Practicing the Future We Want, featuring Spring Up

For more than a decade, Spring Up has been transforming the way organizations share power, make decisions, and address conflict. Founded in 2013 by lifelong collaborators and friends, Stas, Leander, and Shaïna, the collective has grown into a six-person worker-owned cooperative, headquartered in Denver with members across the country.

Their approach is rooted in prefigurative organizing, a philosophy popularized by Grace Lee Boggs, a Chinese-American, Detroit-based organizer, who described this practice in multiple speeches: “We must foreshadow or prefigure the tremendous changes we need, now, in our daily lives and practice.” In other words, Spring Up’s theory of change is grounded in living out the social transformation that they want to see in wider society, in their relationships right here and now. 

Spring Up offers two main services:

1. bluelight academy: A learning hub offering webinars, daylong retreats, and cohort-based courses on shared governance, conflict resolution, and collaborative leadership. Sessions run three times per year, with both live and on-demand options.
   
   
2. Coaching & Consulting: Customized support for organizations of all sizes, including governance design, conflict mediation, and long-term strategy for building equitable and sustainable workplace culture.

They also share free resources for anyone ready to make their own workplace more just, including the Getting Free Together podcast. 

Over the years, Spring Up has trained more than 5,000 people in shared governance, conflict mediation, and collaborative culture. They’ve helped clients from co-ops and nonprofits to universities and for-profit ventures.

Today, most of their clients are facing funding cuts and high-stakes internal conflict. The strategists and leaders at Spring Up have responded to the moment in a way we all could learn from. 

Moving Forward in a Time of Change

Like many justice-focused organizations, Spring Up is navigating a rapidly shifting funding and political landscape. Nevertheless, they’ve managed to stay grounded, and even grow, under the circumstances. The key to their success, Stas said, is their pragmatic, solutions-focused approach and strong communication and decision-making skills.  

Many of Spring Up’s founders started in anti-violence organizing. That hands-on experience taught them that waiting until harm has occurred to respond is too late.

“People are dealing with intimate partner violence or family violence on a day-to-day basis." shared Co-Founder and Vision Keeper Stas Schmiedt, "It's not a theoretical thing; when people are coming to you with an issue; you have to be ready to act.”

Stas emphasized that their background makes their current approach to work “active and practical.” Indeed, Spring Up has created real change – while being a majority-Black and majority-trans team working for justice in a political moment where DEI is under attack.  

“We're disproportionately dealing with [conflict] because of the nature of the work we do and our identities. But every space is dealing with the same patterns.” Stas notes, “If [our approach] can work for us in this high stakes of a situation, I know that it can support other people who are dealing with different kinds of issues.”

Learn More & Connect

Spring Up offers a variety of paid services for those looking for tailored support. You can get more information about their consulting services here. They’ve just released their fall programming schedule, which you can register for here. Friends of CCW can use the code COOPSUMMER for 15% off on all bluelight programming.

Spring Up also has a large library of free resources, including a Patreon community where supporters gain additional benefits. Whether you’re leading a cooperative, a nonprofit, or a for-profit business, Spring Up can help your team practice a future we all want to live in.