The Participation Burger: All Staff Create Impact
Dan Arnett, Cooperator in Chief at Sacramento Natural Foods Co-op, tells the story of how he's inviting all staff members to create participation and impact by way of building the best burger in town. Dan [...]
Participation: Systems & Structures
Systems & Structures within a cooperative are essential to creating and maintaining strong communication between co-op stakeholder groups. Rebecca Torpie shares some brief points about how these systems can better be leveraged to create and [...]
On Participation
In her work as a Participation & Engagement consultant for cooperatives, Rebecca Torpie gets to see many successful campaigns engendering authentic relationships between co-op stakeholders. From members, to staff, to community members, the connections between [...]
Board Communication: Using the Board’s Unique Perspective to Increase Owner Engagement and Participation
There’s commonly a remarkable diversity among how the members of a co-op’s board of directors and how co-op staff see and understand the co-op. And the perception of the myriad owner members are as distinct [...]
What Drives Co-op Employee Engagement
Workplace employee engagement is a hot topic. Open any human resources publication and you’ll find countless articles on making work fun, motivational and results-oriented. No matter what the individual strategies are to achieve that, the [...]
Growing Leaders from Within
By Melanie Reid 186 Sept-Oct 2016 As co-ops evolve and expand and our industry continuously changes, it’s important that we have mechanisms in place that enable employees to see career pathways within our organizations. Opportunities [...]
Key Financial Indicators
The CBLD template Financial Conditions policy and sample report suggest that boards and managers regularly monitor a number of key indicators of financial health. Here are definitions and/or formulas for many of those indicators as [...]
Workplace Conflict Policy FAQ
By Carolee Colter, Columinate & Heather Wright, Esq, WrightJones PLC Columinate is recommending replacing the old Cooperative Model Grievance Procedure from 2009 with this new Workplace Conflict Policy. Why do you recommend changing the [...]
New North Willy Street Co-op Serves Needs and Values
Willy Street Co-op Madison, Wisc. Year founded: 1974 Equity investment: $56 single/$91 household + $2 service fee Number of members: 34,000 Number of employees: 420 Number of locations: 3 retails, commissary kitchen, central office Every [...]
Including Members in the Ends Dialogues
How is your board spending its time? It’s easy to get caught up in the delegation and accountability portion of a board’s job. Yet there’s a whole other side to the work that is equally [...]