This paper offers a conceptualization of how to capture and define basic features of cooperative economic activity for the common welfare in civil society. For conceptual framing, we distill ten ideal-typical core characteristics from central discourses on civil society and the non-profit or third sector, cooperativism, and social entrepreneurship: (1) responsibility for the public (2) common welfare orientation (3) association and cooperation (4) mutual emancipation and self-determination (5) democratic participation (6) collectively shared property (7) economy of need (8) economic viability (9) experimental transformation and (10) civic action. Thus, the article provides a frame of reference for the analysis of empirical forms of cooperative economic activity of civil society for the common welfare, as carried out by the joint project "Teilgabe", which is funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research.

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