Is Your Nest Egg Organic?

Wedge members all know where to go to get great food. For many, however, knowing that the food is great is not enough; we also want to know that the food we buy was produced in an environmentally sustainable way, that the workers who produced the food were treated fairly, and that the companies we buy products from are committed to behaving in an ethical manner. In short, co-op shoppers want full information, not just about the product but also about the process that brought the product to us. The success of the natural foods cooperative food system over the last 30 years has proved that if enough people want something different than what mainstream business offers, (in this case, cheap food at whatever moral, ethical, nutritional, and environmental cost), and if those people care enough to act on their beliefs in concert, a strong and healthy alternative production system can emerge and prosper.

While the Wedge makes ethical food shopping easy, it's not always so easy to assess (and direct) the social impact of our other daily financial decisions. The alarming degree and pervasiveness of ethical scandals at major Wall Street companies and brokerage houses have shown, for example, how little information consumers really have about the conventional financial institutions that dominate our economy. Thanks to co-ops, we can know where each persimmon we eat came from. Yet most of us still don't know, for example, where the money we put in the bank each week actually goes when it leaves our hands, and what it is doing when we're not using it. Do these lenders use our money to support environmentally sound businesses and community ownership, or do they not? Are they (and we) part of the problem or partof the solution?

Luckily for us, the Wedge has paid attention to where the money we spend at the co-op goes, even after we spend it. For many years, the Wedge has been a significant investor in the Northcountry Cooperative Development Fund (NCDF), a community development financial institution dedicated to investing in economic democracy through cooperative enterprise. NCDF was started almost 25 years ago by a group of Twin Cities' area cooperators. Frustrated at their inability to secure funding through traditional sources, these folks started - in typical co-op fashion - their own cooperatively owned "bank." From its modest beginning with less than $4,000 in pooled savings, NCDF has since grown to a pool of $6 million, lending to consumer, worker, producer and housing cooperatives across the Upper Midwest, and maintaining a loss record far lower than most conventional lenders. While the list of NCDF's investors has broadened to include individuals, community-based institutions and even some conventional banks, funds from its co-op members still provide the basic capital that makes NCDF a success.

The Wedge has a long history with NCDF, dating back to almost the beginning. The Wedge started placing a portion of its reserve funds with NCDF in 1984. Soon after, the co-op made use of the Fund in a different way, taking on a series of small loans throughoutthe 80's. These culminated in a larger loan from NCDF for the Wedge's historic 1992 move to the new building, and subsequent addition five years later. NCDF was an important early lender to the 1992 project, leveraging commitments from other lenders for the project. As the Wedge grew more and more financially successful, it returned the favor to the movement by becoming NCDF's largest cooperative investor, supporting NCDF's work as the Fund continued lending to dozens of other co-ops. The mutual self-help of the two organizations continues on other levels too. Wedge Financial Manager Elka Malkis is a long-time board member of NCDF, while Merle Borchers, senior lender for NCDF until his retirement two years ago, now serves on the Wedge board and finance committee.

Unlike large conventional financial institutions, whose funds are invested nationally and even internationally with no concern other than the highest profit, NCDF can assure Wedge members that every dollar invested will go to nurture cooperatively-owned enterprises in our home communities. In addition to food co-ops, NCDF funds also support sustainable agriculture, worker ownership and affordable housing. For example, the newest major project of the Fund is just down the street at 44th and Nicollet where NCDF is using the funds of its co-op members to start the first new affordable family cooperative home ownership project to be started in the Twin Cities in the last 50 years.

Individual members of the Wedge interested in "investing in cooperation" by placing funds with NCDF can do so as well, as an individual member of the Fund. In addition, NCDF is seeking members for a new community development credit union early this year to raise additional funds for investment in affordable cooperative home ownership. For more information about joining NCDF or the new credit union, contact NCDF at 612-331-9103.