Celebrating a Decade of Building an Economy for All

Beloved Community Incubator (BCI) invites you to celebrate our tenth anniversary with us on Friday, October 16, 2026! Join us as we honor the past decade of work, made possible by the volunteers, funders, community partners, and BCI Network members who built this organization alongside us — and as we share our vision for our next decade of building an economy for all.

BCI began in 2016 as a listening campaign. We asked community members how the changing political climate impacted their lives, and their responses were clear: work was their number one stressor. Neighbors who worked in extractive industries wanted something better than wage theft and toxic employers who levied their power over immigrant workers.

From that listening campaign grew a movement to build our regional solidarity economy – an economy where workers have control over their workplaces and have democratic and economic power within their communities.

Inspired by Dr. Martin Luther King and other Southern organizers' vision of beloved community, we've spent the last ten years growing expanding a network of cooperatives – providing legal and technical assistance to more than thirty local businesses and collectives. We led city-wide campaigns that built collective power for the most excluded workers in our region. We founded and manage the DC Solidarity Economy Loan Fund (DC SELF) through our partnership with Seed Commons, issuing more than $3 million in non-extractive loans to local cooperatives and solidarity economy projects since 2022. And we're piloting an innovative response to the gaps in guaranteed income programs and cooperative incubation, in partnership with Muslims for Just Futures.

Join us October 16th for an evening of cocktails, celebrations, and collective visioning. We can’t wait to share what’s in store for our next ten years!