What Cooperators Have to Say About Bill Gessner
Alysen Land, general manager, Ozark Natural Foods: “Bill has helped our cooperative grow and continually improve. Bill has helped me weather difficult times in my career, and has proven to me again and again that [...]
Who’s Watching Member Labor in Retail Food Cooperatives?
By Thane Joyal 158 January - February - 2012 When many retail food cooperatives were formed in the 1970s, the distinctions among worker cooperatives, consumer cooperatives and not-for-profit corporations were not considered to be barriers [...]
Do you have a structure problem?
Sometimes what appears to be a performance problem—employees not doing the job up to your expectations—is actually a problem with the organizational structure of your business. If tasks go undone because they are falling off [...]
Monitoring staff treatment using staff survey data
CBLD Policy Template and other resources (links to the CBLD Library) GM Report Support: Staff Treatment Related articles in Cooperative Grocer Colter, Carolee, and Mary Courteau. “Counting on Co-op Employees.” Cooperative Grocer #141, March-April 2009. Scholl, Marilyn. “The Board Role in the [...]
Great Idea: General Manager Reporting Templates
Reports from the general manager are one of the most important tools boards have for monitoring their co-op’s operation. But sometimes the reports, while very informative, don’t always deliver information in a way that is [...]
Electronic Communication
Many boards of retail food cooperatives rely heavily on electronic communication tools to handle logistic and administrative matters and to share and store board documents. For a board with strong communication skills, properly used electronic [...]
Policy Governance Implementation
This Field Guide outlines the basic steps, timeline, and critical factors for successful implementation of Policy Governance (sometimes referred to herein as “PG”). When implementing Policy Governance, it is important to move forward relatively quickly [...]
Bylaws basics
How Do We Know If We Have the Bylaws We Need? To meet our needs, bylaws must allow for smooth functioning of the coop's internal governance processes while being consistent with both our owners' values [...]
Building a Positive Board Performance Culture 2 of 2
Building a positive board performance culture takes continuous work and vigilance on the part of the board. Part I explored the vital concepts of Shared Understanding of the Job of the Board & Shared Expectations [...]
Audits & Reviews
An essential part of a co-op board’s fiduciary duty is the annual external monitoring of their co-op’s finances and financial systems. This Field Guide introduces a process for making important board-level decisions about the two [...]