Issue #26- October 2004 A publication of Cooperative Development Institute www.cdi.coop
Feature: CT growers look at harvesting plastic cooperatively
CDI Partner Profile: Stacey Cordeiro
NE News: Community energy fund research, Food co-op collaboration
Legal Focus: Capitalizing Co-ops by Patrick Deluhery
Outside the Region: Nicaraguan co-op fights Goliath
Bulletin Board: Read this month's announcements
Values in Action: Principles in Action: (1, 2) Open, Voluntary Membership; Democratic Control
CDI Services: Contact us FMI at info@cdi.coop or 877-NE COOPS
Co-op Quiz: Test what you know!
Above photo: In Putney, Vermont, the state's second oldest food co-op got a new lease on life when the much larger Brattleboro Co-op stepped in to help. If you read Cooperative Grocer magazine you've seen a lot of photos of produce sections like this new one at Putney, being admired by Ed Powers, Grocery Manager; Dan Kubick, Bulk Buyer; Robyn O'brien, General Manager; and Kim Sullivan, Produce Manager. After a while they may begin to look alike, but every one exists because a lot of people cooperated, and that makes every one precious. See story in NE News, below.
Cooperative Development Institute (CDI) is the Northeast's non-pforit center for cooperative development. CDI's mission is to increase economic opportunities and benefits for people in the Northeast by fosteing the growth and success of all types of cooperative enterpirses. Please contact us if you or someone you are working with would like assistance in starting or strengthening a group-based business: info@cdi.coop.
Cooperative Life Leader and the Cooperative Development Institute would like to express our gratitude to the Connecticut growers and Arthur Amidon for allowing us to follow this journey toward greater economic self-determination and environmental stewardship. There are no easy answers, and cooperative incorporation is not always indicated. But in the work of collective investigation and decision-making, there is always something valuable to be learned. - Ed.
In 2001, recycling and solid waste consultant Arthur Amidon completed a feasibility study for Connecticut nursery and greenhouse growers. The study explored the possibilities of cooperatively recycling the plastic film they use to cover their growing houses. In the next few weeks, he will present the growers with a business plan that looks at the cooperative structure as a possible way to grow their businesses.
The basic idea, says Amidon, is for a co-op to purchase new greenhouse and nursery film as well as equipment to remove and bale the film, and to serve as a marketing agent for members' used film.
Since the group first began to look at working cooperatively, there has been a major change in the way used film is collected, and Amidon played a key role in this. He believed that an existing mobile baling technology (Tiger Baler) could be adapted to remove the film plastic from the Connecticut houses. The Tiger Baler was developed for use to remove and bale mulch film from strawberry and tomato fields in Florida. The Connecticut growers adapted the baler to keep the film from touching the ground, so it leaves the film cleaner--and uses less labor--than other methods do.
The steering committee wanted to see if there was a way to use this new baler on their growing houses. Amidon recalls, "Dennis Sutton, co-owner of Tiger Baler LLC, agreed to bring the baler to Connecticut for a trial run. Initially there was skepticism, but after watching it work for fifty feet, the growers knew it would do the job." Four balers have been purchased by the larger operations since then. The cleaner plastic brings a premium price in the recycling industry. Nurseries that used to pay waste haulers to carry off their used film are now being paid six cents a pound by export brokers who want to buy it. However, the new type of baler costs $25,000 and requires a 90 hp tractor to pull it, putting it beyond the reach of most commercial nurseries in the state.
Large growers look ahead
So what's the motivation for big operations to join a co-op? Mike Emmons, Nursery Manager of Pride's Corner Farm in Lebanon, Connecticut, has a ready answer: "Down the road, we may be required to recycle [plastic] and we try to be pre-emptive. We have a resource that potentially has value. We could create value, rather than dump waste."
He acknowledges that the new baler "is revolutionizing the way we recycle" because it's clean, dry, and can be compressed into 800-pound bales, which is how recyclers want it as it allows them to pack more per truckload. But while Emmons presently sees the primary benefit of co-op membership for his company in terms of fostering a cleaner environment, he sees a potential economic opportunity for smaller growers. "The bigger you are, the easier it is to sell your plastic...together, they [the state's small nurseries] probably produce more than we do. It's a shame to throw it away. We're taking a proactive approach. We'd like to see the rest of the state do as well."
Last April, Emmons and a few others invited all the state's growers to attend a demonstration of the Florida baler. Only three nurseries showed up. While Emmons admits it was the busy season, after all, he points out, that's the only time the baler can show its stuff.
Small is...problematical
Mike Emmons regrets that the small nurseries have not been more involved in the discussions about a cooperative, acknowledging that they often do not have the resources to enable them to attend many meetings. Some say they have been discouraged by the numbers projected by the feasibility study.
"Most of these [small growers] are plants men," Emmons explains, people who spend all season growing and selling their shrubs, perennials or annuals and just "want to rent a dumpster and forget about the plastic" when they're done.
"But if the state creates a law that says you must recycle your poly products," he adds, "That will change. We have the ability now, and the sources, to be proactive. If some type of co-op is formed, we should be involved."
The states' roughly 100 nurseries and commercial greenhouses are mostly pretty small operations, some with as few as only four or five greenhouses. These operations may have no tractor at all. Larger ones with several dozen houses may have a 30 hp farm tractor or an off-road pick-up truck. The new baler is no help to them.
Jim Messier of Hop River Nursery in Bolton, Connecticut isn't recycling his plastic right now because it doesn't pay him, physically or economically, even to bale his three dozen or so greenhouses in the old way. He's emphatic about how much he wishes this were not so. "We're in the ecological business, after all," he states.
The devilish details
Messier agrees with Arthur Amidon and Mike Emmons that if a self-baler could be developed with its own internal engine--therefore not needing a tractor--this could help smaller growers surmount one barrier to joining a co-op, as they would be more likely to share ownership of such a machine. However, he points out, "We all take off our plastic at the same time. When spring happens, whether it's the fifteenth of March or the tenth of April, we all have to jump on the wagon and go. (Upon reflection he adds, "Well, the annuals growers, they change their plastic at a completely different time of year...")
So, one question is, how many self-contained balers would it take, if one were to be invented, to clear off the plastic on all the co-op members' greenhouses on that one Spring day (or two, or...how many?) when it was time to jump on the wagon? And another question is, can a co-op successfully utilize both the latest and more conventional technologies and market two types of plastic, clean and less clean? And yet another question is, can the shrub growers and the annuals growers share balers since they remove plastic at different times?
Sometimes -- often, in fact -- unforeseen events outside anyone's control change the variables a group is considering when looking at the co-op option. Would the benefits of cooperative purchasing of new film and marketing of used film, whether clean or not, make it worth doing? Are there other ways in which smaller and larger nurseries could cooperate?
Art Amidon is getting answers to these and other questions ready for his presentation to the co-op steering committee. As he points out, the ultimate question is, "What are the potential mutual benefits that would make cooperation worthwhile to everyone?" Mutual benefit, that's the essence of cooperative enterprise. Look for an update in a future CL Leader.
Excited, informed, and inspired by her participation (along with about 100,000 others) at the World Social Forum in India last January, Stacey Cordeiro returned home eager to help plan a similar, but more local event: the "Other Economies Are Possible" section of the Boston Social Forum, which included cooperators from Equal Exchange, Ownership Associates and Red Sun Press in greater Boston, and the JED Collective based in Greene, Maine.
Cordeiro is optimistic about the role co-ops have to play in the movement for global economic and social justice. "We're coming out of the place where people saw co-ops as all Communists, or hippies. Now, people see co-ops as a practical tool they can use to improve their lives.
"I'm seeing a lot of interest and energy from young people," she observes. "All these networking events are full of them, from high school age on. They're looking for an alternative to what's being presented to them: get a job and move up the ranks, become an entrepreneur, or join the military. They aren't excited about those options."
She's been investigating alternatives to the status quo for a while. Growing up in Newport, Rhode Island's tourist economy gave her a good education in classism. As a student in MIT's community economic development program, she informed her teachers that she wanted to work with worker cooperatives, which she'd been introduced to while an undergraduate at Boston University. Later, she worked with Cooperative Economics for Women to help immigrants and refugees start worker-owned businesses.
Currently, Cordeiro is working on a feasibility study for a possible worker buy-out of a 25-year old manufacturing company whose owner wants to retire. She also is doing a market study for a small food co-op considering expansion. Her background in organizing and technical assistance inclines her to think about CDI's future in terms of both upgrading web sites and databases, and in developing programs to serve low-income, youth, urban, and other underserved groups.
"For awhile I was focused on worker co-ops as the most just way to operate a business and meet people's needs," she says. "But when I came to CDI, my view was broadened. I belonged to a food co-op, for instance, but I didn't understand they had the potential to be as revolutionary."
This is the second in a continuing series to introduce the members of our new Partnership (see CLL #24).
Every Wednesday, Brattleboro Food Co-op's General Manager Alex Gyori heads a few miles north to Putney Food Co-op to lend a hand to what might conventionally be regarded as the competition, although in sales Putney does only about one-sixth of the $12 million in business that Brattleboro does.
But things work differently in cooperative enterprise, says Brattleboro's Financial Manager Bruce Boardman who also visits Putney a few times a month to help them with financial reporting. He credits Alex Gyori with the original vision, and the board of directors with picking up the ball and running with it.
"When we decided to buy the downtown plaza [purchased last January, and including the co-op and three tenants], we took a step back and examined what we wanted to be in five years," says Boardman, who is on the board. "Did we want to bulldoze the building and build a new complex, be the showplace of the East, or what? What we found out was that what we really wanted was to be a good neighbor to other co-ops, not to design a new building."
So instead of investing in capital expansion, they invested in another co-op. Boardman admits the closing of Northeast Cooperatives, the region's co-op wholesaler, motivated some to take a hard look into the future of retail grocery co-ops. One of those people, Mark Goehring, is President of the Brattleboro co-op's board. He's spent a lot of time traveling to the dozen or so food co-ops along the "Route 91 Corridor" that stretches up to Hanover, New Hampshire. These stores differ greatly in size, membership, and annual sales, but Boardman notes there is a strong sense of "If we don't all pull together, we may fail."
Just-in-time cooperation
Putney's GM Robyn O'Brien seconds this sentiment, and calls Goehring a visionary when it comes to cooperative economics. She adds, "We've seen our numbers diminish tremendously over the last twenty years. If we don't collaborate, we're shooting ourselves in the foot."
How much has the collaboration helped Putney? "It was critical at the time," O'Brien says without hesitation. Sales were flat or sagging. There were problems with accounting and reporting procedures. The store needed work. Equipment was outdated. Vermont's second-oldest food co-op was in danger of going under. As Boardman does, O'Brien points to the loss of Northeast as a factor in Putney's falling on hard times. She had come from another food co-op in Maryland, and asked that part of her job be participating in Northeast's "Manager on Contract" program. When it was eliminated, she missed the regular contact with knowledgeable managers in the region.
"Then Alex said they'd step in and try to do some of that work with us," she recalls. "The Management Consulting Program has been going for almost two years, and it's wonderful! Alex has a bigger staff and store, and other resources he's willing to share. But it's also being able to sit down with someone who understands exactly what I'm talking about." Boardman adds that not just the GMs, but every department at Brattleboro has sent managers to meet with their counterparts at Putney. They've made observations, offered suggestions, and generally served as mentors to the smaller co-op.
The numbers, please
Last year's financials are out, and they show that Putney experienced a 20 percent rise in sales. A 14 percent increase is projected for this year. The store has a new floor, new produce cases (financed by Brattleboro Co-op at a modest 1% above their mortgage rate), and a new deli section that does a humming lunch business. New POS (point of sale) equipment was bought and installed in a joint purchasing and training program with Brattleboro's upgrading, which cut costs significantly. Weekly reports track inventory, sales, margins, and other key indicators to help keep operations on track.
Bruce Boardman says that last quarter the co-op showed its first profit since the collaboration began. He predicts that as the Putney staff becomes more knowledgeable--and as the regional and national co-op grocers' associations continue to get stronger--less input will be required of Brattleboro. He smiles, adding, "I come from the corporate world. I would have said, 'Let 'em go down the tubes, we'll buy them out and open a satellite store.'" But instead, this 'retired' businessman is getting a charge out of helping his neighbors take a big step forward in the work of succeeding at business--the cooperative way.
As with the Connecticut growers (see Feature, above), this is a story about an idea that is not yet a reality. Those involved in early discussions and research are eager to learn of other where people are investigating or implementing community renewable energy funds. Contact us at lbenander@cooplife.coop. - Ed.
"There are some very critical barriers to financing renewable energy projects that need to be overcome, in particular the fact that renewable energy investment has a life cycle of around 15 years. Conventional financial institutions like to be paid back more quickly, so are apt to be less interested in these projects." The speaker is Dwayne Breger of the Massachusetts Division of Energy Resources. He's been part of a loose-knit group of people discussing the possibility of a community-owned renewable investment fund to support wind power, biomass and other projects.
Breger continues: "At the same time, there is analysis, documentation and empirical evidence that there is a willingness among the public to pay for renewable energy, so the idea is to tap into that in order to develop a community renewable energy investment fund that would provide below-market financing for a project developer." He differentiates between this idea and the 'Green Energy' voluntary check-offs and other ways states have devised to fund renewable energy investment. Those, he points out, depend on voluntary contributions and have no financial return, whereas the idea being floated here is for investors to recoup a profit on supporting renewable energy projects.
These investors should include as broad a community base as possible to ensure success of the fund, Breger emphasizes. This means 'angel investors' with a socially responsible agenda, companies of any size, institutions ditto, and, ideally, ordinary individuals.
The co-op connection
Wanting to be as "grassroots" as possible, opening the fund to small investors led to looking at the co-op model as a way to aggregate resources in order to be a player. Lynn Benander of the Cooperative Development Institute has been working with Breger and others to look at how small investors might have a role.
Having such broad community participation could help to address some of the NIMBYism ("not in my backyard") that one encounters even with renewable energy projects, since residents would literally be invested in the project's success. And, as Breger says, "To the extent that local dollars are used to finance the project, the rate of return that comes with that investment accrues to the local economy as well. That's a significant boon for these local economies, as opposed to large banks and Wall Street financial institutions financing these projects where the rate of return is going to their shareholders who are far removed from the community."
Sally Wright of the Renewable Energy Lab at the University of Massachusetts/Amherst has also taken part in the discussions. She sees the future of community-scale projects in the region getting better all the time. "A town may be perfectly happy to make fifty thousand dollars a year on its wind turbine," she says, while this would never attract a big investor. The biggest barriers she sees are the fact that in New England land parcels for developing wind systems are small, and there are a lot of misconceptions about them. (Two places to see them in operation, she says, are Hull, MA and Searsburg, VT where the VT Environmental Research Association will conduct its last seasonal tour October 19th.)
Legal restrictions on individuals investing in such a fund are being closely looked at, as well as legal or regulatory barriers to the possibility of a co-op made up of individual investors becoming a member of the fund. People are researching similar efforts in Wisconsin, Canada, Denmark, and elsewhere.
Next steps
Another participant in the discussion is Larry Chretien of Massachusetts Consumers Energy Alliance. He hopes people in the U.S. will follow the Danish lead. The world's first offshore wind farm in the Copenhagen harbor was built with 40 percent financing from the local community. "I want to make wind turbine development as low risk as possible," he says. "I'd be happy to see a five percent return on investment." But he also observes that many energy-conscious people don't want to invest in a renewable energy fund any more than they want to invest in an organic farm just because they like to eat organic food. "They just want to flick the switch and have green energy. And we need to meet the needs of both types of consumers."
Sally Wright has identified a number of projects that were funded on a case-by-case basis, but no one consulted on this story has yet found an example of a community fund that is open to proposals from developers. Dwayne Breger emphasizes that there's a lot going on and not much centralized reporting, and says they would welcome any additional information CL Leader readers have to share.
In the meanwhile, the group is doing some initial modeling and analysis with support from CDI, in order to determine whether and how to move forward. We're holding out hope for their success. After all, the Rural Electric Cooperatives that brought power to US farmers, ranchers, and rural families in the 1930s and 40s were and are owned and operated by the ratepayers themselves (though admittedly heavily subsidized by the federal government). And if people can own their own power plants, they ought to be able to own the funds that build them. FMI: MA Div. of Energy Resources www.mass.gov/doer; MA Energy Consumers Alliance.
One of the highest barriers cooperatives have to scale, especially new cooperatives, is the acquisition of sufficient capital to begin doing business--or to expand the cooperative's assets and thus its capacity to serve its members. While cooperatives have a tax-advantaged source of capital (as opposed to C corporation income distributions which are taxed twice), they need to be running and profitable to take advantage of it.
Often, cooperatives need to use a mixture of capital sources to achieve their goals. Some of the capital acquisition issues cooperatives encounter are: First, traditional C corporations have the ability to sell stock, which can be structured to be freely transferable and available to anyone who wishes to make an investment. Cooperative voting stock is limited to members, and cannot be sold except by the cooperative.
Second, C corporations are run for the benefit of their investor shareholders; capital is attracted because an attractive return on the investment can be obtained in the form of company ownership, stock dividends and other perks. Cooperatives are owned by and run for members. Most co-ops do not pay dividends on their member stock, and even for the ones that do, the bulk of any profits are returned to members in the form of patronage and not dividends.
Third, cooperatives get their capital from members, and so increasing membership increases cooperative capital. But it also increases the burden of service on the cooperative. Care must be taken to not outstrip the cooperative's capacity to serve all its members. Fourth, federal and state securities laws, while designed to protect investors, can offer a formidable obstacle to any organization, whether cooperative or corporation, trying to offer stock or any other investment vehicle to the general public. Fifth, member ownership and democratic control make cooperatives unattractive for venture capitalists or private investors who are looking for large returns on their money and want control of businesses in which they have major investments.
There are three chief ways cooperatives can accumulate capital:
(1) through voluntary member contributions, such as membership fees, purchase of member certificates or stock or other direct contributions, often in response to the cooperative's call on members to provide additional capital (direct contributions are often a minor source of capital, except for new cooperatives, although devices such as the purchase of delivery rights can make this an important source of capital for some cooperatives;
(2) "Retained margins over earnings," or retaining up to 80% of patronage distributions to members to use as capital (These funds are usually put into a revolving fund, used as capital for some period of time, usually three to five years, and then returned to members. Since patronage is taxed at the member level but not at the cooperative level, this is a tax-free way to accumulate capital. The rub is that the co-op must be profitable to take advantage of this method.);
(3) "Per unit retains" are funds retained by the cooperative as part of doing business with or for members. (Example: a dairy co-op may retain a penny per hundredweight of the milk it handles for members; at the cooperative's option, this sum is credited to the member account as a capital contribution, or paid out to the member as patronage and retained in the manner described above. Again, the co-op needs to be profitable to take advantage of this method.);
(4) Preferred cooperative stock: when allowed under state law, the co-op can establish a preferred stock program to attract capital from both members and non-members. (However, often the returns on preferred stock are too modest to attract large investors, and the securities laws can offer hurdles to cooperatives that do not fall into the limited number of "exceptions" to these laws.);
(5) Member notes are borrowings from members to be used for capital purposes. (This is a good short-term solution, but it is still debt. Interest must be paid to the member-lenders on some periodic basis, and the funds must ultimately be repaid. If the note term exceeds nine months, it can be considered a security and subject to the same requirements as preferred stock, which can limit its usefulness.);
(6) Non-member or non-patronage earnings, that is income from sources other than service to members, can be retained for capital purposes. (Examples: all income from business with non-members, investment income and income from "sideline" sources such as the rental of real estate or lease of facilities to non-members. These funds are taxable to the co-op and not eligible for patronage distribution, so it often makes sense to use these funds as capital.) More on how to mix these capital sources next time.
Ed. note: Patrick J. Deluhery is a Massachusetts-based attorney serving the legal needs of cooperative businesses in the Northeast. FMI: pdeluhery@aol.com. This article is intended to provide information and is not legal advice.
The folks who launched the Clean Clothes Campaign in Maine report that one of the most exciting anti-sweatshop victories in Central America is in jeopardy because of continued hostility from bosses of local sweatshops and the multinational corporations that own them. Sweatfree Communities is asking Bangor, which has a strong tie to its sister city of Carasque, El Salvador, to help out at this critical juncture.
"Just Garments was born in November 2002, from a lengthy worker struggle and strong student, labor, and consumer solidarity," says the Bangor group's director, Bjorn Claeson. "It's the first unionized and worker-owned factory in the history of El Salvador's export apparel industry." Founded as a resolution to a labor conflict, it's the only garment assembly plant in the country where the workers have union representation and also form part of the management team. (www.justgarments.net)
Writing from San Salvador, Tara Mathur explains their current situation: "Unfortunately, we have encountered numerous obstacles from local maquilas and multinational corporations, and are now facing a serious economic crisis. As an emergency response, we are contacting many solidarity friends to help us sell t-shirts that we have in stock. We currently have 7,000 ivory t-shirts in stock and we are hoping to find ways to sell them as soon as possible in order to cover our basic operating expenses until we get our next order...We have boxes of 60 or 120 t-shirts in sizes S, M, L, XL that we sell for $4.25 each...Not only would this help us to meet our current cash flow crisis, but it would also help to make the Just Garments label more visible and push other large buyers towards the Just Garments option, thereby supporting the fair treatment of workers in El Salvador. If this is something that you are able to support, please drop me a line."
FMI or to place a T-shirt order contact Tara at: info@justgarments.net (English/Spanish).
Food Co-op GM wanted: Plainfield Co-op has an immediate opening for a full-time General Manager. Experiences in finances, retail sales, management, and cooperative organizations desired. Position requires a commitment to providing healthy foods and related products to the Plainfield Co-op members and residents of the greater Plainfield area. Please mail or email resume and letter of interest to: Peter Young, Hiring Committee Chair, 36 Hudson Avenue, Plainfield, VT 05667, 802-454-9334, luddite@critterpost.com
National Co-op Month: This October, the National Co-op Business Association (www.ncba.coop) is again making available a 'tool kit' for co-ops wishing to promote "Co-ops in their Communities" which is the theme for 2004. You will find news releases, useful statistics, survey data, great stories, and other valuable resources at: www.coopmonth.coop/ .
The National Federation of Community Development Credit Unions, founded in 1974, represents 226 credit unions serving urban and rural low-income communities across the United States. They have developed dozens of ways in which to bring immigrants, underemployed urban residents, and other underserved populations into the circle of ownership of community resources. The first two International Co-op Principles imply that everyone understands and has access to the benefits of cooperative enterprise. Here are but two examples of how 'the Nat Fed' is ensuring that.
Last February, officials from local and national government agencies gathered at the Lower East Side People's Federal Credit Union (LESPFCU) to promote the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) and to launch New York City's newest Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) site, which will offer free tax preparation services in English, Chinese, and Spanish to residents of Manhattan's Lower East Side community.
In his opening address, Pablo DeFilippi, the credit union's CEO, reinforced the importance of community development credit unions to this effort, stating, "We serve precisely the low-income population that these programs target. EITC offers a unique opportunity to bring resources into our community, and in addition, it is a powerful incentive for the unbanked to participate in the financial system."
EITC is the largest antipoverty program in the United States, with over $36 billion returned to low-income families around the country last year alone. Still, many who qualify for this program do not claim it. In New York City alone, 230,000 eligible families do not claim the credit. These numbers represent a loss of nearly $500 million that could have been claimed by the predominantly minority families.
In June, the Federation launched two separate grant programs designed to expand credit union services in underserved areas and promote credit union alternatives to payday lending. The two programs - called "Bridge" and "APPLE" - are funded by a grant from the Ford Foundation. Bridge grants of up to $100,000 will be awarded to "mainstream" credit unions that are being encouraged to partner with community development credit unions (CDCUs) and others that specialize in serving low-income communities. As the Federation's Executive Director Cliff Rosenthal puts it, "Mainstream credit unions have a wealth of resources and CDCUs have a wealth of experience, Together they can help build new wealth where it's needed most."
APPLE grants--named for "alternative products to payday lending"--will support at least five CDCU pilot programs located within the markets served by J.P. Morgan Chase and Bank One, recently merged banks, which supplied funding for the program through their respective foundations.
"So-called 'payday' loans trap people in a cycle of spiraling debt, as many borrowers roll over and refinance these high-cost, short-term loans, incurring new fees each time," Rosenthal explains. "CDCUs across the country are working on low-cost alternatives, and this program will give their efforts a big boost." North Side Community FCU in Chicago has made 2,400 payday alternative loans and saved the community nearly two million dollars in double-digit interest and payday fees. For more information see the Federation's website: www.cdcu.coop.
Each month we tell stories that embody one of the Seven Co-op Principles or two of the Ten Co-op Values approved by the International Cooperative Alliance www.ica.coop/ica/. Please send us YOUR suggestions!Please send us YOUR suggestions!
FMI: (413) 774-7599 or info@cooplife.coop.
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Cooperative Life Leader Staff
Lynda Brushett, Senior Editor
Jane Livingston, Editor
Laurie Siggillino Broussard, Production Manager
Contributors to this issue: Patrick Deluhery, Attorney