In honour of the United Nations’ International Year of Cooperatives, we’re spotlighting a number of Québec cooperatives throughout the year. The fifth installment in this series of mini-interviews is devoted to the solidarity cooperative Populus in Montréal. We interviewed Shylah Wolfe, co-founder and director of the cooperative.
Why did you choose the cooperative model (and the specific type of cooperative you chose, e.g., solidarity, worker, producer, user, etc.)?
We chose the solidarity cooperative model because it reflects our core belief: those who use our services and those who provide them should have a shared voice in shaping them. Our user-producer members and worker members co-govern Populus, ensuring mutual accountability, alignment, and responsiveness.
What has been the biggest challenge in the process of starting and/or running the cooperative?
Designing comprehensive service packages that meet diverse member needs — without becoming too complex — has been a key challenge. We’re constantly balancing custom support with clarity and consistency, all while navigating more demand than we can sometimes meet.
What is the best advice you received or the advice you would give someone else who is considering starting a cooperative?
A cooperative is still a business — but with people at the centre. Be ready for the added (and worthwhile) complexity of collective decision-making. Many choices that would typically be transactional become relational — negotiated by real people in shared spaces of trust.
What are you most proud of about your cooperative?
That we offer professional, reliable and accessible support to social economy organizations — often at critical stages of growth — while creating stable, meaningful work for our team. We’re building infrastructure and livelihoods.
The theme of this year is Cooperatives Build a Better World, and we believe this change starts in our communities. How does your cooperative make your community a better place to be?
We help mission-driven organizations stay focused on their core work — by handling the behind-the-scenes financial and lightening the administrative load that can otherwise hold them back. Populus offers monthly bookkeeping services and project-based support (like Set Up) and training in financial literacy and cooperative governance. We also recently launched the Compliance Compass, a self-serve digital tool that helps organizations track filings, access how-to guides and templates, and stay on top of their obligations — all in one place. We also plan to build out new service streams such as HR consulting, IT support, and beyond.
We make it easier for community-serving organizations to focus on what they do best, but we don’t gatekeep the information or processes. We invest in capacity building, so more people can understand and navigate the bureaucracy while they build and sustain strong, values-based co-ops. That’s how we try to grow the movement.
Curious to learn more?
To learn more about Populus, please check out their website and Instagram page, @populuscoop.
