By Art Sherwood 163 November-December 2012 Expansion and growth are on the minds of many cooperative board and management leaders. And this makes sense, since growing our cooperatives’ abilities to deliver on their organizational Ends is of critical strategic importance. It certainly was on our minds at Bloomingfoods Co-op (Bloomington, Ind.) this last year as we addressed growing to include a fourth store and [...]
By Stuart Reid 163 November-December 2012 The mayor spoke at the co-op’s ribbon cutting, and it seemed like the whole town turned out to celebrate. The local paper wrote excitedly about the new grocery store. The future seemed bright. Nine months later, the fledgling store was begging members for additional cash infusions. Before its second anniversary, the co-op closed its doors. This story is [...]
By Carolee Colter, Jeanie Wells 162 September-October 2012 As we go about our work of assessing organizational structures and conducting employee surveys in food co-ops, we frequently encounter an ongoing struggle between the marketing department (or lone marketing staff person) and the heads of the sales departments. Comments we’ve heard from marketing staff: The departments just don’t seem to understand that I’m trying to [...]
By Rose Marie Klee 162 September-October 2012 Wheatsville Co-op, established in 1976, has become a mainstay of the local business scene in Austin, Texas. Through our first decades, we were initially focused on survival and on cultivating our community of members; and over the past decade, we have grown our relationship with the national food co-op community. Connecting through CCMA (Consumer Cooperative Management Association) [...]
By Todd Wallace 161 July - August - 2012 Our co-op boards are groups elected and charged with a common purpose: fulfilling the legal and moral obligations of their co-op, on behalf of a diverse set of member-owners. Their fiduciary responsibilities demand high-quality deliberation and decision-making to ensure both the cooperative's fiscal prosperity (its health as an enterprise) and the continued relevance and achievement [...]
By Carolee Colter, Helena O'Connor 161 July - August - 2012 An audit can be described as an unbiased examination and evaluation of systems and processes of an organization in order to demonstrate whether they are in compliance with a standard. The human resources (HR) function of any business, including cooperatives, covers all aspects of the employer's relationship with its employees: personnel policies, hiring, [...]
By Nina Johnson 160 May - June - 2012 You know the feeling: you walk into your first meeting, you don’t know anyone, you’re not sure what to say or do, and everyone but you seems to know what’s going on. That’s how it can feel for a newly elected board director who has had no orientation, and this feeling can last for months. [...]
By Jeanie Wells 159 March - April - 2012 Food co-ops are known for being compassionate employers. Unlike some of our big competitors in the grocery industry who only work to maintain their organization's interests, food co-ops seem more likely to try to accommodate individual interests and preferences alongside the organization's priorities. This is a great thing, something that food co-ops should be proud [...]
By Michael Healy 159 March - April - 2012 Why does the work of measuring the co-op's accomplishments and telling the co-op's story matter? Cooperative enterprises build a better world. This tagline for the 2012 International Year of Cooperatives says so much with so few words. These few words can lead us to ask many compelling questions, among them: What does that better world [...]
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 to doing business in a culture of cooperation. Regardless of the legal form used to organize the business, in retail food co-ops across the country, members commonly worked, carrying [...]
