Why Cooperatives Thrive

The National Cooperative Business Association (www.ncba.coop) offers a list titled, "Why Cooperatives Thrive" that I would like to share. It highlights much of what we need to focus on in our cooperative.

Why Cooperatives Thrive 

• Providing only the goods and services shareholders use
• Financed by the shareholders. The greater the financing (risk capital) supplied by the shareholders, the more efficient the cooperative.
• Using all major fixed assets at the 75 percent level, or more
• Members who do the majority of their business with the cooperative
• Low administrative and overhead costs
• More individualized and specialized services, particularly in the marketing area
• Maintaining an open line of communication with shareholders. Individual shareholders will then become more influential
• Selecting and developing a quality management team
• Placing more emphasis on electing business-oriented directors
• Developing and implementing a systematic method of cooperative education for shareholders, employees, directors and paid management
• Aggressively positioning for changes in operations, markets and shareholder needs

6 of these 11 items are about shareholders! Cooperatives are truly shareholder driven organizations

Our cooperative is a perfect example of this. The success of AFCNA is absolutely dependent on the fiber submitted by our shareholders that provides the raw materials that we can turn into yarns and finished products. We are largely dependent on the purchasing power of our shareholders that patronize the cooperative by buying our North American produced products.

Our Board is very aware of our responsibilities to our shareholders. We focus on providing goods and services that our shareholders use. Besides processing shareholder fiber into finsihed products, we acquire third party products that shareholders can purchase at wholesale prices for gifts, personal use, or resale from their farm stores.

We have worked hard to lower our administrative an overhead costs to the absolute minimum necessary to maintain a viable business. We are utilizing our fixed assets very efficiently.

We strive to maintain open lines of communication with our shareholders, encouraging shareholders to provide input and feedback, and to offer constructive criticism.

Through vehicles such as the AOBA National and Mid-Winter Conferences, the AFCNA website and emails  we provide education to our shareholders about fiber production, cooperatives in general, and AFCNA in particular.

We recognize that without active and involved shareholders our cooperative will not thrive.