User Dividends

We pay out all our profits and gains to our users in proportion to their "clicks" on our services. Here, we explain our user dividends in detail.

Cooperatives distribute all profits and gains to their customers in the form of patronage dividends, which are distributed to each customer in cash, in kind, or both in proportion to a specific measure of their transactions with their cooperative.

We measure a user's use of our services for the purposes of calculating patronage dividends.

This is our formula for measuring a user's use during any period of time:

User's use = outgoing service calls + incoming service calls

An outgoing service call is a user-initiated interaction with our services – like a mouse click or a screen tap – that sends digital data to us so that we can provide, customize, or improve our services.

An incoming service call is a service-initiated interaction with at least one of our applications on a user's device that sends digital data to us so that we can provide, customize, or improve our services. These calls can be automatic and, for example, retrieve cookie, device, location, and stored usage data, in accordance with a user's privacy settings and our Privacy Policy.

For Surge Browser, we measure a user's use by the number of unique navigation events that History (surge://history) records, while a user is signed in to Surge Browser. A navigation event is a change in URL that occurs by going, for example, from usercooperative.com to usercooperative.com/user-dividends. Users can use Surge Browser's import-browser-history tool to import navigation events from other browsers. We plan to add more "click" opportunities to Surge Browser in future versions.

We distribute patronage dividends to each of our users in the event of a calendar-year profit or a one-time liquidity event.

Calendar-year profit equals net earnings for the 12-month period ending December 31st minus any cash reserves that we retain to reinvest in our business. Net earnings exclude voluntary financial contributions from our users to cover our startup costs, and our Board of Directors, which our users elect, determines the amount of cash reserves that we retain.

Calendar-year profit = all non-contribution income - all expenses - cash reserves

For a calendar-year profit, we use the following formula to calculate each user's dividend:

User dividend = calendar-year profit x (user's calendar-year use ÷ all users' calendar-year use)

We define a one-time liquidity event as either an outright sale of our company to another company or a complete dissolution of our company.

If we get acquired by another company in an outright sale, we use the following formula to calculate each user's dividend:

User dividend = (purchase price - any liabilities) x (user's use to date ÷ all users' use to date)

If we have to completely dissolve our company, we use the following formula to calculate each user's dividend:

User dividend = the value of company assets remaining after all company obligations are paid x (user's use to date ÷ all users' use to date)

Together, our Articles of Incorporation and Bylaws govern how we distribute dividends to our users.