Cooperative Development Institute: Northeast Center for Cooperative Business

The Hanover Consumer Cooperative Society, based in Hanover, NH, recently announced the opening of its fourth store, across the border in White River Junction, Vermont.

The DFTA Workshop, "Domestic Fair Trade Association: A Movement Based Approach to Fair Trade," is scheduled for Friday morning, June 25th, at 10 a.m. in Cobo Hall Room 02-33. The panelists will include Rosalinda Guillen of Community to Community Development; Joaquin, a young farmworker traveling with Community to Community; Elizabeth Henderson, farmer and NOFA representative; Richard Mandelbaum of CATA-the Farmworker Support Committee; and myself.

The Portland Press Herald had an article yesterday by Avery Yale Kamila on Local Sprouts, the worker cooperative community supported kitchen and catering business that has now just opened a cafe. Dedicated patrons can become members of the cafe by paying for a subscription in advance and will benefit from a 10% discount on the breakfast, lunch, and dinner menu featuring organic, Maine-sourced food.

Cooperative Development Institute has been working with the 12 organic dairy farmers who are launching Maine Organic Milling in Auburn, ME, a farmer-owned cooperative to mill and mix organic feed for their livestock. Read "Maine organic farmers launch grain mill" by Lindsay Tice in a recent issue of the Sun Journal. The farmers are members of Organic Valley Family of Farms cooperative, which helped the group with inventory, technical support and logistics. This partnering is a perfect example of co-ops helping to form new co-ops and grow the cooperative economy (see our recent presentation at the NCBA Annual Conference on "Growing the Cooperative Economy: Co-ops Seeding Co-ops").

Food Co-op 500 has Evolved...

Into a new, non-profit organization that will continue to support new retail food co-op development across the United States -- the Food Co-op Initiative. A recent press release describes the organization and its impact and announces the appointment of an executive director, Stuart Reid.

The Neighboring Food Cooperative Association (NFCA) is an alliance of over 15 New England food co-ops. Founded in 2004, NFCA has defined its primary long-term desired outcome as a thriving regional economy. A thriving regional economy will include a food system that provides all people with access to healthy food from the region as much as possible. At the heart of such an economy, we see cross-sector collaboration among a variety of cooperative enterprises.

There are some great ideas being proposed at the "Revelation to Action" contest sponsored by Green Mountain Coffee and Ashoka's Changemakers. They want to find and help fund the most innovative ideas and organizations that strengthen and improve communities in Maine, New York, Rhode Island, Vermont, New Hampshire, Connecticut and Massachusetts.

The Neighboring Food Co-op Association (NFCA) has an immediate need for an Executive Director.

CDI Cooperative Development Specialist Lynda Brushett is teaming up with the Northwest Atlantic Marine Alliance to work with a number of Community-Supported Fishery (CSF) projects underway in New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and Maine. Several of these were detailed in a pair of Boston Globe articles by G. Jeffrey MacDonald on January 24, 2010:

The Cooperative Fund of New England (CFNE) has launched the Cooperative Capital Fund (CCF), a new source of patient capital (including equity and equity-like loans) for co-op expansions, conversions and start-ups. They are proud to announce that CCF has reached its minimum level of investment and has begun accepting applications.