Steps to Organizing a Cooperative

i am with usda rural development a long time co-op developer and we have alex stone the executive director of cooperation works and uh we are pleased that we are able to offer this first in a series uh what we're going to present today is just the basics on the steps to forming a cooperative but before we get started we are fortunate to have this presentation being simultaneously translated into spanish by eric and melissa with the interpreters cooperative of madison so i'm going to hand it over to them to take care of some house housekeeping details [Music] thanks all um briefly i'm going to copy and paste some instructions in the chat window here first in english i'll repeat this in spanish just after about accessing interpretation so those are showing up now it's very important that everyone on the call selects a language either english or spanish by the methods identified in the chat window here based on if you're on pc tablet or mobile so that we can make sure we have the two language audio channels separated and with quality audio and the interpreters will be able to work between the two i'm going to go ahead and paste the spanish and repeat that in spanish now interpretation simultaneous i think i forgot to add margaret and alex that we're going to ask people that you can put your questions in the chat if you have a burning question or clarification but we'll be planning on addressing them at the end and i'll go ahead and say that in spanish [Music] so again we'll take questions at the end we're going to turn on interpretation now the globe has not shown up yet but once i click the button it will and everybody should be able to select their preferred language channel so let's go ahead and do that right now [Music] for those of you who are on video please go ahead and raise your hand if you're able to hear me on the english channel right now i know it might take a second for people to get on i see a lot of hands raised already that's a good sign thank you for that i'm going to go ahead and check check the spanish channel quickly looks like we have 26 members on i'm seeing a lot of good thumbs up there thank you for your patience so i don't see any reactions from spanish but we are recording so i think we're all set i'll go ahead and repeat the instructions as we get started but i think we're all ready to get started from the interpreter's standpoint thank you perfect thank you so much and this is wonderful to be able to have this translated into spanish this is being recorded and alex will record this in english and the interpreters will record this in spanish and uh that way uh we will put this on the cooperation works website and it will be available into the future so thank you everyone welcome to coming as i mentioned this is the first in a series about the steps to organizing a cooperative what i'm going to do today is cover the basics that any type of cooperative needs when you're developing it needs to be covered but then in in the coming months we will go into more details based on industry sector and uh methodology and i'll go into that a little bit at the very end of our presentation so um alex if you wouldn't mind putting up the screen thank you for doing that great so i've been a co-op developer um based in my home state of wisconsin i've helped organize about 35 different cooperatives and all kinds of different industry sectors and um i'd like to share with you uh some uh knowledge that that the field of cooperative development has has developed and some personal lessons i've learned along the way that i'd like to share with you as well so alex next slide please okay so when it comes down to it all cooperative development involves six steps that must be covered in order to to bring a cooperative idea to fruition um and i apologize for the the flower theme there i'm a master gardener it's spring here in wisconsin and um i've got flowers on my mind so let's go to the next slide so it all begins with an idea someone has an idea and there's another caveat to that can a group effort address the idea that someone comes up with next slide please so after coming up with the idea uh the the persons that come up with the idea need to explore that idea you know what are the basics of the business concept and is the cooperative business structure the best means to meet that shared need need and i like to say that coming up with a cooperative and the early steps of cooperative development involves a group of people that uh share the philosophy of a quote by margaret mead next slide please and here is that quote from uh the noted anthropologist margaret mead never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world indeed it's the only thing that ever has next slide this thoughtful group of people that that share a concept that share an idea that believe that the cooperative method is the best way to meet that need are going to gather some information they're going to gather information about what exactly is a cooperative uh what is the cooperative legal structure and some of the other legal structures that are available they'll want to talk to other cooperatives in both the industry that they're thinking about along with other cooperatives in your region it's important to explore the cooperative values and principles and then you'll want to explore a little bit deeper the concept of an ownership culture and the concept of participatory democracy because cooperatives are about economic democracy then you'll want to go up go ahead and identify further resources you may reach out to a project a coordinator someone that will keep everyone on task it doesn't have to be a full-time job it's just the point person that will will share information about when the next meetings are uh if people have questions those questions can be referred to that person it's a conduit of information and this is a good time to reach out to cooperative development centers to individuals that are experienced in co-op development and also some paid consultants such as attorneys and accountants that have experience with the cooperative model and then this will bring us to the next next phases of further defining the business concept so let's move to the next slide so as you are doing this exploration there are some key questions that you need to answer first of all is the idea a sound business idea and of course is there an advantage to working together as a group rather than trying to do this as a solo business enterprise and it's the cooperative model the best structure for meeting that need and then it's also important to explore is the idea worth doing because cooperative development as with any business develop is a major investment of time resources and energy on behalf of the people that are organizing so one of the key concepts in cooperative development is that forming a cooperative that cooperative should make a major difference in people's lives and the potential members lives and this cooperative should be a business not just a hobby and i have an example to help illustrate that a couple years ago my neighbor across the street arlene is was an avid uh knitter and she used to work part-time at a local yarn shop here in town and arlene was very excited to be able to to have good quality yarns to knit and she loved working at the yarn shop but unfortunately the the owner of that yarn shop it was her dream to open this yarn shop and she developed an allergy to fibers airborne fibers so the owner of this yarn shop was going to close the store well arlene heard that i did this work with cooperative development and one evening she came bounding across the street knocked on my door and said margaret oh my goodness i have such an important idea we need to take that yarn chop and turn it into a cooperative and i paused and i said arlene um the people that buy yarn at that shop is this vital to their livelihoods do they depend on yarn to to uh to make income no is this um is this yarn is this have some strong cultural relevance you know is this an expression of who people are or is there the danger that people may just move on and start buying yarn at walmart or joanne fabrics or michael's or wherever and arlene thought about it a bit and she's like you know what um they're probably people are and people enjoy buying at the yarn shop but if that yarn shop were to close they would probably just move on and start buying their yarn at other places so i use that as an example that the yarn shop concept while it was really cool it was more of a hobby for a lot of the people that depended upon those supplies so i just want to share that with you as an example to try to figure it out um the casual interest in cooperatives versus hey this is critical to who we are economically culturally socially so next slide please the next step is critical and that with that small group of people that have been working on exploring this this concept it's critical to discuss your mission and your values this is time well spent uh because every cooperative every business about a year and a half two years into operations will face some type of roadblock something will happen there will be people will hit the wall and that is critical that you have agreed upon uh shared mission and values before you hit that critical roadblock because when you hit that wall you may discover wait a minute i got involved with this cooperative because and you thought it was because and you thought it was because wait a minute we you know we don't agree on why we even started this to begin with by having a shared set of mission and values when you hit that inevitable roadblock roadblock you can step step aside and say wait a minute okay we're facing this shared problem okay let's let's look back and why we form this to begin with and based on those values what are some options for moving forward so by the very nature of cooperatives cooperatives in their very dna are principle driven businesses and it's important to take that time early on to have an agreement to come to an agreement on what are your shared mission and values next slide please so after discussing your shared mission and values with that small group of people that have been working on this concept this is the time to share the idea with a wider group of people to hold an exploratory meeting to see if there are other people that share this idea that are interested in this so at that meeting you would present the concept if there looks like there's interest in the room you would ask people to form a steering committee and also at this time it would be appropriate to ask for some earnest money some early investment to cover some of the organizing expenses any legal expenses that may come up and quite frankly a little bit of funding a little bit of money out of people's pockets is also a good indicator of their commitment to this concept and one of the lessons that i've learned over time is that uh informing a steering committee you just don't want to take a sheet of paper and send it around the room and ask for people to volunteer to be on the steering committee um you'll probably want to have busy people on your steering committee because busy people are are the ones that get things done and uh busy people don't necessarily just volunteer to do things you may need to individually go and ask people hey john we understand you've got some good experience in this industry or carla you've got some experience with financials would you be willing to to serve on our steering committee the ideal size for a steering committee i would say is about three to six people and the steering committee is going to be the folks that uh carry the idea forward uh that would keep the momentum moving you can have other people serve on committees for specific projects because they may not have the time to to devote to being on this on the steering committee on on the group that's really uh holding the body of knowledge but they they've got some specific viewpoints or they've got some specific um experience that would be relevant to share and you know they only have about three months time to share so um you'll want to have a steering committee but remember you can certainly have uh smaller committees to work on specific topics as you're moving forward so let's go to the next slide so to recap with the idea exploration you've got the initial idea start gathering information make sure you discuss your mission and values hold a wider meeting to explore this idea see if there's more people interested form a steering committee from that and then we'll move on to the next stage on our our pedal of developing a cooperative next slide please okay so we've gone through the idea exploration now it's time to explore the viability of the business concept and there'll be two important phases to the business viability next slide so we've gone through the exploration a process where the proposal it looks realistic the cooperative model seems like a possible solution to to this idea and you've held an exploratory meeting and people are showing interest then it's time to proceed to doing a feasibility study but if in the process the interest in this just doesn't seem to be there or the idea seems to be a little too fuzzy it's okay to stop because um the idea may not it may not be the the time for this idea uh it may make more sense to do it a little further down the road so let's move on to the next next slide so conducting a feasibility study the basic concept is is this concept is this business concept viable you're going to have a third party doing industry analysis that third party is going to look at the market potential some of the technical aspects of the business try to come up with some capital requirements uh financial projections and it's it's very helpful to have what we call scenarios the best case scenario the worst case scenario and the so-so uh case scenario and as i said it's important to have a third party do this specifically a third party that has experience previous experience with that industry uh you may be wondering well where do you find uh you know a consultant or an individual that has experience in that business probably when you were doing the exploratory phase you may have reached out to others in that industry um it's okay to ask others in that industry in other parts of the country or in your region who do you trust uh to to inform uh your your industry who who has the best knowledge uh certainly appropriate to reach out to a co-op development center uh we in cooperation works have a wonderful list server in which we can pose questions to one another has anyone done something in the meat processing industry has anyone done anything with taxi cab companies and people from across the country are willing to share information so if you don't know who could do a feasibility study in your industry ask around you'd be surprised the names that come forward people that people feel comfortable with next slide please so another decision point so after you've gone through the feasibility study does the concept still seem viable and after doing that thorough review and presenting the information to the steering committee does the steering committee feel that it's worth pursuing that business concept if it looks viable and you and you still have the energy to move forward then you'll want to move forward to a business plan but if not if the feasibility study comes back negative or if after going through the feasibility study process the steering committee just kind of runs out of steam it's appropriate to stop because you may be saving yourselves valuable time and effort um of not proceeding with a business idea that just doesn't have viability at this point let's move to the next slide so this is the second part of business liability and this is conducting a business plan a business plan is about the details of your venture it's it can be done by the steering committee or by consultants you'll probably be using information gleaned from the feasibility study but you're going to make it your own you're going to talk about the product that your product or service that you're going to provide you're going to talk about your marketing plan you're going to talk about specifics about your operations what does management look like what does the organization look like what do the finances and capitalization that are needed for your specific idea and then how much equity from the members is needed and how much debt financing is needed like i said this can be done conducted internally or you can bring in consultants to do it but again you're going to be using basic information that that you take you pull from the feasibility study to help inform the specifics of your business plan next slide please so another decision point if the market potential looks solid and member participation there's still interest in moving forward and the capitalization chances look reasonable then you can proceed to actually incorporating and moving forward with the business idea if not stop and that's okay it's okay not to proceed if if it's just not a feasible idea and there just isn't the energy to do it or you just the finances just don't look possible it's okay to stop because you could be saving yourselves valuable time and resources by not proceeding next slide please okay we have gotten through two critical steps the next uh step that we're going to talk about is the legal structure for your cooperative business so let's move on next slide so there are some important documents that need to be uh drafted and signed you'll want to work on the bylaws and the articles of incorporation the articles of incorporation are actually filed with your state or whatever state you're going to to incorporate under and then the bylaws are a legally binding document amongst one another but it's not actually filed with your state the bylaws are kind of like an operating manual for how the business will move forward into the future how it will be governed so after you have worked with a co-op co-op developer a co-op development center and have an attorney to review those articles of incorporation and bylaws you'll want to select people that will actually sign the articles of incorporation oftentimes these are people that have been involved from the very beginning that have served on the steering committee and those people that sign the articles of incorporation they will act as the interim board of directors for the cooperative until the boar until the cooperative actually can hold its first meeting uh and elect people from from amongst the membership so you will want to incorporate with your state agency either in your state or a state where you're going to do do that with you have the some options to decide whether or not you will offer stock or not and then you'll also want to start developing some policies and some controls financial controls for the cooperative business you'll want to open up a banking account or an account with a credit union uh you'll want to develop some checks and balances uh such as uh two-party signatures on checks uh things like that uh if you are going to have employees of the cooperative business now would be the time to start developing a personnel policy handbook um membership agreements if if that is what is needed by your cooperative and some board policies such as conflict of interest things like that next slide please so after creating those legal documents and one thing i neglected to mention in uh in the previous slide is that please don't just uh borrow someone else's bylaws and just say oh these are the bylaws for our cooperative you'll want to form a committee to actually work on the bylaws and make them your own because if you just borrow someone else's bylaws those are someone else's bylaws and they may not be relevant to who you are what your mission and values or frankly if they're they are bylaws from another state they may not even meet some of the legal requirements of the state in which you've incorporated so sorry about that so um after you've you've developed these um these legal documents you'll want to have an organizational meeting and this is where you would present the results the findings of the feasibility study in the business plan be prepared to answer a lot of good questions that are going to come from people that are going to become member owners of this potential cooperative you'll want to have people actually adopt the bylaws and then this would be the time to elect the permanent board of the initial board of directors and to collect any type of membership equity that is required to become members of the cooperative next slide okay so we've gone through idea exploration we've gone through the business viability we have just discussed the legal structure now it's time to talk about tada capitalization coming up with the funds to launch your cooperative business next slide please there are various options that are available to cooperatives you see them listed on the screen most cooperatives will use a combination of these options one of the first options is membership equity investment by members in their cooperative business uh usually there's some type of initial membership uh requirement and sometimes there's an annual uh annual fee uh to to keep um investment coming in cooperatives can also offer uh financialization by transaction fees oftentimes with agricultural cooperatives there's something called a per unit retain for instance i live in wisconsin we have a lot of dairy cooperatives and we talk about uh some type of surcharge on every 100 weight of milk that is delivered to the cooperative or there might be a five percent surcharge on the delivery of of local foods or if there is a worker cooperative it might be some hourly withholding until those new member owners reach their equity requirements to become members of the co-op another option is to do an equity drive and this is where you would offer common stock to the members and this is you know whatever the set fee is that just gives you rights to become a member owner of the cooperative and to and to share and pay patronage refunds then you can also offer preferred stock and this allows members and the community to invest in the cooperative depending on how you are incorporated most states will cap the rate of return on investment at eight percent however there are some new statutes out there that have an unlimited um uh a fee personally i think eight percent and is quite generous but uh depending on the size and scope of what you're doing uh you may have investors that expect a higher rate of return and the people that purchase preferred stock that preferred stock has very limited voting rights um i live here in wisconsin and voting rights for preferred stockholders are limited to matters of merger consolidation acquisition those types of things and no matter how much you have invested in the cooperative you get one vote just like everyone else so there are other you can also look at debt financing such as subsidized loans uh those loans can come from members or people in the community it would be at a rate mutually agreed upon by both the cooperative and the members and of course grants are attractive however i offer a major caution about pursuing grants grant following trying to capitalize a cooperative with a grant can get people thinking into a non-profit mentality and very quickly you can find yourself on a treadmill of having to write grant after grant after grant and once the grants dry up oftentimes the the cooperative dissolves it's important that that we we stick to that cooperatives are businesses and that they should be financed as businesses uh with equity with debt uh with with investment and then of course there's the opportunity to do market rate loans as well so next slide okay next we are coming upon becoming operational so next slide i remember when i first started with usda there was like a 10-step or a 12-step program of the steps to forming a cooperative and the last one was open for business and i remember helping to organize one of my first cooperatives at this one right here cooperative care i think you get to the point where operation we started operations it's like oh my gosh now what there's like a ton of details that need to happen um but anyhow uh some of the immediate tasks that you need to take care of after you've incorporated is to uh you will need to register on the irs with an employer identification number and ein um and uh if you get stuck with because the cooperative option doesn't show up right away contact a co-op developer or co-op development center they can guide you through that um option on the irs website any type of a board and business insurance and i highly recommend getting a business liability insurance and a board and officers insurance for your board of directors as well any licensing that's needed workers compensation if you are hiring employees then you'll want to proceed with hiring or co contracting with a manager and then that manager would be empowered to go ahead and hire other employees as needed as presented in the business plan and then moving forward with acquiring facilities and equipment next slide please so begin operations you'll often do a a soft opening and then perhaps a grand opening with some type of ribbon cutting and and public relations it's just the beginning as you begin operations next slide please and then a critical piece in cooperative development that goes on over a period of years is cooperative cooperative education and training next slide please so in the cooperative development process you want to help that cooperative business get on its feet to begin to walk upright um and it's important to provide training to both the membership and the board of directors and to help both groups think longer term because it's easy to get caught up in all the details of operations and um and and that type of thing and lose sight of the bigger goals of the governance issues that that a board of directors needs to be engaged with so as a as some as as the group is moving forward um a co-op developer can help model some good board behavior and help the group think through some policies that they want to develop uh making sure that there's a strategic plan making sure that the board does an annual review of its manager and doing an annual review of itself it's so easy in in all the excitement that goes on with beginning operations and in the in the initial years to lose sight that you need to touch base you need to do a review you need to to see how are you doing and to give good feedback to that initial manager um so member education and involvement something to think about i talked about education and training education is the ongoing agreement as to why you form the cooperative touching base on those mission and values so that into the future as new people join the cooperative or or this lasts for for years and you start to see generational new generations of people coming into the cooperative it's critical to keep touching base as to why you form this cooperative what are your mission what are your values and and and coming back to that over and over again training provides you the how to be a cooperative such as how to read the financials how to conduct a board meeting how to conduct an annual membership meeting uh it's more than mechanics whereas education is the why why are you all cooperative and i mentioned the annual membership meeting that is uh required by state law and at that annual membership meeting you'll cover three things um an update on how the cooperatives is doing uh financial information and then voting upon the board of directors and voting upon any bylaw changes or even changes to your articles of incorporation so next slide so as you're organizing a cooperative general rule of thumb it takes about for most cooperatives two to three years from the initial idea phase to actually starting operations i have seen in a few cases i was involved with one cooperative that organized within three months time it was a very small shared services co-op a group of people that knew each other well um and they were able to to form it very quickly um some of the um consumer food co-ops that are out there they're talking about a more elaborate um strategy for for starting up and oftentimes those cooperatives can take six to seven years um and uh that will be one of the uh upcoming series uh presentations that we will have about that particular model but generally it takes about two to three years uh because there are a lot of steps to take um to go through this is a shared business you can't just do something on the back of an envelope that individual entrepreneurs might feel that they can do there are a lot of good checks and balances to make sure that everyone is on board that there is some good thinking that goes behind actually launching the business so with that move on to the next slide the steps in summary all cooperatives all cooperative development needs to cover these steps the idea exploration business viability if it looks viable from both the feasibility study and the business plan move forward with incorporation and other legal structures that are needed capitalization these are businesses after all if you've got the capitalization together you can move to actually operations beginning of the cooperative business and then the ongoing education and training to make sure that members are fully participating in the life of their cooperative business next slide please so this was the introductory uh webinar on the basic six steps of forming a cooperative uh in the future we're going to have uh we have dates set for june 17th and july 15th we're going to cover both sector specific steps in forming a housing cooperative in converting existing businesses to worker cooperatives and the consumer food model that i've mentioned before and then we're also going to take a look at specific development methods such as cooperative academies cooperative incubators and there are even if there's a good example of cooperative accelerators out there so please um mark your calendars for june 17th july 15th and we'll have later dates coming up as well so the next slide is contact information from me um if you didn't see that already but that brings us to the end of my formal presentation so why don't we go ahead and answer some questions and i think i'm going to ask alex to help uh with fielding some of those questions and maybe we can go to the screen to see each other um do you want people to be able to unmute themselves and ask questions or just drop them in the chat box or either or what whichever people feel more comfortable with i can start asking questions of you [Music] some shy folks here today or you just explained everything with perfect clarity yeah right well i'm not shy my name's michelle um and i wanted to ask about and you'll probably get to these things in other presentations but it'd be helpful to kind of know a little bit about the um the prefer a little more about the preferred stock and um and the option of stock versus the membership and maybe even what combination you mentioned people will sometimes use right oh those are really good questions and i didn't dive into a lot of details because this was just an overview but excellent questions michelle um we are fortunate with cooperatives that we have several options to us in uh capitalizing a cooperative and the third cooperative principle is member economic participation these are businesses and the members of the cooperative need to participate in the economic life of this cooperative so one of the things that cooperatives can do is cooperatives have a few exemptions that are available to to them from the securities and exchange commission the sec the securities and exchange commission was created back in the 1930s to help protect people from uh some of the unscrupulous investment opportunities that became available in the roaring 1920s people invested in they lost their life savings and it helped to create the great depression securities and exchange commission was created to help protect uh people from um from those type of investments so for larger corporations for larger business entities you can raise money substantial amounts of money but you need to register that with the securities and exchange commission and basically what one of the things that is done with that is that um in the process of registering you will create a prospectus which is like a sick document that lists everything that could possibly go wrong with your investment what that could possibly go wrong with that business and it's done to as the securities exchange commission to be a third party of information with cooperatives because of our cooperative principles of transparency good communication ongoing training that people understand uh financial documents especially the documents available through the cooperative it is assumed that members have access to high quality information they understand the information and the local community as well so there are a couple of exemptions that um that allow cooperatives to offer preferred stock to members or the local community as long as it's in within your state or certain exemptions of accredited versus the number of non-accredited members um that you can offer preferred stock without having to register with the securities and exchange commission and i'm involved with two really big projects right now and we're finding out yeah that's a really good thing uh to not have to file the securities and exchange commission so um oftentimes with cooperatives when you're offering preferred stock uh in most states there's a cap of eight percent of a return on investment for that preferred stock um although in in today's day that's really high um the actual rate tends to be more in the four to five percent range um we call it patient capital is what we're trying to attract uh we're also um uh when you offer preferred stock people need to be very much educated that the preferred stock is being offered by the cooperative based on the decision of the board of directors the board of directors every year will evaluate how the cooperative is done financially in the past year and then the board will decide okay we're going to pay um people that have hold the preferred stock in cash that year or we may just you know we're not quite there yet we're just going to accumulate it's going to be rolled over to the next year so um people need to be well educated about if they're going to buy preferred stock and invest in a cooperative they need to be educated that this isn't something that's done on the stock market this is something that's held locally it's very much the decision of the board of directors from year to year um what the payment will be uh there's an agreed upon payment but how often it will be paid out from year to year and um uh this is a topic for um for further training obviously but it is a tool that we in cooperative development have to help cooperatives uh capitalize and to do so um on a reasonable basis great question michelle so we've had a couple of questions come in through the chat and also uh one comment that i'll read out that um just says thanks for the thoughts about using grant money in the future of the business it does poison the well so good thing to think about um we have a question from molly who currently has unstable internet uh has a question about the ways to capitalize slide under member equity listed initial and then annual what do you mean by annual an ongoing annual member fee or paying off the initial member investment on an annual basis okay yeah good question um by that uh by that slide i meant that sometimes there's cooperatives for instance the local food co-op that i belong to here um there's a forty dollar membership annual membership fee um i i paid an initial equity investment and then i've got a yearly membership fee some cooperatives do that especially some of the consumer co-ops um so that's what i meant by that thanks margaret and we have another question that came in from caitlin should the developer generally bring in a co-op friendly attorney an accountant to work with the client during the development of policies and controls bylaws member agreements etc uh if you don't have an attorney on staff is it wiser to send the client directly to those professionals which steps really require a lawyer and shouldn't be attempted by non-attorneys yes yes oh excellent questions excellent questions i really encourage people to develop bylaws amongst themselves as best they can with the help of a co-op developer or co-op development center and then ask an attorney that has experience with cooperatives to review those bylaws you could ask an attorney to create bylaws for you from from scratch but you lose something in the process because there's something to be said for a group of people going through the process and thinking through what are our membership requirements how big of a board of directors do we want to have do we want to have term limits for the board of directors those things are those are important issues to have discussions about and that is a role that the co-op developer can play with helping people at that that subcommittee think through those issues because if you just pass it off to an attorney you lose that richness and plus it's you know the attorney costs a little bit of money um uh there is something there are certain points especially if you are offering preferred stock absolutely work with an attorney and get in touch with an accountant that has familiarity with with cooperatives if you're offering preferred stock absolutely you need to have an attorney involved with that because you don't want to get into violations for the securities and exchange commission there are some experienced co-op developers on this oh on this call it might we might uh call on some people i'm looking at you diane gassway um if you want to share any thoughts on some of uh some of these points or some of these questions that have come up i just want to make sure that i'm still saying the same message after all these years thanks margaret it's you're always really great and so it's so wonderful at explaining some uh what can be complicated issues any thoughts on and i mean you're seeing some interesting um you know with with coved you're seeing a a lot of interesting cooperatives um any any thoughts that you might want to share on some of the steps uh anything strike you no i think you're um absolutely spot on and and i appreciate the last response that you had about um you know when to bring in an attorney and not and that's typically what we do as well is you know guide people through the process and definitely bring an attorney there once we have drafts to make sure that everything agrees with one another so the bylaws agree with the articles and membership agreements and policies and you're not going sideways of your state laws yeah good points yeah thank you for that thank you thank you diane um we have had a couple more questions come in uh from folks over chat um so from sandra we have uh what one or two previous mistakes would you want others to avoid making oh good lord um oh man okay i learned the hard way about sending around a piece of paper to have people sign up to be on the steering committee i'll never do that again um something people that that step forward may have time on their hands for a reason so that was a um important thing um and another reason that i kept stressing the importance of agreeing upon mission and values early on i have journeyed with a lot of co-ops that reach that that wall you know a year it's it's like clockwork a year and a half two years into opening something happens something happens with the business or people start to disagree with one another or things get get weird and it's so important to have had that discussion about mission and values and being able to come back to that when you reach those those critical those difficult points and and you know coming up within usda um some of my counterparts used to think oh that's margaret she's being touchy feely uh you know it's like no these are real issues and these this really does come up um we had another question come in from michelle can you share some examples of restaurant cooperatives and i know that matthew epperson has already volunteered to share a list uh with michelle as well so but if you have any further call please let us know yeah yeah there's the famous one in um i'm gonna have to ask some people other people on this on this webinar to help me out there's one in southeast ohio it's a famous worker cooperative it's been around for long nueva it it it's mexic it's um latin american food nueva we have a casa it's it's done as a worker cooperative i don't know if anyone else oh diane you've got um an example blue scorcher bakery in cafe [Music] new moon cafe a casa nuevo restaurant that was the one thank you oh cheese board in california there's some there's some good examples out there most of them have tended to be worker cooperatives not as many consumer or multi-stakeholder where you would have worker and consumer although it could be done but there again it gets into um issues of is it a casual hobby for people whereas for restaurant workers it's their livelihoods so there's more at stake so yeah if anyone wants to if anyone would like to unmute and offer some observations on that if i could ask of the person that asked that question i think it was michelle um what are you thinking um well so we're thinking it needs to be a community-owned cooperative or a consumer-owned cooperative it's located um a couple of blocks from george floyd square and um there i think it would be a nice thing for the community to sort of own and operate um or at least have the workers operate so but to your point about like how important and valuable is it to the community is is the question but i think it could be a uniting factor right in the definition of a cooperative it's shared cultural social economic aspirations so yeah good point good point we are do we have any last questions uh we're getting close to oh my goodness we've got extra time don't we i mean i don't think anybody minds getting a little bit of time back in their day but we do have until 1 30 if there are any lingering questions or things folks want addressed 1 30 yeah other questions or i see some other experienced co-op developers i might do the preschool teacher and start calling out people like stuart i don't know if you noticed but i only just joined i was held up on a call until just now so i if i asked a question or answered one i would be totally in the dark sorry teacher i wasn't paying attention any other i think if there are no more questions we could wrap up okay um i would just put in a uh a couple of plugs uh first is thinking margaret bao for another concise really clear engaging presentation on uh the co-op development process uh we're really lucky have her as a member with cw and be willing to do these uh these webinars for us so thank you so much um and she had mentioned in her presentation that this is actually the first in a series so i'll just reiterate that we're going to be exploring um cooperative development for the housing co-op sector sector worker co-op development um and consumer food co-op development along with some specific methods that are not necessarily tied to a sector looking at incubators accelerators co-op academies so we have the dates for the next couple already set and i'll send out an email shortly covering those and we're still working out the dates for the later ones but please stay tuned uh and if you're interested in uh becoming a cooperative developer or learning more uh and more deeply we do uh also offer a bigger training that is uh three week long sessions and because of everything that's happened in the last year they're actually all virtual now and this year we're offering building blocks which is the first of those sessions four times the first one is going to be offered from june 30th to july 23rd and registration opens uh on monday so i'll include a link uh to that on our follow-up email as well and you can check that out if you are interested in deepening your knowledge and skills in cooperative development even further and um i'll find it oh and i also just want to thank the interpreters cooperative of madison for providing interpretation we're really lucky to uh be able to connect with them and and expand access to uh these really great presentations so thank you so much um been really great having uh eric and melissa uh here with us today so thank you and um i'll hand it over to margaret for any final wind down no thank you so much thank you cooperation works thank you to the professional development committee for coming up with this topic idea and we want to make sure that this is recorded in both english and spanish and make it available on our website um it's it's a wonderful opportunity um you'd be surprised people stumble across these youtube videos and and and watch them and so it's it's great to have this resource so thank you cooperation works for recording this and making this available into the future great job everyone thank you for all you do for cooperative development have a great day take care