What Cooperative is — governance for co-ops and member-owned firms

Cooperative is the governance layer for any member-owned organization: consumer co-ops, worker co-ops, employee-owned firms, mutuals, community land trusts, food co-ops.

Tabs:
• **Members** — your roster: active member count, member class, capital account balance, patronage.
• **Proposals** — proposals open for vote, with results and status.
• **Distributions** — dividends and patronage distributions to members.
• **Bylaws** — voting weight rules and member classes.

Cooperative runs in the org context. It assumes the basic accounting of a co-op: each member has a capital account (their share of equity) and accrues patronage (their share of allocable surplus, typically proportional to their use of the co-op).

The core idea: governance happens in this module, not in Slack. Proposals are formal records, votes are logged, results are reproducible from the audit trail.