Cathy Statz, Cooperative Cheerleader

Hello, and welcome fellow Awsomologists to Awsomology. I’m Sue.

And I’m Ben. And in this episode, we’re welcoming Cathy Statz, cooperative educator, creative connector, and world traveler. I wanna hear more about that. Welcome to the show, Kathy.

Thank you. It’s a pleasure to be here.

Well, we are so excited. It sounds like you have so much experience and expertise, and we have so many questions we’re gonna end up asking you.

But before we start learning all of that and we dive in, I think it would be really good of us to give our listeners a little bit of context and a quick introduction to what a cooperative is before we talk about your life as a cooperative educator. How does that sound?

That sounds fabulous. I would love to do that. I spend a lot of time doing just that.

Well, we thought you’d be good at it.

Well, I always preface, you know, any conversation like this with the acknowledgment that I am, I am a generalist. I I’ve decided I’m specializing in generalism, actually, because because it is a it is I am not a cloud developer. I do not have a business background. You know?

I I don’t get into legal and taxation issues. I am kind of a coop cheerleader, but I think our world needs that too. So with that in mind, you know, when when folks ask me, well, what’s a coop? I said, well, here’s the basic premise.

Right? It’s it is an enterprise in which the folks who need a product or service or employment or an opportunity to market project products rather, it’s a business that they own. That ownership is distributed, right, amongst everybody who needs that thing, whatever the thing is.

They control it democratically.

Right? So it’s typically one member, one vote, but they benefit from it proportional to their engagement with it. Right? So it’s a business.

People need the thing. The people who need the thing control it.

They control it democratically, and they benefit from it, but they benefit from it proportional to their use.

And that’s sort of the most simple definition. It’s a variation of what’s used by actually by the United States Department of Agriculture, USDA.

And that seems to give folks a good sense of the basic notion of what a coop is. Now I could go on, and I will. But I was hoping We both agree.

We’ve got an hour.

Well, that’s the basic basic definition I often use.

Cool. And, a nice way to simplify it because, there’s some variation, which, we’ll talk about in a little bit. But tell us, how’d you get started in cooperatives, and what was the journey to what you do now?

Well, I have learned, over the years that I’m in a sort of a a a very privileged position of having, sort of always known about co ops. So I grew up on a dairy farm just outside Madison, Madison, near Sauk City Prairie du Sac, sort of between Madison and Baraboo. And so as many farm families are, we we’re we’re very involved in co ops. Right?

So we shipped our milk to a a dairy co op. You know, we marketed our milk through dairy co op. We bought a lot of our agricultural inputs through the local cooperative. My dad served on the local coop board.

So, you know, coops are kinda all around you when you grow up in agriculture.

Not everyone, though, who grows up in agriculture sort of, knows what that means.

I was lucky to have actually participated in a youth and summer camp program from a quite early age that actually taught about the cooperative business model, and that was through the Farmers Union. The Farmers Farmers Union, in Wisconsin has run a co op summer camp program since the nineteen thirties. I started attending sort of day classes and day camps and programs when I was about six. And then when I was nine, I started going to the overnight camp. And that I could tell you more about that, but that really introduced me to the language, the examples, the definitions, and the spirit of cooperatives and at a really early age, for which I’m very thankful.

Yeah.

So you just mentioned a whole bunch of other cooperative types. So I’m gonna bounce back to your definition, and maybe you can, like, tell us some of the nuance or some of the differences between them, based on what you’ve seen and maybe things you, that you liked about some or don’t like about others. Not that you there’s there’s nothing to not like.

Oh, co ops are fabulous. Yeah. But, you know, but it is helpful to, think of them, in kinda a couple of categories, particular categories. And we would do this at summer camp.

The summer camp program that I grew up in and then also ran for three years. So a lot of my passion for this comes from having explained co ops to eight year olds. And, you know, really, frankly, that’s probably the basic level of understanding we should always start with, you know, just to be understood. So that, those types, I would usually describe, well, to kids in particular, but any audience, really, is, like, who has the power?

Right? So who holds the power in this particular cooperative businesses business example?

Growing up in agriculture, the folks producing a product, are one very important type that you see, in rural America. It’s in they’re often anchor businesses in those communities, in those rural communities. Right? So it’s it’s the power is being held by the producers.

Right? They are creating something for the market, and their aim is to basically get as much as possible from that market for it. Right? So dairy farmers are pooling their milk.

Cranberry growers are pooling their cranberries.

We find this with rice and citrus and all kinds of different agricultural products, but particularly those that are most perishable. Right? So this is why a vast majority of our country’s dairy products are marketed through cooperatives because pre refrigeration, farmers were pretty powerless because they couldn’t hold that product until the price improved. They had to sell it, like, right now. Yeah. You know? Making it into cheese helped a little bit, but even that, you know, was was you you only have such such a shelf life when you have no refrigeration.

So the idea of folks coming together who are gonna try to get more power in the marketplace by, banding together to sell that thing or to market that thing that they make. Right? That’s the producer model.

And we have lots of different examples in that space that are pretty familiar to folks who shop in grocery stores, which is just about everyone. Right? So Welch’s, Sunkist, Sun Maid, Florida’s Natural, Blue Diamond, Tillamook, Land O’Lakes, Organic Valley, Cabot Creamery.

You know, these are all Bustleman’s Treetop, these are all food brands who are which are owned by farmer cooperatives, producer cooperatives. Those Those are some pretty big companies. Right? Those are some big big names, big brands.

And a lot of them, not Organic Valley is more more recent, having gotten started only about, well, in the nineteen eighties. But a lot of the rest of them were started in, you know, the either the late eighteen hundreds or the early nineteen hundreds by farmers who were kinda held hostage, you know, by the big corporate egg and the railroads and said, hey. Wait a minute. We could we could do this differently.

They learned about co ops. We can talk more about that later. They learned about co ops, ops, other in other places and decided to apply it here in the US. So there’s a producer power, sort of structure.

The one that folks in credit unions would be most familiar with is the consumer model, and that’s where food co ops fall. It’s where REI co op, our country’s largest consumer co op, the outdoor sporting goods, camping gear, credit unions, housing co ops, telephone co ops, electric co ops. These are all the power structure of folks needing something and coming together to buy it more affordably. Right? Or it didn’t exist at all. Right? So in the case of the rural electric cooperatives, right, the investor owned utilities just wouldn’t run power to rural places because there wasn’t any money in it for their shareholders.

Yeah.

So the same farmers who created those some of those producer co ops also realized that they could band together on a in a consumer power structure to buy inputs, buy feedseed and fertilizer, build their own electrical system, build a farm credit system.

Rural and urban folks were turning to credit unions as a great way to access financial services.

And that model is sometimes better known, right, in urban spaces, and certainly very, very helpful for folks of modest needs who are trying to access the things that they need.

That is our second kind of basic model. And then we have worker co ops, and these are a little bit less well known. They’re really starting to grow now for a variety of good reasons, but that’s where the employees own the company. Right?

And so not in ESOP. Now sometimes folks go, oh, yeah. Like, Woodmans, they say they’re employee owned. They must be a coop.

Not so. They fall under this other category in which employees can have ownership.

But somebody else, some other group is probably still the majority owner and has majority control. So things like ESOPs, which are, which stands for employee stock ownership plan or program, do give employees a certain amount of ownership, probably, you know, a kind of a a retirement plan, if you will. Sure. But there’s not really that sort of democratic control piece that you find in a true worker co op. So a good example for folks around the Madison area would be Union Cab, like the taxicab company that is owned by the drivers.

Isthmus Engineering and Manufacturing also owned by, all of the employees there.

And there are some more contemporary examples, which are pretty cool. So any small business that isn’t sure, you know, what the future might look like after the current owner or owners retire, you know, they might not wanna sell it to a corporate entity. They maybe don’t have a single individual with the capacity to buy it outright.

They don’t want to just shut it down. They’ve got employees that have been there a long time who are loyal and who, you know, love the work and love the communities they live in. Well, why don’t you sell it to all those employees?

And there’s a really cool example of that that has been developed just in the last couple of years in Spring Green, Mays, Maine area with a vet clinic. You know, vet clinics often are owned by the vets. The vet, you know, the the practice is owned by the vet. In this case, the vets were getting ready to retire.

They didn’t have any single young vet with the capacity to buy the practice, But they had a really great group of staff, who loved the work and they didn’t want to sell out to a corporate. So they said, well, what if we sell it to all these great employees? And they have and it’s been really transformational. It kept those jobs in the local community.

It’s kept that clinic locally owned. And those employees now have this additional layer of empowerment around knowing they own the place, which is pretty cool. So, workers kind of the third big type. Then there’s another, purchasing, which folks might recognize, Ace Hardware as an example.

Right? Small businesses that band together to be able to buy, sometimes bulk purchasing, but also things like national branding, insurance services, back office support, employee benefits. So the purchasing coop space is a little bit less visible, you know, to the the average person on the street, but those are really important for small businesses and allow folks to come together to get kind of the goods and services and training and insurance, all kinds of things to let them retain their, you know, local independent ownership.

Yeah.

Those are the biggies.

Yeah. Awesome. And like you were saying when you were kinda, you know, naming some of them when you were leading with egg co ops, like, you even outside of that category, you just gave excellent proof that they are all around us, you know, all kinds serving all sorts of needs.

So thank you, and and a really nice way to categorize them in a clean way too. Mhmm.

Yeah. I think when when, you know, when we talk about them at camp, I would have sort of a grid, right, with the power dynamic on on one axis, if you will, and then the purpose on the other axis. Right? Like, it’s also a way of teaching kids, in my case, in the summer camp environment, you know, what are the things we need in communities.

Right? We need electricity. We need health care. We need transportation. We need food.

We need financial services. And then you could just, you know, connect the two lines where those intersect. Okay. We have a consumer owned financial institution.

Ah, that’s where credit unions live. Right? We have a producer owned agricultural company. Ah, that’s where, you know, Sun Maid or Ocean Spray lives.

Yeah.

And it gave kids a sense of, you know, both who holds the power and then for what purpose does it exist.

Mhmm.

Yeah. That it’s such an excellent way to look at it. I I think, I’ve been working I’ve been working in credit unions. This is my twenty sixth year that I’ve been working in the credit union. And so, really, I I fundamentally felt I understood cooperatives pretty well, Kathy, and I never really thought about it from the lens of who holds the power.

Mhmm. I so that is you have already, said something transformational to my brain today.

So Fantastic.

It warms my educator’s heart to hear that. Thank you, Sue.

Good. Good. Well, speaking of educator, what then does a cooperative educator do?

What do you do other than exactly what you just did for Yeah.

Precisely. I mean, that that’s a lot of it is, you know, this these sort of outreach opportunities. But, you know, educator the educator hat can be worn in a lot of different ways. And for many years in fact, ever since I started working for Wisconsin Farm Machine back in the late nineteen nineties, I’ve been a member of the Association of Cooperative Educators or ACE. That’s a transborder, cross border, cross sectoral, cross language, professional development association.

And, we had a campaign a few years ago, you know, that was like I am a cooperative educator and it was all kinds of different folks in in the cooperative space. And when I say cooperative, I always include credit unions in that, of course, and that, whether you’re sort of intentionally teaching people about the model or whether you’re an academic who’s maybe, you know, doing research around cooperatives and then figuring out how to translate that research into practical strategies for folks who are working in practice in cooperatives, whether you’re an industry person who’s got a member services job or you work in communications.

I mean, lots of, education happens, in all kinds of ways. And, one of the things that I really encourage folks in, quote, the cooperative space to think about is, yes, educate on your purpose area. Right? Going back to that notion of the grid, educate about your purpose.

Right? So in credit unions, financial literacy, in food co ops, right, healthy eating, in agricultural co ops, how to, you know, manage the market, in REI, how to enjoy and protect the outdoors. Right? All of those different types of co ops, those sectors, those industry spaces have particular educational goals around the industry that they live in.

Right?

But I also wanna remind folks that that, you know, principle we have in cooperatives of education, training, and information is also literally about co ops themselves, about what it means to be a member owned business, and how, you know, you really need to, number one, protect the model. We can talk more about that, but folks in credit unions know, right, it’s not a foregone conclusion that we just always will have this model available to us. The other sectors have similar challenges that are raised when folks don’t like the way they’re taxed or not taxed or the other benefits that they are given because they’re member owned, because they operate on a different, a different mindset than the sort of extractive shareholder value one. So but, so getting folks to think about the value of also teaching about what it means to be a coop, literally. What does that look like for you as a member, as a staff person, as a leader, you know, as a board member, in management?

I think it’s really important. And there’s lots of ways to do it. There’s just kind of formal ways through programs and professional development. There are casual ways, which are sort of my favorite.

Right? The sort of gorilla education, if you will. Like, trust me. Trust me. I don’t take Uber or Lyft very often.

I take public transit and stuff all the time, walk and whatever. But, you know, those rare times when I have to, you know, get in an Uber or Lyft, you better believe that somehow I’m finding a way to bring the conversation around to the driver’s cooperative in New York and Denver where an identical platform in the sense of a shared ride, access has emerged except it’s owned by the drivers.

Right. Mhmm. Right? So I will find a little way to, say, hey. You know, how’s Uber treating you lately?

The answer is really not good. And I said, well, you know, you know, this this might come to your city at some point, so maybe keep your eye out for it. But there is a there is a new a new platform, you know, that’s being used in in New York and Denver called the drivers cooperative, where the drivers own the platform, and the profits, therefore, are really redistributed back Mhmm. To the drivers, right, because they are the owners.

And that’s they’re like, woah. What?

You know, so those are all little opportunities to communicate the cooperative difference, you know, just in your everyday life. And I love those too. Sometimes I think those might be even more powerful. Right? Yeah. Planting you’re planting a seed, which might take years to come to fruit, you know, to fruit.

I feel like when, you dive into, you know, the you look under the hood of what a cooperative is and you start to talk about things like cooperative principles and, you know, this shared ownership and redistribution of wealth and profit.

The place most people wind up is like, well, why wouldn’t I be a member of a credit union? Why wouldn’t I do as much business as I can with cooperatives over other kinds of businesses?

And I’m saying all this because I’m absolutely teeing up the next question, which is knowing all of that, that’s a big challenge that cooperatives face right now is just sharing an understanding of the of the model and the spirit and the benefits to people to buy from them, interact with them, be members of them, etcetera.

What are some other cooperative business challenges that people are facing right now?

Well, I mean, just in general, I mean, I know you’ve already sort of referred to it, but I often say, you know, what other what other business model has to explain the business model as well as try to, you know, market a product or service. Right? Nobody else has to do that. Yeah. What?

You know, so that’s why I’m a big advocate for broad cooperative awareness and education for the general public.

Right? Because, otherwise, we’ve gotta spend a lot of time telling them what we, you know, are as well as what we do.

So so, I mean, I already mentioned in sort of the advocacy, space and the and the real very real concerns about the structures that allow us to do this kind of business, and that they are frequently under attack and that, or or simply a victim of of ignorance.

Right? So I think that folks who are in, you know, our civil society need to know what the have just enough knowledge about the coop model to, like, know that it’s different and to be able to ask a few more questions. There’s a I mentioned REI earlier. There there was, past tense, a similar coop in Canada up until just a few years ago called Mountain Equipment Coop. And I I won’t go into the long long story of it, but the gist is they ran into some financial problems.

And they they they did not have expert advice that understood what a coop was. And those attorneys said, oh, well, I understand that you’ve got this, like that there are all these people that apparently have some stake, but, you know, each each of those stakes is so minuscule that you actually don’t need to tell them you’re thinking about selling this business to a private investor.

And they did.

They sold the coop without the membership knowing, and the membership was outraged.

Sure. It was it was too little too late. So they lost their coop. I mean, they it was a huge, you know, national, millions of members, you know, all across Canada.

And trust me, a lot of people in Canada like the outdoors and a lot of people in Canada like co ops. But for whatever reason, the board itself had, was maybe not really fully understanding the model, and the outside expertise was not well enough informed to say, wait. Wait. Wait a minute, though.

You you guys are a co op. Right?

That means you have, like, a lot of owners who probably wanna be a part of this decision. Even if it ends up still needing to have, they should at least have a chance to weigh in and be informed. And that didn’t happen. Right? And so I think that’s that’s a real problem is not just the sort of board and leadership, maybe management in some cases, understanding the model, but literally the folks on the outside, attorneys, you know, the folks that are doing the the money part, all that all those folks, they need to have just enough knowledge of what a co op is to appreciate that the the path forward might be different because of the ownership structure. And so that’s real danger.

I think too just, you know, people are busy and, co ops are slow.

Yeah. Right? They’re kind of they’re democratic.

Democracy can be agonizingly slow sometimes. It’s true. Right? And, and in a in an environment you know, in a culture where everything is like, just for me right now. You know? That idea of, like, wait. A bunch of other people in, like, months?

Right? Who wants to do that? But at the same time, I do think that with the younger generation, we’ve got a real opportunity here. There was a at a National Cooperative Business Association. So the NCBA, the National Cooperative Business Association, is a country’s, like, you know, cross sectoral apex organization for co ops and credit unions and mutuals. I was at their meeting a few years ago, and a speaker was talking about generational differences and said, you know, the next generation loves co ops. They just don’t know it yet.

And it was this idea that, you know, frequently, the younger generations and this happens in many generations. Right? They’re more idealistic. They they’re really wanna find something that fits their, you know, values.

They wanna feel like they’re a part of something that has meaning. And I think even more so maybe now than some previous generations because there have been so many abuses. Right? So much concentration of wealth and power, and it’s so visible to young people.

Right? They feel pretty strongly about it.

And, boy, if they knew, right, that that co ops, including credit unions, were, you know, either a workplace or a way to access things that they needed, that turned that, you know, sort of profit prioritization on its head a little bit. Boy, I think it would make a real difference.

So I think just lack of awareness amongst, you know, some young people.

And and I think you gotta get them young enough before their lives are busy with young families and, you know, trying to I don’t know. I just I think that I think we, I think we gotta start younger because I’m a product of that, and it made a difference to me. It was like the lens through which I viewed everything. I didn’t have to relearn.

Mhmm. Right? This alternate business model. It just was always there. It was always there. And, for me, that made, I think, a difference, and I’ve been able to do a lot of others too.

So there’s a couple. So there’s, you know, there’s the awareness and education. It’s whether it’s from, you know, from at the very top of, like, you know, public opinion leaders and legislators all the way to young people and then, I don’t know. And I and I think just there’s the fact that folks, you know, don’t always have the patience we need to engage in cooperativism because it is slow.

It’s it’s true.

Yeah.

And do you think too, Kathy, that one of the blessings and challenges and, you know, you talked about you you mentioned those structures that create cooperative businesses and the sort of the constant, the constant vigilance that cooperative businesses have to have to maintain those structures.

And Mhmm.

You know, the most recent example being the don’t don’t tax my credit union, effort that has been going on, that part of the blessing and the challenge is that the conditions that created cooperatives have not changed.

So those same forces, you know, we when we look back to the industrial revolution where these things were coming up and we started seeing workers’ co ops and we started seeing credit unions, and the, at that time, we sort of we had that robber baron class Mhmm.

Which was the, you know, the thing that some people were some incredibly impoverished people thought that they were aspiring to and could get to, you know, to be a Rockefeller.

Mhmm.

And those were the forces that wanted to prevent that organizing.

Mhmm. And, we and so we sort of they didn’t go away. They maybe sort of rebranded, and we they, you know, and being in marketing, we know a lot about putting a applying a brand and glossing over, you know, some of the real intention behind what those, you know, the big national multinational companies have. But Mhmm.

As long as they exist in the market and as long as they are fundamentally opposed, you know, the the things that cooperatives are doing still as small as, you know, when I think about credit unions, any of these cooperatives really, is they’re just a bit player in the global economy, but the fundamental belief of them and the possibility of them still threatens these big players.

And so they will probably constantly fight against it.

Sure.

Because they they and the blessing of that is it’s because they see the potential.

Mhmm. And that if we could educate everyone and get everyone seeing what these models can do for them and how they can be a societal benefit Mhmm. Then they would they would look at your Rockefellers, your Hearst, whoever, and say, oh, you know, maybe that’s not how we want wealth distribution to work here.

Right. Right? Right. Yeah. I mean, it’s it’s so interesting. There were there were two kind of thinkers around, cooperatives, you know, hundred years ago probably now by now.

And one, one gentleman so it’s Norris and Sapiro. And I always I should have written it down in anticipation of this, interview because I always forget which is which. But one really maintained that co ops were there to meet a need in the market, a gap, a void, whatever. And that when the market caught up, the co op didn’t need to exist anymore.

It was just very pragmatic. Like, the co ops just there as an intermediary, you know, as a sort of an inter interim solution Mhmm. Until the market catches up. Right?

And the other said, no. No. No. No. No. No. Co ops are there to help keep the market honest, basically.

Right? Like, we need them because you they’re just as you said, so, like, these other forces will always, always, always be seeking, you know, to take advantage, to to have agreed motivation. Like, we we’ve gotta have them there. But that’s really the big challenge, I think, is we were just talking about this actually at the Graduate Institute for Cooperative Leadership at the University of Missouri.

Carrie Jacobs does a really great program there for, aspiring leaders in agricultural cooperatives. And, you know, she’s they were talking about the fact that it’s really hard to explain the value of the coop when the only way to to, like, demonstrate what it would be without it is if it if it went away. And you don’t want that. Right?

You don’t want a massive failure to be the wake up call. But then it’s really hard for people to appreciate and understand what the coop is and has been doing for them all these years.

Mhmm.

Because it’s just like there’s nothing to compare it to. I mean, for example, you could look in agriculture, I suppose, and see, like, poultry and pork where cooperative marketing was not as prevalent.

And both of those industries are largely right? Like, they’re, it’s all contract farming now. Right? There are very few folks that own small scale.

I mean, unless they’re doing really direct market, you know, sort of small scale production, they’re they’re almost all in these very, you know, corporate controlled kind of environment. So that that might be, I suppose, one example you could look to in agriculture. Whereas in dairy, for example, you know, even though many dairy firms have gotten quite large, that the production, the marketing rather is still is still cooperatively managed, and that has helped somewhat with price, although it can still be really volatile. But it’s challenging, you know, because, also, I think people just kinda you know, they get it just overwhelms them.

And we have, you know, so different soon from that time, you know, hundred plus years ago, we have a lot of cheap consumer goods Mhmm. And services that I think probably mask, at least temporarily, you know, the discomfort.

You know, think about, you know, access to food back in the days of, you know, the Rochdale Equitable Pioneer Society in England, you know, the folks that kind of founded the principles.

You know, you there wasn’t a lot of ready made convenience food. Right? Yeah. There might be some, you know, market sellers that would, you know, get something hot to eat when you were out doing your trading on your trading Saturday or whatever.

But, you know, that that sort it it just you know, like, that that notion of sort of, like, that, fast fashion and fast food and all of that, you know, we were all of that cost is externalized. Right? It’s we’re not we’re not really aware. And, so it sort of seems like, well, there’s plenty of food.

Look. People are are obese.

There’s so much food. There’s so many calories. Right? The litter masks the real problem. Mhmm.

That yeah. It’s not necessarily good food. It’s not necessarily healthy food. You know?

Are we addicted to our phones and our entertainment? You know, it’s the old bread and circuses, idea. Right? Like, if you give the people enough free bread and you host enough free circuses, you’ll they’ll they’ll be happy enough that they won’t bolt.

Yeah. Right? And that’s, I think, what we see.

I’ve I’ve I’ve never heard that concept before. Mhmm. But yeah.

The Romans. The Romans. Bread and circuses. Good.

Yeah. I follow. I definitely follow.

We see it. We see it today. Yeah.

So let’s talk opportunities.

We we we can see what the challenges are. What are the opportunities right now for cooperative business?

Yeah. I think there’s a variety. I mean, the worker co op space, for example, is, I think, tremendously powerful, both for sort of startup worker co ops. Right? So spaces where folks are looking for meaningful employment, and and not finding it, or for existing businesses that want to, have a different way of a succession plan. So I mentioned, you know, the succession plan already with the veterinarian coop, right, with the idea of selling an existing business to your employees. And that has a lot of potential for, right, this whole group that’s already starting to retire, right, and all of that wealth transfer that’s gonna have all that business transfer that needs to happen.

Right? But we’ll just have more and more either corporatization or small communities not having those businesses that they want and need if if a a model like worker co ops is made more available to folks as an option. Right? So that means making sure that economic development organizations in rural communities are familiar with it, right, that, folks who do business loans and, you know, they understand it, like, whole a whole series of things, will help make that a little bit easier.

But also just to know that they could be created from scratch, essentially. So, like, home care, for example, lots and lots of folks would like to age in place. It’s much more affordable. It’s often more comfortable, but they need a little support.

Right? They need somebody to come in and do some housekeeping, maybe some hygiene care, maybe do a little shopping, maybe some food prep.

And the folks who do who do that work are often independent contractors with no benefits, no, vacation time, and no workers’ comp. Right? So think of that as an independent contractor if you’re in home care and you hurt your back lifting someone out of the bathtub. You’re just out of work.

Mhmm. It’s very precarious. And a lot of the folks who do that work are, you know, new Americans. They’re, recent immigrants.

They’re people of color. They’re often women. They’re often women with modest educations and modest incomes to begin with. And so it’s very precarious.

But that that group of workers could be organized and has been organized all across the country into worker co ops, home care co ops so that they can be now, still providing great care, but do it in a company they own.

Right? And so think about four agencies that might need to contract for care. They now have one entity instead of, like, sixteen people Mhmm. Right, that they’re sort of negotiating or contracting with.

The the people themselves, and again, it’s primarily women, have better wages, you know, time off, workers’ comp, insurance, and just a tremendous sense of empowerment. Right? But then also think about those clients to whom they’re providing care. When home care workers are, you know, coming in and out of the work frequently, you know, they do it for a while and they get hurt, or they do it for a while and they decide it’s just not paying good enough and they leave, right, then some of those very vulnerable members of our communities, elderly folks, differently abled folks, have to sorta, you know, get used to a whole new person Mhmm. Providing you know, how do they like their eggs cooked?

Intimate care like bathing and you know? Right? Like, it was Ben for, like, six weeks, but now it’s this Sue person. I don’t you know?

And they get you know? Especially if they have memory care issues or other, factors where routine is really important. Right? So it can be very disruptive for the individuals who need that care too.

So the home care example home care worker coop example is such a powerful one because it benefits everyone, right, not just the workers.

And I so I think that that’s that’s really a great opportunity space. Affordable housing, right, so folks that are looking at, what are called limited equity housing co ops and those, sometimes are in urban spaces but they could be rural too.

And those, I think, are, intriguing because they can take a lot of different forms. It could be an apartment building but, then that’s what the limited equity housing co ops usually are like. They’re modest departments where, folks don’t own their unit like they would in a condo.

Right? But you own a share in the co op that entitles you to live in a particular unit.

And the limited equity model means that you earn some equity on that share you have in the cooperative over time, but it’s sort of a a steady, modest amount. So if you move out, you get that equity, but the access to the housing remains affordable for that next person who wants to move in. In other words, it’s not being your share is not being sold at market rate.

Yeah.

So protects you if the market has dipped significantly, that you still will get that agreed upon amount.

If the market’s great, you might not get as much out, but it retains the affordability for the next, member who wants to move in. So those are really interesting. And then resident owned, communities or rocks is a really cool space for, transitioning manufactured housing, what we might call mobile home parks or trailer parks, you know, sort of in casually.

Considering that if the owner of a park wants to sell that property, it’s often being sold for development. Those individuals who live there, probably many of them own their units. Right? They own their trailers.

They own an asset, which if that property is gonna be sold and developed, is now essentially worthless. Right? Mhmm. We all know that mobile home is a misnomer.

You know, a manufactured home, once it’s set down there for ten, fifteen years, you’re not gonna move that anywhere without having some major structural issues. Right? So that asset that these folks have, you know, saved for and maybe even paid off is now essentially worth nothing, if a park is sold for development. So, there have been some really interesting examples of folks, you know, assisting the residents of manufactured housing parks to buy the property as a cooperative.

Right? They continue to own their unit, but they own the land in common underneath. And, you know, when you think about work fit, workplace or workforce housing rather, you know, just affordable housing in general, I mean, those are those are significant opportunities for affordable housing that we sometimes forget, and that they and they don’t have to be you know, they can be cared for. And how better would they be cared for, right, if the people who live there actually own it?

Yeah. Right? Have some and have some say and, you know, and that the whatever, you know, they you know, they still usually pay, like, rents, if you will, or, like, a monthly fee even if they own the park together because that they still need to provide, you know, you know, upkeep for the for the property lights and sewers, stuff if necessary or drainage or whatever. But but it doesn’t it’s not being extracted out of the park.

It’s being used to benefit the park itself and its residents, its owners.

So that that’s a really cool opportunity space, I think, as well. And and these are both examples that are for really modest income people. Yeah.

And just in general, I think for people to understand better the different types and sectors. I think even folks within co ops deeply committed to their co ops, you know, and whether it’s credit unions or ag co ops or food co ops, you know, they and I get it, you know, particularly if you’re working in a space like rural electrics or credit unions where there’s incredible amount of regulation and you’re always facing, you know, these challenges from the investor owned, you know, versions of yourself that, you know, to to have the luxury to sort of lift your eyes for a moment, take a breath, and go, oh, we’re just like this other business or businesses in our community. And we don’t really do anything with that. You know, we don’t reach out to them.

We don’t celebrate our coopness Right.

Often enough and to use it also as a way to raise the visibility of the model for those opinion leaders and those develop you know, those folks that are looking at the economic situation of that community to be able to to be seen as, you know, one, you know, one way of doing things that’s different and that’s community focused.

And I think that that’s a real opportunity space. It’s just for us to think more cross sectorally more often because it benefits us and it benefits everybody.

Right. Right. Which is the entire cooperative model. Mhmm. It would benefit everyone that participates.

Right. And the communities they live in. Right? Like, by just the members. Like, obviously, you have to benefit the members.

There has to be, right, intrinsically sort of an individual benefit accrued, really. Like, let’s be honest. Right? You want a low interest rate on your loan or you want, you know, a better price for your milk or you want, you know, cheaper ice axe or whatever, wherever you want.

Great affordable organic beef, you whatever. Mhmm. There is an individual benefit accrued and, there is a community benefit accrued that and that benefit is not just the members of the co op and the co op business itself, but the whole community.

Right. Right. Fast absolutely fast. We could go on for hours.

Yeah. Hours. I have notes. I have so many notes about even just opportunities for our business to just, like, if we’re on a scale from one to ninety nine and how much we’re interacting with cooperatives, not just credit unions, but cooperatives.

I mean, we’re we’re in the single digits. Right? And I think if we crank that up by five, like, huge business opportunities just for us, you know, and I think that that’s probably the same for every other cooperative, every other business that’s kind of I don’t know. I like to say it as harshly as I probably can.

Like, kinda living under the under a rock a little bit about this opportunity that exists within cooperatives. You know?

Yeah. Yeah.

I mean You’ve you’ve mentioned it. Like, we’re just we’re busy. We’re all busy.

Absolutely.

So we get it. But, also, like, we gotta stop and see what’s around us too and take advantage of those opportunities.

Yeah. I mean, people are always sort of you know, people in co ops are, like, wringing their hands. People don’t understand co ops. No.

They don’t know who we are. Well, what are we how are we actually strategically doing anything about that? Right? And when it starts at home, it starts with, you know, the teller at the credit union recognizing the REI logo on somebody’s, you know, polar fleece vest and going, hey.

Are you a member of that co op too? That’s cool. What do you mean you don’t know what that means? Oh, well, you know, we’re a co op.

We’re we’re like them. We banded together to provide financial services for folks. They banded together so people go back climbing, but boom. Done.

Like, you just had a mini education moment, and you’ve had a connection moment.

But how many you know? And I’m not just saying, like, credit union tells, but, like, how many of that sort of frontline employee knows enough to make that connection? Or they’re wearing the, you know, the cap from the local ag co op. Right?

Right.

Who are are you plugged into that stuff enough to help kind of casually raise you know, draw attention to it, raise awareness of it?

Feel like you know? I mean, I think folks at credit unions feel so good about being part of something that’s, you know, done so well so for so many for so long. Like and, right, it’s just one part of an even larger whole of cooperatives and not just in this country, but globally.

Right? I mean, that’s something people could feel really good about. Yeah.

Especially at a time when things are really divided, and that’s where too recognizing that co ops fit all kinds of ideologies. Right? Get used by politically conservative folks. They get used by very politically liberal folks.

Across the spectrum, people find something really compelling about this model. And that’s something we can really celebrate during these times.

Yeah. Absolutely. Okay.

Well Unprecedented times.

Yeah. Ding ding.

As as Sue said, we could probably go on for hours. We can’t do that now. So before we transition to closing, Kathy, how can people connect with you? Is there anything else you want folks to know, one big takeaway, anything like that?

Well, we I haven’t mentioned it so far. I’m kind of astonished I haven’t, but twenty twenty five is the international year of cooperatives designated by the United Nations. I mean, I that’s it’s been such a a banner under which I’ve been, you know you know, cheering all these months now, but it it it’s something that I’ve realized a lot of folks in co ops don’t realize yet. So the United Nations did declare twenty twenty five the international year cooperatives.

It’s a that is just a really great opportunity to raise awareness of the coop model and to share examples of its impact, you know, whether it’s in your local community or cross sectorally or across the globe. So that is something that I wanna make sure folks are aware of. And to bear in mind that you’ve got a few months before October, which is coop month and which, of course, is also when, you know, credit day happens. And so, credit union day happens.

And so if you, right, are a member of the Chamber of Commerce, find out if any other coops or credit unions are members of the chamber and host an event in October that doesn’t just highlight your business but highlights all the cooperative businesses in that chamber. Right? Or if you, you know, have a rotary club in your community, ask if you can come and do a presentation during October and and lift up, again, not just the impact of your cooperative business, but of all of the cooperative businesses in that community or in that region. And Rotary International, for example, is an international organization, so they would also be interested to know about the international work of cooperatives.

Mhmm. Yeah. And nice plug for Rotary. That is how I first met you, Kathy.

That’s right. Right. I didn’t even do that on breakfast.

All those years ago.

Merge naturally.

Yeah.

Awesome. Alright. Well, let us transition into our something awesome segment where we share cool experiences, cool recommendations, anything that we have, experienced lately that we just want the world to know about. And I’m gonna kick it off.

I’m gonna share a link to a YouTube video that’s a really cool story from CBS News about this organization called Speaker Impact.

I am one that, like, I’m pretty darn disciplined about recycling. I try to get, like, as much life out of my clothes. I’ve got patches on stuff, and I could it pains me to know that something that could be used or reused winds up in a landfill.

And that’s what, Sneaker Impact is really just trying to prevent.

And they shared some cool stuff in the video.

Fun fact, and I I don’t know. I I haven’t vetted this number, but the average person will own two hundred and fifty six pairs of shoes in their lifetime. They must be counting, like, the all the little ones as a baby that as your foot grows by a quarter inch, you gotta get new shoes every two weeks. But still, if you live to be eighty, I did the math. That’s like three pairs of shoes a year. So I am under buying shoes based on that number, but that’s okay.

But they they take, new or lightly used shoes and redistribute them all over the globe. They shred them and turn them into other products, including, like, sandals and shoes that are made of the shreds, and then those shreds are also put into other products, flooring, and all that kind of stuff. So just a really, really cool story, a really cool example of how, you know, there’s not too much in our world physical stuff that, like, truly is straight up garbage and can never be used again.

And she was just being, you know, one of those daily things in our lives that we don’t even think about twice. We just put them on, throw them away when they’re too bad, and they probably could get a second life somewhere, some way. You know? So Nice. Yeah.

I think I think that I am making up for you under buying.

Okay. Sweet. Well, that’s good.

As long as we’re hitting the quota between the two of us, that’s We are for sure.

We’re hitting it. Yeah. Sweet.

Alright. Kathy, you’re up. What you got for us?

Well, I it’s so so I it’s going it kinda goes back a little bit to the coop thing, but I was really thrilled to see at this recent meeting in Missouri that, like, all the snacks being provided for this cooperative meeting were coop branded snacks.

Right? And I think that that was just you know, I I have I am an advocate for that, but I don’t always see that in cooperative meeting spaces, right, to say if we’re putting out some snack foods, how about Welch’s fruit snacks? How about ocean spray craisins? How about, you know, organic valley strangles? How about you know, that there are all of these great food products that can be part of telling the cooperative story.

So that’s just an idea to plant. Like, if you’re doing, you know, snacks for a program for kids or, you know, meeting snacks or whatever, use that opportunity to promote cooperatives by featuring some cooperative brands. It’s really eye opening to a lot of people. A lot of people have no idea.

You know? So that’s something I think that’s kind of I was so glad to see it in in action.

The medium is a great idea.

Example and an easy win. I mean, I’m just envisioning a credit union’s annual meeting with those snacks out, like, easy opportunity.

Mhmm. Co op coffee, you know, equal exchange, for example, is is a worker co op that buys its coffee primarily from farmers in the global south, farmer cooperatives in the global south, and sells, their finished product of, you know, coffee and chocolate and tea and dried fruits and nuts primarily to the consumer food co ops in North America. And, you know, you can get their coffee, at a lot of local food co ops and, like, serve that, you know, and then have some Organic Valley or Land O’Lakes, you know, creamer with it or both. Right?

What what a great way to celebrate co ops. Yeah.

Fantastic.

So I’m gonna I’m gonna give us a hard left turn because that is what I always do. I every every time I do one of these, it is whatever it is filled with recency bias. It is whatever I most recently did because my attention span does not bear out anything less than, whatever I just knew yesterday. But, I do wanna share this, I wanna share a book that I just finished listening to, which I absolutely loved, and it is such a strange title. So I’m excited to say it out loud and then see both of your faces to see how you react to the name of this book. So, one of the books I just finished reading or listening to, I should say, is called Harriet Tubman live in concert, and it was written by Bob the drag queen.

And it was delightful.

So you have to start with an incredible amount of that willing suspension of disbelief.

But the concept behind it I’ll I’ll give away I’ll spoil the purpose behind it, is that, the concept is that we have to imagine a world where some of these famous people have just come back from the dead. They are just here now, and we are just living in a world where they are here again. So modern day Harriet Tubman and some other people that were really a part of the abolitionist movement are now alive. And Harriet Tubman wants to make a rap album.

And it is and it sounds so silly, but the main character in this book is a music producer who, who is really going through this journey of understanding who he is, understanding his life.

And the, the central concept here is that everyone everyone is, held captive by something.

And so freedom looks different for everyone.

Mhmm.

It just was when you realize that that is what it is all moving up to and that’s the purpose behind why these two characters intersect, it just blows my mind.

So Nice.

Really, really excellent book. I enjoyed it a lot.

And also bonus, Bob the drag queen, one of my favorites.

So that also was fun because it was read by them. So Yeah. That was good. So great read. Highly suggest Harriet Tubman live in concert.

I love it. I love it. I’ll look for it.

Sounds like a book that, listening to would provide quite a different experience as opposed to reading, just being able to follow, the intricacy of it. That’s Mhmm. That’s cool.

Yeah. Yeah. Yes. And I believe probably their first, I think, their first book they ever wrote.

And, really, you know, this is a person who’s a real performer.

So really excellently read. So highly recommend. And I found out that I could get it in Spotify premium. This is not a commercial for Spotify premium.

But when I realized it, but it was a real bonus because it’s pretty new. So Yeah. Oh, nice. Nice.

That’s awesome.

Well, Cassie, thank you so much. This hour went by so quickly. It was so much fun listening to you and learning.

And, hopefully, we will get to do this again sometime.

I would love that. Always a pleasure. Thank you.

Awesome. Well, thank you for joining us, listeners. Thank you for being with us.

And we hope that you go out in the world and proclaim all of the gospel of cooperatives now.

And we also hope that you catch up on some of our podcasts. If this is your first time being here, you can always catch up on your favorite podcast app like Spotify, which again, this is not a commercial for, but it’s there, or your Apple Podcasts or all of your favorite podcast apps, or you can find them on our blog at exclamation QSO dot com slash blog.

Thanks again, Kathy, for being here. Thanks, friends, for tuning in. Be awesome, and see you next time.

The Osmology podcast is a production of exclamation services. Executive producers are myself, Ben Bauer, and my friend, Suzanne Campbell.

Thanks to Kylie Ganther for our show artwork, Scott Saager for booking our guests, and Alex Westerhausen for social media support.