Issue: #148 May - June - 2010

Post date: 06/04/2010 - 16:09

Telling Stories

Old craft leads to increased local sales and social media visibility

Long ago, back in the days of community barn raising, an Upper Midwest barn was new in a day. Neighbors traveled by horse, wagon, and maybe a model-A or two to help a young German homesteader and...

Post date: 06/04/2010 - 16:07

Startup Co-op Conference Shares Resources

George Huntington

Debbie Trocha

Indiana Cooperative Development Center (ICDC), a nonprofit agency supported by funding from the USDA, and Bloomingfoods Market and Deli recently...

Post date: 06/04/2010 - 16:06

Smile, Please, You're in Front of a Customer

By Bruce Palma

About a year ago, our major competitor held a focus group with some of its customers. We learned from several participants—longtime members of our co-op—that many people in the group told the...

Post date: 06/04/2010 - 16:04

Self-Help Wanted

By Dave Gutknecht

Spend most earnings now, or invest more in the future—what is the proper balance? We can see, in the current financial mess, some consequences of imbalance. For the sake of immediate benefits, the...

Post date: 06/04/2010 - 16:03

NCGA Working to Get Organics Included in WIC Program

By John Fogarty

The Women, Infants and Children program (WIC) has been a focus of National Cooperative Grocers Association (NCGA) advocacy efforts for over a...

Post date: 06/04/2010 - 16:09

Waking the Sleeping Giant

Recognize patronage dividends for what they are--co-op capital

Marilyn Scholl

Joel Dahlgren

Bruce Mayer

Creating solutions begins with building the foundation for the future you want. One of the remarkable things about cooperation is that mutualism encourages solution-oriented growth, built on a...

Post date: 06/04/2010 - 16:08

Steps to Sustainability: It Takes Vision

By Annie Hoy

The founders of Ashland Food Co-op (AFC) in 1972 were guided by the ethics of a budding environmental movement. The impulse to operate a not-for-profit business in ways...

Post date: 06/04/2010 - 16:00

Emerging Eco-Labels

Researching perspectives of co-op member-owners

By Lia Spaniolo and Phil Howard

Editor’s note: Several charts on the food industry can be found at Phil Howard’s webpage. The present article is linked under Lia...

Post date: 06/04/2010 - 15:59

A Cooperative Approach to Management Education

By Erbin Crowell

Editor’s note: In this article, when citing Canadian sources, we have retained their practice of hyphenating “co-operative.”

Education is a central...

Post date: 06/04/2010 - 13:52

Food Co-op 500 Becomes Food Co-op Initiative

By Staff

On March 25, 2010, the founding partners of Food Co-op 500 announced that the organization will move beyond its pilot phase and become a new nonprofit corporation. Food Co-op Initiative will...