Earning national recognition from cooperative peers, Kevin Edberg and other co-op leaders were honored at the recent CCMA conference for their many contributions. During celebrations at the May 30–June 1 gathering in Portland, Maine, these award winners were announced:

Kevin Edberg, executive director of Cooperative Development Services, received the Co-op Innovation Award, presented by Michelle Schry of National Co+op Grocers (NCG); Edberg’s work is detailed below;

Chris Maher, general manager at BriarPatch Co-op whose Cooperative Service Award was reported to Columinate readers on June 25;

Doug Johnson, general manager at Belfast Co-op, also received a Cooperative Service Award; Johnson previously was a frequent contributor to Columinate reports, and we hope he will return! Capping years of service, he is overseeing a major renovation/expansion of Belfast Co-op.

Becky Colpitts, community outreach coordinator for Littleton Food Co-op in New Hampshire, founded in 2008; Colpitts received a Cooperative Service Award for her strong contributions at this young co-op. Littleton Food Co-op also won the Cooperative Excellence Award in 2023 from CCMA. A big thanks to Michael Healy, Columinate CBLD Consultant, for his work with LFC!

Food Co-op Initiative (FCI) assists startups throughout the country, and their expertise is behind the FCI Food Co-op Startup of the Year Award; this year’s winner, open since May 2023, is Assabet Co-op Market in Maynard, Massachusetts.

FCI also grants awards in the name of Bill Gessner, a founding member of  Columinate’s food co-op consulting group and a primary creator of the startup development model, “Four Cornerstones in Three Stages”; the 2024 winner of the Bill Gessner Startup Co-op of the Year Award is Caledonia Food Co-op in Vermont, which secured its facility in April and will open soon.

Bill Gessner also strongly promoted coaching and mentoring as a tool for strengthening co-ops; this year’s GM Coaching Award, presented by NCG, went to Lucy Georgeoff of High Falls Food Co-op in New York.

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:

“Kevin has been the executive director for nearly half of CDS’ history, at times as the sole employee. Having served as a CDS board member for 13 years, I’ve had a front row seat to witness the work that Kevin and his colleagues and partners have undertaken in the face of strong headwinds, often creating solutions where others had failed and where ideas were plenty, but resources thin.  He has proven time and again that you don’t have to have a big budget to make a big and meaningful impact.

“He has been able to connect players from different corners of the food co-op ecosystem and deliver novel solutions to some of our most significant challenges.  His skills as a cooperative expert, coalition builder, a visionary, and creative financier have put CDS at the forefront of some of the most important developments in the history of our modern food co-ops.

“For years, Kevin created space within the CDS umbrella to provide a home to food cooperative consultants. As food co-op consultancy flourished under the leadership and guidance of long-time consultants like Bill Gessner and Marilyn Scholl, the decision in the 1990s was made to spin off into an independent organization, first known as CDS Consulting Co-op and today Columinate. Kevin supported his colleagues and served for many years as an outside director of the new organization, maintaining strong relationships with his former co-workers.

“In partnership with long-time CDS consultant Bill Gessner, Kevin spent months in development and deployment of the “4 Cornerstones and Three Stages Model of Food Co-op Development” that to this day helps to create a pathway and order of operations for start-up food co-op boards, their consultant partners, and ultimately their new GMs.

“At the time, there was no dedicated organization to support, foster, and nurture new food co-op opportunities. Kevin and Bill realized that these start-up groups needed guidance in order to preserve resources and speed the development timeline. The Four Cornerstones model ultimately provided a roadmap for the work of the new food co-op development entity that Kevin was a partner in founding: Food Co-op 500 was launched in 2005 in a partnership between CDS, National Co-op Grocers Association, and CDS Consulting Co-op, with major funding from the Blooming Prairie Foundation. Now known as Food Co-op Initiative (FCI), the organization has continued to utilize the Four Cornerstones Model and continues to evolve the pathway to food co-op development from this foundation. FCI today boasts a broad range of talented partners and developers, many of whom Kevin has nurtured and supported as a mentor and colleague.

“Food co-op development, like most co-op development, is often hamstrung by limited access to capital. This is another area where Kevin understood that to create and nurture an organization to deliver support wasn’t enough—he needed to close the loop by helping co-ops access the funds needed to fully engage in that development work. So he set about creating a vehicle for fiscal sponsorship of local food co-op development. Through the use of the CDS 501(c)3 status, Kevin created a fiscal sponsorship vehicle that allows for the collection of tax-deductible contributions that are passed through CDS directly to local food co-op development projects. This vehicle has many times been the key filler of budget holes, helping donors send over $3.4 million to food co-op projects in just the past two years.

“During the early years of National Co+op Grocers’ development, when the organization was lean, with few staff and a primary mandate to negotiate preferential purchasing agreements with key vendors, NCG was slow to expand its membership beyond founding members, particularly by limiting applications to potential members with $2M or more in annual sales. This meant that small and particularly rural food co-ops were left without many options for operational support. Kevin and CDS stepped in, finding funding to provide learning opportunities and assessment skills to small food co-ops throughout the Upper Midwest via a program he called “Small and Strong”—a program that continues to this day, providing peer connections and access to professional advice.

“While it is the work of Kevin and CDS with food co-ops that sparks this nomination, I would remiss not to mention the work he’s done in the formation of CooperationWorks!, an organization dedicated to the connection of co-op developers throughout the U.S.—working with forestry co-ops, providing support to small agricultural co-ops, working with foundations around water quality and myriad other topics supported by our food co-ops.

“Kevin might just be one of the most impactful cooperators we’ve had in support of co-ops in decades.  We have been lucky to have Kevin and CDS in our corner all these years, and I think it is time we give him his long overdue flowers: by awarding Cooperative Development Services and Kevin Edberg the 2024 Cooperative Innovation and Achievement Award.”

Join us if you can on October 15, 2024, in the Twin Cities for Kevin Edberg’s retirement party, when cooperators will celebrate his very fruitful career.