Providing leadership support to mission-driven...
bensandel@columinate.coop
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2025 Enrollment Now Open! Our Cooperative Board Leadership Development (CBLD) team is looking ahead to another great year of supporting your organization’s success through our award-winning CBLD program. Now in its 21st year, CBLD provides an annual program of board support that includes monthly consulting, facilitated board retreats, a wealth of online webinars and other board trainings, and a [...]
Our culture has a lot of beliefs about money that range from its worship to seeing it as the root of all evil. Food cooperatives especially have been historically conflicted about capital, once seeing it as the cause of destructive economic practices, to the point that raising money was once practically shunned. This left many cooperatives under-capitalized and some of them had to close [...]
With a dozen of its members part of the program, Columinate will have a strong presence at the annual food co-op startup conference, Up & Coming, to be held in Kalamazoo, Michigan, on September 12–14. Up & Coming is a spirited event, with enthusiastic members of co-op startups from across the country mixing with veteran trainers and consultants.
This multi-session series will examine various aspects of governance, including both practical skill-building as well as exploration of broader governance concepts and issues that inform the Policy Governance approach.
Create a solid foundation for shared understanding — with the added convenience of tuning in from wherever you are.
Ten years ago, the Assabet Co-op Market recruited its first member-owners in the small mill town of Maynard, Massachusetts. Today, the co-op boasts more than 2,100 member-owners from 40 communities, and this spring they'll celebrate the grand opening of their 8,000 square-foot grocery store along the Assabet River. "It's been a pure grassroots effort from the beginning," says Lorne Bell, the co-op's operations coordinator. Bell estimates that he and co-op volunteers have "tabled" at more than 500 farmers markets, festivals, and community events over the years.
Raising capital is especially important for cooperatives, which don’t have a typical ownership structure that banks or lenders are used to. Mobilizing the co-op’s membership to raise funds through an owner capital campaign can be an excellent strategy.
The Middlebury Natural Foods Co-op is uniquely situated in small town Middlebury, Vermont. When they were ready to expand, they reached out to Columinate for assistance with a member capital campaign.
Research suggests that public speaking tops the list as the number-one fear-inducing activity for most people. Put that together with asking people for money, and you’ve got a potent combination for high anxiety.
