Becky McCray over at Small Biz Survival drafted a recent post about using cooperatives as an alternative business model.  Once thought to be strictly the domain of agricultural producers, the cooperative model is enjoying a slow revival, with 2012 already declared the International Year of Cooperatives by the United Nations.  Basically, cooperatives are owned and operated by a group of individuals for their mutual benefit (Wikipedia).

Cooperatives have, for ages, helped communities economically, creating local jobs while providing essential goods and services. 

Within Canada, a Cooperatives Secretariat exists to spur economic growth and social development of Canadian society through cooperative enterprise.  The Cooperative Development Initiative even offers funding for innovative cooperative applications.

Along with the Co-operative Housing Federation of Canada, other successful examples include tourism (Yukon Tourism Cooperative Marketing Fund), retail (TruServ Canada, Co-op stores), film (Newfoundland Independent Filmmakers Cooperative), child-care (Turtle Park Cooperative Childcare Centre), education (Tender Years Co-op School) along with a smattering of large financial services institutions and producer co-ops.  It’s clear that even today, cooperatives continue to offer a practical option for the provision of products and services.

Rurally speaking, cooperatives can emerge as a model of choice to offer area residents health services, education, power/electrical services or even retail options (e.g. coffee house, farm supply, clothing store).  When properly managed, cooperatives can provide greater control over destinies, by supporting smaller, regional communities in ways that a corporate enterprise cannot. 

Further information about what a cooperative is and does can be found on the Canadian Co-operative Association website.

Please feel free to share any other cooperative examples in the comments section below!

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“It all depends, analysts say, on Chinese building codes and the financial mathematics of 150 million new kitchen tables.

Optimism over the prospects for lumber has been growing steadily for some months [and a] new code … in effect, allows Chinese building needs – the titanic construction effort association with accommodating 20 million people every year moving from rural China to the cities – to be met by modern wood-frame construction. 

Lumber products, particularly those made in Canada and Russia, may now be in hot demand as a cheaper way of putting up new housing.”

- Leo Lewis, The Times

Click here to read the entire article.

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Last week, I had the pleasure of hearing Gordon Pitts - author, lecturer and senior writer for the Globe and Mail’s Report on Business - speak on the future of small and family-owned business … with a Western Canadian twist.

Chatting with him briefly following the presentation, he reiterated that SMEs, especially family-owned ones, need to embrace the “longview” and try to plan beyond the boom/bust mentality that pervades much of Western thinking and business enterprise.

Breaking the boom/bust cycle and building sustainable regional communities is one of the greatest challenges now facing the rural West.

But we will never be able to move beyond the boom or bust mentality in our regional villages, towns, and cities until citizens become engaged and properly map out and implement regional industry plans that create jobs that last and facilitate the redistribution of the population within and to vibrant regional centres.

Add to this …

• strategic investments in infrastructure;
• a new environmental awareness;
• a renewed, progressive attitude to social inclusion; and
• regional broadband enhancements;

… this new mixture would make  Western regional centres the [new] engines of national growth.

By embracing the “longview,” a new generation will sow the seeds of rural sustainability … for generations to come.

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