Membership Report

The 21st Annual Member Meeting of the Wedge Community Co-op was held as scheduled on Tuesday October 8 at The Cathedral Church of St. Mark, on Loring Park. Forty-five memberships were represented at the meeting. Members heard reports from board of directors president Bob Kleiber, General Manager Dan Foley, and Financial Manager Elka Malkis, and had the opportunity to ask questions about the past year and the future of our cooperative.

Topics mentioned by member-owners included getting more Wedge shoppers to become members, the acquisition of the brown house, and a number of financial questions. When informed of the growing cost of member discounts, a member commented that if current discounts to members might endanger the future health of our co-op, the board should take a look at changing the benefit package. The evening ended with the member-owners thanking the staff and board of the Wedge for doing such a good job of serving the members.

While the turnout at annual meetings is typically small, the quality of the discussion and the depth of questions put to the management are consistently impressive. And of course, the hors d'oeuvres served by our fabulous deli make the event! Mark your 1997 calendars now for Tuesday Oct. 14, 1997!

In response to the discussion at the annual meeting, the board and management are taking a look at the member benefits package as a part of an overall review of our finances as we go in to the expansion. One of the major responsibilities of the board of a cooperative is to make decisions that keep the co-op financially strong, so that it can continue to meet the needs of the membership.

As Board President Bob Kleiber points out in his report, unlimited register discounts in two categories accounted for half the member discounts taken last year. We are tracking the use of the senior and disability discounts, and that information will be presented to the board at the December meeting. So far, it appears that fewer than 10% of our members are accounting for nearly 50% of the discount taken! This is alarming because it is an uncontrollable expense that flies in the face of the cooperative principle that the benefits of the cooperative should be distributed proportionally according to patronage. When a discount is given at the register, it reduces the surplus (AKA profit) available for rebates for everyone.

Member comment on this issue is important. We recently had a comment in the suggestion box reflecting on the fact that discounts for seniors are appearing everywhere, yet it is young people struggling to pay rents and raise children on low wages who represent the poorest sector of our population. Should we be giving discounts based on membership in a demographic group at all? Is it a form of discrimination?

The custom of providing discounts started in natural food co-ops partly out of the belief that co-ops should relieve economic imbalances in the population, and partly out of ignorance of the cooperative principles. Discounts were never part of the cooperative tradition. The inventors of cooperatives expected the businesses to be make a surplus (profit) which was to be reinvested as needed in the cooperative, with any remainder rebated to the member-owners proportionally to their patronage.

In the case of the Wedge, we have to consider that we are about to take on a huge debt to finance the expansion. Board and management would like to be able to rapidly pre-pay on the mortgage in the first several years, in order to reduce future debt service. In this way we can ensure ourselves of having a co-op to shop at in the future.

I want to leave you with a thought: a cooperative is a gift from one generation to another. It does not exist for what I can get out of it today, but for what it can provide for the community for generations. We who enjoy the Wedge now are benefiting from the investment of time and money made by the founding members over 20 years ago. We have a stewardship responsibility to be sure we leave our children with a cooperative that can provide the quality of goods and services we now enjoy. All of our decisions need to made with that in mind.

I look forward to hearing from you.