The social and solidarity economy has been promoted for its potential to reduce poverty, enhance economic inclusion, and provide alternative solutions to labor market issues, but very few empirical evaluations of its impact exist. We build an original qualitative and quantitative survey on the population of cooperatives in different sectors in Morocco with the aim of analyzing their economic models and relevance for job creation and economic inclusion. Much like commercial firms, we find that cooperatives grow and survive based on (i) internal factors pertaining to total factor productivity, (ii) management factors related to characteristics and management style of the president or manager, and (iii) external factors dependent upon the business or market environment.