Using Policy Governance to Improve Board Leadership
By Marilyn Scholl 078 September - October - 1998 Food cooperatives around the country are talking about Policy Governance -- a system of board leadership developed by John Carver. While people are drawn to the [...]
Governance Toolbox: for Directors of Natural Food Co-ops
by Mary Courteau & Corinne Shindelar In the fall of 1996, over 200 directors of natural food co-ops were surveyed for a project funded by Northcountry Cooperative Development Fund and the National Cooperative Bank Development [...]
Challenges to the Cooperative Board of Directors
Edited by Dave Gutknecht and Karen Zimbleman
The Co-op Empowerment Stream
By Bill Gessner 063 March - April - 1996 Our cooperatives are truly empowering organizations, in origin and in practice, in vision and in mission, in theory and in action. Empowerment can be a simple [...]
We Own It: A Workbook about Member Equity
By Rob Wilson and Rob Okun
The Perils of Co-Management
By Carolee Colter 051 March - April - 1994 Is it inevitable that all "new wave" co-ops founded in the 1970s will end up with general managers? While only a few have had a general [...]
What Good Is A Business Plan?
By Mary Myers, Walden Swanson 038 January - February - 1992 Editor's note: This article is the first in a series of three articles on Business Plans for co-ops. Has your co-op ever produced [...]
Preparing For Expansion
By Bill Gessner 033 March - April - 1991 Losing Market Share? Many of today's retail food cooperatives now have a history of ten to twenty years. Meanwhile, the natural foods industry and the natural [...]
How to Critique a Business Plan
By Walden Swanson 010 April - May - 1987 "Business plans may be great for bankers and investors, but if companies really followed them, you might never have heard of Compaq, Lotus, or Ben & [...]