Membership Recruitment From AZ
My name is Cath Pape and it was my pleasure to be one of two steering committee members that represented Clipper City Co-op at The Up and Coming Food Coop conference March 10-12, 2016, organized by the Indiana Cooperative Development Center (ICDC) and Food Coop Initiative. The Food Coop Initiative (FCI) grant awarded to us in July 2015 reimbursed our registration costs. A $300 grant from The Ralph K. Bowers Fund assisted with a portion of our travel expenses. The actual cost incurred by our co-op was minimal after the co-op was reimbursed 50% of our lodging and fuel costs by FCI.
While in Bloomington, Albert Sears and I each attended nine 75 minute workshops, in addition to a four hour in-depth workshop on Thursday afternoon. That Thursday, Albert participated in Time-lining Your Startup’s Development while I attended Membership Recruitment from A-Z. The A-Z workshop I attended began with this great quote.
“In a cooperative, memberships aren’t sold, as much as they are earned. Rather than selling, we’re seeking to first build a relationship between a prospective member and ourselves as leaders of the cooperative and to then ask them for a commitment in the form of an equity payment.”
Relationships matter! We each have invested in Clipper City Co-op for a personal reason. That story matters. Successful co-ops are built around a clear, compelling message that resonates with people in the community. We have several stories to tell: The story of self, the story of us, and the story of now.
As the month’s unfold, watch for more stories about the experiences both Albert and I had at the conference. We continue to meet and prioritize conference materials, preparing to train our leadership team and our co-op owners on material titled, Laying the Foundation I and II. Other workshops we attended included Finding and working with Lenders, Understanding Ownership numbers, Intro to Co-op Finance, Recruiting and using volunteers, Planning a capital campaign, Popup, Local motive and shared harvest, Assembling your Leadership team, Finding your Coop’s Vision, Insurance, Governance: Transitioning from Steering Committee to Board, Financial Feasibility, Why some coop’s fail, and more.
Monthly blogs will include more stories of our learning and the gratitude we have to be building long lasting relationships with all of you that will inevitably build the Clipper City Co-op foundation, one owner at a time. We are all storytellers!
