California Center For Cooperation Development

Causes: Community & Neighborhood Development, Economic Development, Unknown

Mission: Educating the public, community institutions and government agencies; disseminating information about successful practices and models for cooperatives; encouraging cooperation; providing technical assistance in the formation of cooperatives

Programs: Cooperative education and outreach: provide education about the ways the co-op business model can be used to accomplish together what may be unachievable alone, share strategies for effectively operating a user-owned, democratically controlled business. Co-op education is accomplished via our website- www. Cccd. Coop, media outreach, responding to inquiries, and an annual 2-day "california co-op conference" (145 participants), and agricultural director education conference (42 participants). Staff presented at 16 conferences and events; cccd's website logged almost 36,000 unique visitors who used the sites start-up tutorial, downloadable publications, co-op news, videos, and links to additional resources. During 2016 cccd distributed 1400 print newsletters, shared 31 e-messages that were opened by about 7,300 recipients, and responded to more than 341 telephone and email inquiries.

assistance to existing co-ops:cooperatives are member owned and controlled businesses that are democratically governed on the basis of one member, one vote. Board and leadership education is important for cooperatives because crucial business decisions are often being decided by people who may not have professional business experience. Cccds education includes strategic planning, reading and understanding financial statements, linkages to technical consultants and managers, the roles and responsibilities of boards, effective communication, successfully representing members and avoiding/preventing conflict of interest. Workshops for existing cooperatives were offered at the california co-op conference and the agricultural director education conference. Staff also provided more than 23 trainings to specific co-ops.

co-op formation assistance: provide cooperative development assistance in the formation of worker-owned business that promote living wage jobs and democratic workplaces, agricultural cooperatives that help farmers improve their market conditions , child care cooperatives that help parents meet their needs for high quality affordable child care, consumer food cooperatives that increase local food security, promote locally sourced and community-based businesses; and housing cooperatives that create affordable home ownership opportunities. Cccd provided direct support that led to the incorporation of 4 new cooperatives which directly created/retained at least 22 job. Undoubtedly, this assistance also led the indirect formation of additional jobs and local economic development.