South Mountain Company

Martha’s Vineyard’s integrated design/build company

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The Amicus Cooperative – Stronger Together

South Mountain is proud – and lucky – to be one of the co-owners of the Amicus Cooperative, a collection of 50 of the most progressive solar companies in the U.S.. Amicus exists to support smaller regional solar companies by leveraging national scale purchasing power, sharing best business practices, and combining collective brainpower. My colleague Rob Meyers, who manages our Energy Services division, never misses their semi-annual gatherings. I have gone twice, once in 2015 in Phoenix and once this year in Denver.

It is not an overstatement to say that both times the Amicus group took my breath away. The intelligence, the heart and soul, the culture of civility, humility, humor, inquiry, fellowship, and friendship at these gatherings are extraordinary.

We’re happy to be able to share this piece about Amicus written by Sarah Stranahan, a senior editorial associate at The Democracy Collaborative and a leading member of its Fifty by Fifty employee ownership team.

The Democracy Collaborative is another remarkable organization which does cutting edge research and “works to carry out a vision of a new economic system where shared ownership and control creates more equitable and inclusive outcomes, fosters ecological sustainability, and promotes flourishing democratic and community life.”

Good stuff all around. These are important below-the-radar antidotes to the sorry, sleazy, sadistic mess of national politics today. – JA


Amicus Solar Purchasing Coop Spreads Employee Ownership
Achieving Scale while Maintaining Local Impact

By Sarah Stranahan

Amicus Solar is one of more than 250 purchasing cooperatives in the US, including such well-known brands as Ace Hardware and Best Western Motels. By forming a large national cooperative, small producers or retailers increase their purchasing power and access to project financing, while remaining independently owned and operated. An additional benefit, it turns out, is that a purchasing co-op can be a particularly effective means of spreading employee ownership.

Amicus Solar was founded in 2011 by six independent solar companies, including employee-owned cooperative and certified B Corp Namaste Solar and South Mountain Company. Amicus Solar is led by cooperative veteran and former Namaste Solar employee-owner, Stephen Irvin, who serves as its president. Today Amicus includes 48 local and regional solar photovoltaic (PV) installers and developers who openly share and collaborate on a wide range of business issues, from operational efficiencies to sales and marketing strategies.

Similar to Best Western and Ace, Amicus is democratically owned by its members, 40 percent of which are B Corps and a growing number of which are employee owned. With five Amicus members having joined the cooperative as employee-owned companies, Amicus has made a conscious effort to educate its members about worker ownership. As a result, five member businesses (ReVision Energy, Technicians for Sustainability, SunBug Solar, Positive Energy, and Sunlight Solar) have converted — and another five are considering converting — to either become worker coops or employee stock ownership plans (ESOPs). The purchasing co-op has become a means of “industry contagion” — a way of rapidly spreading employee ownership.

Staying Local While Creating a Competitive Advantage

Since the Great Recession, there has been an increased interest in localism (also called subsidiarity) — the principle that decisions should be made at the lowest practical level or closest to where they will have their effect — because small, local mission-driven businesses have three key advantages for nurturing a more democratic and sustainable economy:
They invest locally, capturing and multiplying value, particularly when they sell locally produced goods;
They are more successful at participatory management because it is easier to cultivate personal trust and accountability in small-scale, local organizations; and
They are more likely to care about and be accountable to their communities in terms of environmental health, social equity, cultural vitality, and good governance.
Localism, however, faces challenges when it comes to economies of scale, which can increase efficiency and reduce the costs of production. Scale is also required to meet the needs of densely populated urban centers, where a larger and larger portion of the world’s population lives.

Small solar installers have faced intense competition from large national companies such as SolarCity (recently acquired by Tesla), SunRun, and SunPower. By coming together in a purchasing co-op, the relatively small businesses that own Amicus Solar have leveled the playing field with their larger competitors, particularly in terms of purchasing power, while maintaining the advantages of staying local.

New Ventures

In addition to taking advantage of cost and marketing efficiencies, Amicus members share best practices and develop joint strategies to advance their common goals. For example, in 2016 Amicus won a $358,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Energy to found a new cooperative to provide high-quality operations and maintenance (O&M) support to large-scale solar installations. Today Amicus O&M Cooperative includes 20 member organizations that have set collective operations and management standards to ensure that commercial and utility-scale solar PV systems fulfill their performance expectations over the long term. Amicus O&M Cooperative is being led by another cooperative veteran and former Namaste Solar employee-owner, Amanda Bybee.

In 2017, Amicus members helped found the Clean Energy Credit Union (CECU), which received the first federal charter for a new credit union in Colorado in 31 years. CECU’s mission is to promote clean energy, environmental stewardship and cooperative enterprises through the financial services it offers its members. Using the federally insured deposits of its members, the credit union provides consumer loans to reduce the cost of clean-energy products and services. “We envision a world where everyone can participate in the clean-energy movement,” said board chairman Blake Jones, co-founder of Boulder-based Namaste Solar. This new federally chartered credit union will make it easier for people to both invest in and use clean energy in order to help protect our environment and improve our economy.”

Jones is leading another venture in this growing ecosystem called Kachuwa Impact Fund, which has provided capital in support of multiple Amicus members. Kachuwa’s mission is two-fold:
(1) To provide privately held “impact companies” with mission-aligned, long-term, and non-controlling capital; and
(2) To provide “impact investors” with diversified, impact investment opportunities outside of Wall Street.
Kachuwa’s multiple “impact themes” include cooperatives, certified B Corps, and companies that are owned by employees, women, or people of color. Kachuwa itself is aiming to convert to an investment cooperative structure in 2019 and, among other things, to increase its support for companies converting to employee ownership both within the Amicus ecosystem and beyond. Improving access to values-aligned capital is a critically important part to growing the cooperative and employee ownership movements.

Democratic Governance

According to Irvin, president of Amicus, Namaste Solar has had powerful influence on the culture of the purchasing coop and its members. It was at Namaste Solar that Irvin learned about cooperatives, democratic processes and governance, and the importance of facilitating a process to reach consensus. Like Namaste Solar, he says, Amicus uses an open-book management policy to keep everyone fully informed and a committee structure to facilitate decision making.

Irvin told Solar Pro magazine in 2014, “[Open-book management] is important since the members are equal owners. Consensus building can take time — but once we’ve come to a decision, you see more engagement and commitment from everyone.”
Democratic governance has not only contributed to the purchasing co-op’s success, but has shown members that ownership, mission, governance, and culture matter. Today Amicus Solar is an important driver of employee ownership across an entire industry.

The Ultimate Customer Service

There’s a saying that “Customer service is an attitude, not a department.” The story that follows might be a perfect illustration of those wise words.

In 2009, as part of a renovation project, we re-built 2000 square feet of wood deck surrounding three sides of a house near the water. To frame the deck we used a highly anticipated, well-regarded (by respected sources) new lumber product called TimberSIL. Touted as pressure treated lumber without the chemicals, it was infused with a baked-in, supposedly rot-resistant glass barrier. The material was guaranteed to last for 40 years, and contained no residual chemicals so that when the wood reached the end of its useful life, it could be chipped up and used as mulch. The TimberSIL slogan was “Locked in for life”. Unfortunately, it turned out to be a pathetically short life.

Fortunately the material was so problematic to work with that we never used it again. Unfortunately, that one time we did use it was for a very large job. This year it failed, miserably. From a serviceable deck to a major hazard in no time flat. We discovered that there have been other major failures, most notably in the case of Brad Pitt’s Make It Right Foundation, which used it on houses they built in the post-Katrina 9th ward re-building, only to experience severe failures. Not surprisingly, the company is out of business and nowhere to be found.

We learned that that our liability insurance doesn’t cover this loss and that our client’s Homeowners’ coverage has a limitation for rot coverage that wouldn’t come anywhere near the cost of the new deck.

We felt that our clients deserved a new deck, but we also felt that they should participate in the replacement cost as they got eight years of service life and will now get a new deck. They agreed, but a very large chunk of the financial responsibility was on us.

I took Sandy Ray, the owner of Martha’s Vineyard Insurance (he sold it to a larger company five years ago but is still involved) out to see it. He said, “your liability insurance carrier would only cover if there was an incident and something or somebody were damaged.”

I said, “Look at this, Sandy, it’s an accident waiting to happen. Doesn’t the insurer want to avoid an accident?”

He said, “you know, John, it makes sense, but insurance companies are not known for their foresight. And there just isn’t any coverage.”

“I get it, Sandy,” I said, “but here’s the thing. Over the past four decades we have paid your company literally millions of dollars for insurance and never made a claim. Now we have a problem and we want help. There must be something you can do. I hope you’ll get creative and come up with something. I know you can do it!”

Three days later, he called and said he wanted to come talk to me. He said they can’t refund premiums or commissions, but, he said, “My son Matthew and I are going to do the dismantling of the deck for you.”

“You’re going to what?” I said.

“It’s something we can do to help,” replied Sandy.

It’s no exaggeration to say that he got about as creative as you can get – and then some! When he said he and Matt wanted to do the de-construction of the deck as a gesture of participation, I was startled. It was way more than a gesture! It was 100 hours of grueling work. Sandy, at the age of 73, worked throughout, long days. They did a beautiful job, they did it promptly, and they did it with great humor and plenty of pride.

I said to Sandy, “I’ve heard of good customer service, but this takes the cake!” We are grateful, impressed, and appreciative.

The new deck is complete. Ultimately, the cost has been equitably shared by all. Everyone’s feeling pretty good. Bad situation, sweet resolution.

I have no idea how much of this inferior product TimberSIL sold. There doesn’t appear to be much information available. I hope it wasn’t much.

It is not uncommon for us to be faced with evaluating new products that appear to be improvements over old products. We generally do so warily and carefully, with the understanding that when we choose to experiment there’s risk involved and that we may have to make good on failures that occur. Fortunately it doesn’t happen often. It’s heartbreaking when it does. In this case it was a good example of plain old bad judgment. But when you receive “the ultimate customer service “ it sure does take the sting out of it!

It’s looking a bit better now, isn’t it?

There’s Deirdre . . . and then there’s Rob…

At South Mountain, there are seven standing members of our Management Committee (which we call MCom). An eighth member, always an owner, rotates onto MCom for a six month stint. This allows all our owners to experience and contribute to the management process and learn to understand the complexity and dynamics of running our business.

Two of my management colleagues, Deirdre Bohan and Rob Meyers, have interesting stories. The rest do too (I mean hey, we all do, right?) but these two are particularly compelling because they took circuitous and unconventional paths to their current positions.

Twenty two years ago, when our bookkeeper moved off-island, we hired Deirdre to replace her. Within a year she had developed robust systems and reduced what was previously a taxing 40 hour job to a reasonable 20 hour job.

She came to me and said she didn’t have enough to do. “What do you want to do?” I said.

“That’s up to you,” she replied.

“No, I mean what do you really want to do?”

She told me she had a long-standing interest in interior design; it was one of the reasons she came to work at SMC. For years we had done interior design partially and unsystematically; we wished to add a serious interior design practice but hadn’t had the resources and had failed to pro-actively seek them. So there it was: we decided to devote the time Deirdre had created (20 hours a week) to her education. She assembled a well-rounded program that combined the resources of several design schools. She was soon leading a thriving interior design business. We hired a bookkeeper to replace her; Siobhan has now been here 14 years and is our Financial Manager and another of our standing MCom members.

In 2004 and 2005 I spent two consecutive winters on sabbatical, writing a book and seeing how the company would fare in my absence. Deirdre was the person who stepped most effectively and thoroughly into the leadership void. The experience, coupled with her innate intelligence and the computer science degree she had earned at Brown, helped her recognize that there were operations issues that weren’t getting the attention they needed. She articulated this and soon became our COO. The operations job became nearly full time, and we hired an architect, Beth Kostman, to fill some of the interior design aspects of her job.

In 2010 Deirdre and her husband Dave had a son, Declan. She was 43. I think the lessons of parenting refined and strengthened her leadership skills, while softening them at the same time. She already had a deep intuitive sense of what makes people tick, but parenting always adds a special dimension – greater empathy and flexibility perhaps.

Deirdre now chairs MCom, co-manages the company with me, manages in my absence, and would become interim CEO (at least) if something were to happen to me (which we call the Avalanche Scenario). I couldn’t ask for a better collaborator. Quite a journey from bookkeeper to now!

And then there’s Rob Meyers.

Rob was hired as a carpenter in 1997. He was an average carpenter, but nothing special. He liked jawin’ more than sawin’. After a few years he packed up his family and went back to Michigan, where he’d grown up. Short-lived detour. Not so good. He came back in 2002 and has been here since. His carpentry improved, but it wasn’t what he really wanted to do, so he began trying on a variety of new and different roles within the company. The shift fueled his ambition and allowed his latent entrepreneurial abilities to blossom.

In 2007 we decided to devote significant resources to wind and solar. We wrote a business plan (I think that was the first time we ever wrote one, for anything). We did it because we had made a number of faltering attempts in past years to start a solar division but somehow it never came to fruition. I’m amazed to say we carried out that plan, and have gone far beyond it, specifically with solar. Today our lively Energy Services division is producing roughly a third of our revenues. Our solar work allows us to touch the lives of and provide something meaningful for far more people than our architecture and building does. It pushes our mission forward. It diversifies and strengthens our business.

Rob now manages this business endeavor with passion, commitment, connectivity, and competence. His gregarious nature and sharp intellect have helped him become a force in the industry throughout New England. He influences policy, and he has a national reach through our membership in Amicus Solar a member-owned purchasing cooperative and peer group network of 50 of the most progressive solar companies in the country (that’s another story for another time). And his mixology skills and lore are second to none.

These two people, Deirdre and Rob, have become true leaders. They came to South Mountain without the experience or the skills to do the jobs they are doing now. And they’re not just doing them, they’re doing them with remarkable professionalism and constant innovation, making it clear that they (along with others of the managers and owners here), are well-equipped to take the South Mountain juggernaut forward into an unpredictable future. One of the most thrilling aspects of my job – maybe the most – is witnessing the growth and development of the people who have chosen to build their careers here. As I often say, “Every morning I walk up the stairs and say to myself, ‘Hey, can you believe I get to work with these people, all day long, and I get paid for this’”?

There oughta be a law. But if there was, I’d have to break it.

Local Sustainable Economies…And Way More Than That

My colleagues and fellow owners Deirdre, Rob, Siobhan and I just returned from a conference in Boston called Local Sustainable Economies. It was a national gathering, hosted by the Sustainable Business Network of Massachusetts, of people and organizations working to localize economic activity and encourage the long haul shift from the extractive economy of the present to a generative economy of the future.

Read More about Local Sustainable Economies…And Way More Than That

Transitions – in life & in death & in business

On January 12th, my wife Chris and I went to see my 95 year old father in Palo Alto CA.  He had recently fallen and hit his head.  I had been to see him after the accident and he seemed to be doing well.  While i was there he and I had a long conversation with his doctor, Scott Wood.

My Dad, who just weeks before had been attending grand medical rounds, playing tennis, and leafleting for Bernie Sanders on University Avenue, was suffering from some cognitive losses, but he was lucid and clear.  He told us in no uncertain terms that if this thing got worse there would be no hospital – only hospice, no food and drink, and comfort.  We agreed.  His doctor commented, “I’m with you – when I go I want plenty of morphine and ice cream, and the ice cream’s optional.”

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Bottom Lines Reaches the Summit

The first Bottom Lines Business Summit is over.  It will not be the last.  It was a peak moment after several years of work with two friends and colleagues, Paul Eldrenkamp and Jamie Wolf, to design and build a new program for the Northeast Sustainable Energy Association (NESEA).

On a beautiful fall day, more than 100 NESEA members gathered at Smith College to celebrate two years of Building Energy Bottom Lines, to hone business skills, and to consider the future of this exciting endeavor.

Read More about Bottom Lines Reaches the Summit