Develop Your Leaders

Balance Sheets: Getting the Picture of Your Co-op’s Financial Position

By Mark Goehring|2023-05-05T20:22:32-04:00September 15th, 2007|

By Mark Goehring 132 September - October - 2007 Our cooperatives aim to provide value on behalf of member owners and often take a wide-ranging approach on how to express and demonstrate that organizational accomplishment. When it comes to managing and reporting financial performance and condition, traditional financial statements do quite nicely. Financial statements are not good places in which to exercise “local control” [...]

Monitoring Report Decision Tree

By Columinate|2023-05-05T20:22:33-04:00September 6th, 2007|

This flowchart describes the steps and questions to use during the process of accepting or rejecting a monitoring report. Use during a meeting or beforehand to prepare yourself.

Handling Emotional Conflict of Interest

By Carolee Colter|2023-05-05T20:22:34-04:00May 4th, 2007|

By Carolee Colter 130 May - June - 2007 By now, probably most co-op boards of directors have a policy on conflicts of interest. For example, when a board member has a financial stake in a company that potentially or actually competes or does business with the co-op, this information is revealed to the board, and the affected board member may be barred from [...]

The Board Role in the Accountability Stream

By Marilyn Scholl|2023-05-05T20:22:35-04:00May 4th, 2007|

By Marilyn Scholl 130 May - June - 2007 Boards of directors are the critical link between owners and management in the accountability chain for a cooperative. If boards don’t have a good understanding of how accountability works or don’t have good systems for accomplishing it, the job can be frustrating. Accountability mirrors empowerment To begin, we must recognize that accountability and empowerment go [...]

Gar Alperovitz Addresses the Weavers Way Membership

By Columinate|2023-05-05T20:22:40-04:00April 1st, 2006|

Monitoring the Manager

By Mark Goehring|2023-05-05T20:22:41-04:00March 17th, 2006|

By Mark Goehring 123 March - April - 2006 There is a fifth dimension beyond that which is commonly known to directors and managers. It is a dimension open to interpretation—potentially as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between too much and too little, between knowing and doing, and it lies between the pit of a director’s [...]

Rebating Superdividends to Members in the UK

By Columinate|2023-05-05T20:22:42-04:00January 30th, 2006|

West Midlands Co-operative Society (WM) and Oxford, Swindon & Gloucester Co-operative Society (OSG) have recently merged to create the fourth largest co-operative society in the UK: The Midcounties Co-operative. They currently operate co-operative funeral services, co-operative childcare, retail stores, travel agencies, post offices and Motorworld. Superdividend has revolutionized the membership of The Midcounties Co-operative. Superdividend rebates members a share of the Society’s profits in [...]

Avoiding Post-Expansion Burnout: The board of directors’ role

By Bill Gessner|2023-05-05T20:22:47-04:00October 22nd, 2005|

By Bill Gessner 120 September - October - 2005 More than half of our food co-ops have engaged in planning and implementing an expansion project during the past three years. As demanding as these projects can be, the real challenge begins when the co-op opens its doors in the expanded store. An earlier article by Carolee Colter (CG #116, Jan.–Feb. 2005) described the challenges [...]

Democracy in Cooperatives

By Michael Healy|2023-05-05T20:22:50-04:00May 4th, 2005|

By Michael Healy 118 May - June - 2005 Alexis de Tocqueville, in the first half of the 19th century, visited our still-wet-behind-the-ears nation and penned his famous treatise Democracy in America. In this book, de Tocqueville noted that “the American learns to know the laws by participating in the act of legislation; and he takes a lesson in the forms of government from [...]

The Spirit of Generosity: Co-ops need to plant and nourish the seeds of future cooperation

By Bill Gessner|2023-05-05T20:22:52-04:00March 4th, 2004|

By Bill Gessner 111 March - April - 2004 The collective progress in collaboration that the food co-op sector has achieved over the past decade has been significant and inspiring. “Cooperation among cooperatives,” through the Cooperative Grocers Associations and other vehicles, is building a strong, powerful momentum. An underlying core value that has supported this collaboration, but has rarely been articulated or recognized, is [...]

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