A building’s foundation supports the entire structure. Without it, the structure is doomed.
The cooperative business model rests on a foundation that not only provides stability but also guides day-to-day decisions. This “foundation” is what we refer to as the Seven Cooperative Principles and it’s what distinguishes all co-ops, including electric co-ops, from other businesses.
We address the seven principles throughout the year, and your co-op’s local pages this month beginning on Page 16A highlights their importance. Because it’s proven we learn and remember things better in groups of three, here are three main themes derived from the seven principles that I believe are the “heart” of cooperative:
- Concern for communities served by the co-op
- Consumer-members’ financial obligation and benefits are proportional to use
- Democratic control by consumer-members
Perhaps the most important takeaways critical to understanding the difference between a cooperative and for-profit businesses can be pared down to two fundamentals that center around you, our readers, of which I’ll refer to as the “soul” of the cooperative:
- People who own and finance the cooperatives are those who use it
- People who control the cooperative are those who use it
There are myriad reasons to celebrate and promote cooperatives, including the co-op ideals that continue to serve rural America well. However, most importantly co-ops put people, their consumer-members — the soul of the co-op — first. Co-ops are also vital to the communities they serve. Co-ops represent more than 1 billion consumer-members, which equates to 12% of the world’s employed population. Throughout times of financial crisis and downturns in the economy, cooperatives have shown great resiliency, continuing to meet consumer-members’ needs even as profit-driven organizations falter.
Now more than ever we need locally-owned and locally-controlled co-ops to be a strong foundation to the local, state and national economies. We should take time to celebrate the ways co-ops continue to stabilize our Kansas communities and rural communities throughout the world.
Lee Tafanelli is Chief Executive Officer of Kansas Electric Cooperatives, Inc. in Topeka.