CCMA09: Cooperation Among Cooperatives in a Policy Governance Context

— Don Kreis, Hanover Con­sumer Coop­er­a­tive Soci­ety & Erbin Crow­ell, Coop­er­a­tive Fund of New England

This was another great ses­sion full of lots of valu­able infor­ma­tion.  I’m in a hurry though so i’m going to make this one snappy!

• First off, our co-op her­itage is one of an inte­grated coop­er­a­tive econ­omy.  This means stretch­ing across sec­tors.  And this goes back to the mis­sion of the Rochdale Pioneers.
• Sec­toral iso­la­tion is a chal­lenge for many co-ops who may not know about resources in their own neigh­bor­hoods that are avail­able to them.
• One of the many fac­tors in Mondragon’s suc­cess is that early on they ana­lyzed mar­ket gaps and moved to fills those gaps.  In addi­tion they worked to cre­ate the ser­vices that were not read­ily avail­able or were denied to them.

So, to the pro­tein of it:

• We cham­pion the value/end of coop­er­a­tion among coop­er­a­tives, and the spread­ing of co-op prin­ci­ples to our region and the world.  But are we sure that we have poli­cies that guide the man­age­ment to meet­ing those ends?
• Don Kreis posits that coop­er­a­tion is an end in itself, rather than a means.  It’s a really inter­est­ing notion and one worth exam­in­ing.  Do you agree?  Feel free to dis­cuss in the com­ments sec­tion below.
• As a board, what about com­mis­sion­ing a research study to mea­sure the eco­nomic impact of coop­er­a­tives in our region.  Sure, research is expen­sive, but the cost can be shared, and the results can be lever­aged.  What if we sub­mit­ted the study to the City Coun­cil and said “Hey, look at all this rev­enue we gen­er­ate, ALL OF IT STAYS LOCAL!”  That could have a pow­er­ful effect.  Then we say, “Now can we talk about pro-cooperative leg­is­la­tion in our already coop­er­a­tive city?”
• And finally, what about coop­er­a­tion among co-ops as an exec­u­tive lim­i­ta­tions pol­icy rather than (or in addi­tion to) an ends pol­icy?  At first blush it seems like this would be a LOT eas­ier than a global ends pol­icy for the mgmt. to mea­sure.  But it also feels more limiting.

Per­haps if i have time i can expand on some of these more.  Just needed to brain-dump this while it was still fresh.