Have you ever felt like your board is in a rut? Maybe it seems that all you do at meetings is hear reports about operational or committee activities. Or maybe you notice that your board engages in robust dialogue during your day-long retreats, but your monthly meetings seldom include this sort of conversation. Maybe you have begun to wonder what value you—individually or collectively—are adding to the organization.
At the Moscow Food Co-op, all C policies (Board Process) and D policies (Board-Management Relationship) are currently monitored using categorical surveys sent out to each board member with either a “How much do you agree with the following statement?” scale or, “With this sub-policy, is the board in compliance or not in compliance?” For each global policy and sub-policy, there is a comment option where a board member can express their thoughts and can explain why they answered as they did.
By Michael Feiner, Paul Feiner 194 Jan.-Feb. 2018 Retail grocery co-ops are as quintessential Vermont as the brilliant colors of our fall foliage, the hallmark herd of Holsteins on the pasture, or the one-room schoolhouse at the crossroads of two backcountry roads. In fact, it’s said that Vermont boasts the most food co-ops per capita in the country—somewhere in the neighborhood of 17, give or take, [...]
When boards and management make decisions with the long game of co-op impact in mind, a powerful relationship with owners can develop. Strategic decision-making can be an opportunity to build a strong, participatory co-op culture that understands that the leadership is obliged, by virtue of its fiduciary responsibility, to make decisions to benefit the co-op and accordingly, its owners. Owners typically have high expectations [...]
By Mary Myers, Walden Swanson 042 September - October - 1992 This is the third in a series of articles based on Business Planning For Cooperatives, a manual published by Cooperative Development Services that provides step by step Instructions for writing business plans. This manual is based on the principles of systems analysis, which recommend an analysis of each of a retail co-op's key [...]
By Todd Wallace In the summer of 2014, a Supreme Court ruling in the case of Burwell vs. Hobby Lobby led the CEO of Eden Foods, a prominent organic foods producer, to revive an earlier 2013 court case arguing that the company be exempted from paying for its employees to receive birth-control, as required by the Affordable Care Act. The company’s lawyers cited the [...]
By Art Sherwood, Todd Wallace 175 November-December 2014 In 2013, the International Cooperative Alliance, in its “Blueprint for a Cooperative Decade,” identified the elevating of participation as a key component of its 2020 Vision for more and stronger cooperatives. The “Blueprint” states that, “Democratic member participation is the best-known feature of the co-operative way of doing business and a major part of what characterizes [...]
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 [...]
Where we are headed matters. If we don’t know where we are going any road will do. A primary responsibility of a board is to define the reason for the organization’s existence. What are we here for? What should be different because we exist? For whom? For a board that uses Policy Governance®, Ends are written policies which define a) results, outcomes or benefits [...]
