Universe of Information
Stored in this Portal
Portal Library of
Reports Topics
- Personal and professional goals achievement
- Improved personal leadership, including work / life balance
- Increased accountability and focus
- Improved self-awareness and perspective
- Growth in leadership competency and capacity
- Better systems for priority management
What is a Cooperative Reports
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Co-operative Housing Works
Where LEHC’s Work Best - On land leased from local jurisdictions or employers - On donated land or below market value land - Communities where there is a low home ownership rate or high home ownership prices and costs - Where stable housing costs can help retain and recruit - Where home ownership tenure might be no more than 5 years - Mobile Home Parks where residents own their own home and share in the ownership of the park
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Bibliography of Cooperatives and Cooperative Development
This updated bibliography was funded as part of a grant from the U.S Department of Agriculture Rural Development to address new information in cooperative development. The original project was funded by a grant from the Illinois Council on Food and Agricultural Research (C-FAR) as part of a strategic research initiative on rural community development. The original project emphasized agriculture and rural economic development, and the bibliography, as part of that project, provided references on the cooperative model as a form of community development. The Illinois Institute for Rural Affairs (IIRA) believes that cooperative development should be considered in a rural development project.
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WHAT ARE COOPERATIVES
A corporation of which there are two types, general and cooperative. Both usually have multiple owners, offer goods and services to customers, anel use sound financial practices. They operate under State-gra nted articles of incorporation. Policy is set by a board of di rectors, \lvhile day-to-day business operations are the responsibility of a hired manager. Most corporations are general corporations such as iBM, General Motors, Xerox, and Wal-mart.
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Advising People About Cooperatives
A few individuals or a larger group of people may believe that forming a cooperative is the answer to their problems or needs. They expect you to appraise their problem objectively, make practical suggestions, and give professional assistance. Their interest may be in the more common agricultural marketing, purchasing, or service cooperatives or in special cooperatives such as buying clubs, child care, crafts, credit unions, fishing, food purchasing, forestry, housing, health, recreation, sewer, student, water, etc.
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Understanding Capper-Volstead
There are essentially two keys to understanding the basic meaning of the Capper-Volstead Act and its special implications for agricultural producers, associations of producers, and the general public
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What Is a Cooperative
What Is a Cooperative? Cooperatives are businesses owned and controlled by the people who use them. Cooperatives differ from other businesses because they are member owned and operate for the benefit of members, rather than earn profits for investors. Like other businesses, most cooperatives are incorporated under State law.
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Do Yourself a Favor Join a Cooperative
For more than 200 years, Americans have worked together in business cooperatives to meet critical challenges and to solve problems that were too big for them to overcome as individuals. Today Americans of every type and occupation belong to nearly 31,000 cooperatives nationwide. These include: farmer co-ops that help producers process and market their crops and livestock and provide them with essential farm supplies and services;
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The Nature of the Cooperative
This article focuses on the core points of the author’s presentation, “Farmer Cooperatives and Value creation: the Example of Dairy Farmers in the United States,” delivered at the 5th meeting of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) Food Chain Analysis Network, Oct. 30-31, 2013, in Paris. It is also a concise summary of a recently completed study into the nature of the cooperative, as reported in two recent research reports available from USDA Rural Development (RR 221 and 224) and a series of nine articles that have appeared in Rural Cooperatives magazine.
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Cooperative Theory: New Approaches
This report contains nine papers on cooperative theory relating to operations, market behavior, decisionmaking, finance, and other aspects of farmer cooperation. These papers were written as part of an ACS project intended to stimulate research and thinking on practical aspects of cooperative theory. This report does not represent an exhaustive theory of cooperatives, but presents new approaches to thinking on several topics. In addition to answering some questions, these papers ask others in an attempt to encourage more thought.
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Co-op 101 Start-Up Packet
Our vision of a cooperative economy is of an inter-dependent dense network of enterprises and institutions that allow us to meet our needs through principled democratic ownership, and that care for community, combat injustice and inequity, and promote conscious self-governance. The cooperative economy is embedded within and helps create a cooperative society aware of its place in a cooperative ecology.
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CO-OPERATIVES FOR SUSTAINABLE COMMUNITIES
The contents of this book are based on a five-year Community-University Research Alliance titled Measuring the Co-operative Difference Research Network. With Co-operatives and Mutuals Canada as the principal investigator, it was funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada and also involved the participation of researchers at four universities — Mount Saint Vincent,
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An Accessible and Lasting Tool for Home Ownership
How does a housing cooperative work? A housing cooperative is a legal corporation. Members of the cooperative live in the cooperative and run the cooperative—from organizing social activities, to maintenance, to handling finances and landscaping. Members set the bylaws and elect, from among themselves, a board of directors. The board ensures that the cooperative runs smoothly, in accordance with the cooperative’s bylaws and operating agreements. The board organizes a membership meeting at least annually, and hires staff to run the day-to-day business of the cooperative.
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The Role of Limited-Equity Cooperatives in Providing Affordable Housing
This article develops an economic analysis of the role of limited-equity cooperatives (LECs) in providing affordable housing. Using a model of the user costs of housing that focuses on housing externalities, it examines methods for overcoming externalities in multiunit rental dwellings.
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Limited Cooperative Association Statutes: An Update
Since 2001, new cooperative laws have been adopted in five states -- Wyoming, Tennessee, Iowa, Minnesota, and Wisconsin -- and introduced in the Nebraska state legislature. These laws do not replace existing cooperative statutes. They provide for the establishment of a new type of business entity, the limited cooperative association (LCA), which has characteristics of both the traditional cooperative and the limited liability company (LLC). Because the LCA can be structured in ways that contradict fundamental principles under which cooperatives traditionally have operated, there is concern that these new laws will subvert or dilute the cooperative business model.
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CONSIDERING COOPERATION: A GUIDE FOR NEW COOPERATIVE DEVELOPMENT
This publication reviews the key elements needed for successful formation and development of new cooperative businesses. The motivation for and process of forming cooperatives are discussed. Six phases of cooperative formation are presented including: 1) identifying the opportunity, 2) building consensus on the potential for a cooperative, 3) developing trust among potential members, 4) securing member commitment, 5) involving other stakeholders, and 6) starting up the cooperative enterprise. The roles and selection of qualified advisors are presented for each phase.
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Comparing Nonprofit and Cooperative Entities
Nonprofit or cooperative? Questions about the differences between these two types of legal entities are often part of early cooperative development discussions. These questions may come up when groups are looking at start-up financing. Grants and donations might be considered as a source of low or no-risk seed capital, and an entity must have a nonprofit tax-exempt status to be eligible. Future tax liabilities of the new organization also may be a concern. Other questions might be related to the governance of the new entity. Groups that are interested in democratic, member-based governance will want to know whether these goals fit with the legal requirements for these entity types
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Promoting Resident Ownership of Communities
BACKGROUND Residents of manufactured home communities (commonly referred to as mobile home parks) face a number of problems. Because they own their homes but not the land under their homes, they are vulnerable to closure of the community—the landowner can decide to put the land to some other use, and can force all the homeowners and their homes off the land. Closure of manufactured home communities is always a threat, but is particularly pronounced when there is a boom in commercial development, as developers eye these communities as prime targets for strip malls or office buildings.
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Research on the Economic Impact of Cooperatives
The cooperative ownership model is used in a wide variety of contexts in the United States, ranging from the production and distribution of energy to delivery of home health care services for the elderly. Although cooperative businesses have been responsible for many market innovations and corrections of market imperfections, little is known about their impact as an economic sector. Until this project, no comprehensive set of national-level statistics had been compiled about U.S. cooperative businesses, their importance to the U.S. economy, or their impact on the lives and businesses of American citizens.
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The ABCs of Co-op Impact
Today’s economic climate is marked by growing insecurity in the face of structural changes to work, benefits, and business ownership. Small business start-ups are at their all-time lows, and entrepreneurship is lower among millennials than previous generations at those same ages (Wilmoth 2016).1 The income gap between the top and bottom of wage earners grew 27 percent from 1970 to 2016. And wealth inequality is growing as well. In the 50 years between 1963 and 2013, the top 10 percent saw their wealth quadruple while the bottom 10 percent went from having essentially no wealth to being $2,000 in debt.
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What About Housing? A Policy Toolkit for Inclusive Growth
Our nation’s legacy of economically and racially exclusionary policies has resulted in segregated cities and suburbs all across the U.S. For example, redlining policies upheld by the Federal Reserve Bank from 1934 to 1968 disallowed conventional mortgage lending in communities of color. To this day, the impacts of inequality and segregation weigh heavily in neighborhoods in every corner of the country. Meanwhile, rising rents and sales prices have dramatically outpaced wage growth. Today, people of all types are struggling to keep up with monthly housing expenses. In fact, the U.S. Census tells us that about one-third of the population is now housing-cost burdened
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THE SILVER LINING OF COOPERATION: Self-defined rules, common resources, motivations, and incentives in cooperative firms
Cooperatives are characterised by mutual-benefit coordination mechanisms aimed at the fulfilment of members’ participation rights. This paper explores the institutional elements that regulate individual behaviour and outcomes in cooperatives by bringing together newinstitutionalism, behavioural and evolutionary economics. Our framework considers four main dimensions of the governance of cooperative firms: (1) the development and application of self-defined rules by the members of the cooperative; (2) the management, and appropriation of common resources and outcomes; (3) intrinsic motivations and reciprocating behaviours; (4) the implementation of suitable incentive mixes based on inclusion and reciprocity, including both pecuniary and non-pecuniary elements. An example is offered in order to highlight possible problems in the governance of cooperative firms, in particular the processes of distribution and appropriation of surplus. The example aims at introducing the discussion of the new framework of analysis.