Membership Report

October is Co-op Month! Elections for the Board of Directors and Wedgeshare grants are underway. The Annual Meeting will be held on October 21. Patronage refunds will be mailed in December. This confluence of events at the heart of the cooperative ideal tells me it's time to celebrate co-ops in the world (see article in this issue) and tell you a few of the many ways the Wedge exemplifies the Cooperative Principles.

A brief history: The Wedge was founded in 1974 to provide natural food and a friendly place for neighbors to interact. Hundreds of such co-ops formed around the country. The co-ops that thrived did so by meeting the expressed needs of their own members and being good stewards of co-op resources. They also had a healthy respect, though not a burning drive, for surplus, AKA profit.

In a consumer co-op, profit is a means to the goals the members want to achieve. The first goal is a strong co-op that can provide goods and services for the members and do it well. Your fellow members, the elected board of directors (Principle #2), decide how much of the surplus we need to keep the co-op financially sound. Any remainder is sent back to the members (Principle #3).

What has your co-op done with its money lately? From 1998-2002, the Wedge refunded close to a million dollars to members. We paid off the mortgage a decade early, saving our co-op thousands of dollars in interest, and established a reserve fund (Principle #3).

Education (Principle #5), sustainability and social justice (Principle #7: Concern for Community) are major areas of interest for our members. We support many related efforts. Each fall we negotiate a "sustainable price" with local growers for the next year's crop. This summer we initiated the first domestic Fair Trade contract in the country. We fund Midwest Food Connection to go into metro classrooms to educate children about food and agriculture. We donate over $30,000 per year to local non-profits through Wedgeshare, the Donations Committee and Green Patches. A full time employee sources product from local growers, manages our organic certification and works with organizations to encourage a sustainability agenda. Social justice includes good jobs. Our co-op has created 240 jobs with great benefits.

File these activities under Cooperation Among Cooperatives, Principle #6: Our Information Technology department developed cutting edge cash register software that we use and give to other co-ops. We donate staff time to new co-ops and national groups to help co-ops survive corporate competition. We contributed financial resources to develop a co-op Living Wage model. We donated considerable staff hours to the organic movement to develop certification standards for retailers and provided information for many co-ops undergoing the certification process.

We can pursue all these goals because of our financial success, which is the result of careful stewardship and responsiveness to our members. Reasons indeed to celebrate!