At the September 11–13 Up & Coming conference in Kalamazoo, Columinate’s Don Moffitt was honored with the Cooperative Champion Award. The award was conferred by Food Co-op Initiative at the annual food co-op startup conference, a spirited national meeting for these community-based ventures and their professional supporters and allies.
Night of Hope to spotlight Oakes’ contributions to cooperative development and community resilience. Washington, DC (September 18, 2025) –Community of Hope has announced that Vernon Oakes, longtime cooperative leader and General Manager of Columinate, will be honored with the Tom Nees Award for Exceptional Service at this year’s Night of Hope celebration on October 3, 2025.
Start-up cooperatives face tremendous challenges while on their long road—from foundational organizing to the establishment of a sustainable brick-and-mortar business delivering their mission to the communities they serve. We have seen that organizations can benefit greatly from the learnings of more seasoned businesses that have been on that journey.
Under a theme of “Co-Creating the Future,” the annual conference for startup food co-ops, Up & Coming, will be held September 12–13 in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Up & Coming is sponsored by Food Co-op Initiative (FCI) and offers a solid program and a spirited gathering of co-op activists of many stripes.
Top Women in Grocery (TWIG) is an award sponsored by Progressive Grocer as part of its annual Grocery Impact Conference, to be held this year on November 7. The 2025 TWIG Awards, announced in June, include Columinate’s Carolee Colter, after she was nominated by Joel Brock.
Columinate members will be among the many presenters and trainers at the 2025 CCMA conference, to be held in Duluth, Minnesota, on May 29-31. They will join a few hundred co-op directors, managers, and key staff from a network of food co-ops and national allies. The CCMA conference, sponsored by UWCC, is a spirited and busy three days of challenging speakers, workshops, local tours, networking, award presentations, and a bang-up closing party.
In mid-April, National Co+op Grocers (NCG) released its “2024 Food Co-op Impact Report,” showing strong sales growth and continuing leadership by co-ops in local, organic, and Fair Trade product sales. Click here for a pdf of the full report. Same-store sales growth among NCG co-ops was a strong 4.7 percent, compared to overall US retail grocery sales growth of under 3 percent. (That was in a volatile and somewhat inflationary market. According to the federal Economic Research Service, 2024 food inflation was 2.3 percent.)
In proclaiming 2025 the International Year of Cooperatives, the United Nations and cooperatives worldwide are lifting up the tremendous social and economic achievements and potential of these democratic, community-based associations. In the US, the campaign is being led by National Cooperative Business Association (NCBA) CLUSA, our apex trade association and an international development organization.
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.
Kevin Edberg and Cooperative Development Services: "We have been lucky to have Kevin and CDS in our corner all these years." Michelle Schry of National Co+op Grocers introduced the Cooperative Innovation Award and Kevin Edberg, who she described as the "longtime brain, backbone, and captain of Cooperative Development Services" (CDS). CDS is a nonprofit co-op development organization founded 38 years ago in Minnesota/Wisconsin, and it has had a profound impact for food co-ops and other ventures. What follows is edited from Schry's CCMA introduction:
