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.
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.
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:
Chris Maher, general manager of BriarPatch Food Co-op in California, won the 2024 Cooperative Service Award, presented at the Consumer Cooperative Management Association (CCMA) recent annual conference in Portland, Maine. This award goes to someone who has contributed outstanding and sustained work in consumer cooperatives. CCMA is presented by the UW-Madison Center for Cooperatives (UWCC) has served as an interdisciplinary teaching and research center for all sectors and types of cooperatives since 1962: https://uwcc.wisc.edu/
