset ownership.
Fairer Economy:
The bill aims to create a fairer and more equal society through a community wealth building approach.
Community Wealth Building (Scotland) Bill - Scottish Parliament
This Bill was introduced by the Scottish Government on Wednesday 20 March 2025. ... Community Wealth Building (CWB) is an approach...
Scottish Parliament - Citizen Space
Community Wealth Building (Scotland) Bill: Financial Memorandum
About the Bill Community wealth building is an approach to economic development. It focuses on ensuring that economic wealth is ge...
Scottish Parliament
Community Wealth Building (Scotland) Bill - Scottish Parliament
4 days ago — The Bill would also place a duty on local authorities and relevant public bodies in their area to form 'CWB partnerships...
Scottish Parliament
Community Wealth Building in General
What is community wealth building (CWB)?
Community Wealth Building (CWB) is an economic development model that transforms local economies based on communities having direct ownership and control of their assets. It challenges the failing approaches that have been widely accepted in American economic development for too long, and addresses wealth inequality at its core.
Where did it come from?
First articulated by The Democracy Collaborative (TDC) in 2005, CWB takes progressive elements like community land trusts, worker cooperatives, public banking, and more – elements that have previously only existed as one-offs – and supercharges their power, systemically connecting and scaling them to change people’s lives and the economic future of our communities. It does so in coordination with local governments, economic development teams, anchor institutions, and community leaders and organizations: helping them to work in harmony, identify what elements are needed, and see the big picture as they replicate successful new tactics.
The Democracy Collaborative believes that when practiced in a holistic and interconnected way, CWB can democratize our economy from the ground up to build the equitable and sustainable political-economic system we all need.
Who is CWB for?
While its principles can and should be applied at all levels by all actors within a local economy, CWB is especially powerful as the defining framework of a local government. It is made for cities and localities not satisfied with tinkering around the edges, and those who are ready to reset the system entirely – challenging the very ideas that have been widely accepted in American economic development for too long, and addressing wealth inequality at its core.
How is community wealth building practiced?
The crises we face are driven by the extractive nature of our existing system – concentrated ownership, community disinvestment, attacks on labor, environmental degradation, and structural social and racial injustice. Community wealth building (CWB) directly confronts and addresses these trends - building an economic system where broad and democratic ownership lays the groundwork for greater equity, social and racial justice. It achieves this through the following five pillars of direct intervention into local economies:
Inclusive and democratic enterprise. Cities should have multiple forms of worker and consumer cooperatives, social enterprises, public ownership, municipal enterprise, and more, based on the recognition that the ownership of productive capital is at the heart of where power lies in any political-economic system.
Locally rooted finance. Cities and local institutions should redirect money in service of the real economy through public and community banks, credit unions, targeted public pension investments.
Fair work. Every worker must receive a living wage and real power in and control of their workplace for decent work and conditions, and advancing trade union rights.
Just use of land and property. Cities should mobilize land and property assets to build real wealth in communities, bring local land and real estate development back under community control, and combat speculation and displacement.
Progressive procurement. Local governments and place-based “anchor institutions” should lead with procurement practices that re-localize economic activity, build local multipliers and end leakage and financial extraction.
Within all of these five pillars are various elements that are direct interventions that help democratize local economies from the ground up. These include:
Community Land Trusts (CLTs)
Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFIs)
Worker-owned enterprises and co-operatives
Employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs)
Local government partnerships with anchor institutions (e.g., hospitals and universities)
These elements are not new – they have been benefiting communities across the world for generations. Yet, while they can produce real and positive outcomes for people, on their own they are not transformative unless linked to a larger context. What is missing from these individual elements is a broader, cohesive strategy. CWB sees the big picture, implementing each element in a holistic and interconnected way across all of the five pillars. In so doing, it achieves the urgency, speed, and scale required for this moment. We call this the Community Wealth Building “Wedge.”
One key procedural element of Community Wealth Building is the role of anchor institutions: large commercial, public and third sector organizations with a significant presence and stake in the local community. These include local authorities, public bodies, colleges, universities, hospitals, schools and housing associations. As large employers, purchasers of goods and services, and owners of land and property, these anchors exert significant influence on the local economy and labor market -the are economic agents. If anchor institutions work together they can have a transformative effect on the prosperity and wellbeing of their local communities.
“The Wedge”:
The Wedge represents CWB’s transformative power – powerfully combining the actions within these pillars to disrupt and displace the extractive economy, creating a new model that drives a more democratic economy from the local to the global.
TDC’s tried and tested methodology deploys this Wedge using an appreciative inquiry-based approach. This, in turn, produces a suite of actions which, taken together, act as the Wedge to democratize the local economy through practical, focused and achievable steps. TDC is developing the tools – from trainings to briefings to toolkits – and communities of practice with the resource, support, and expertise needed to take this movement from the fringes to the mainstream.