Where do we go from here?

Regarding 2), it's probably also important to revitalise the existing big cooperatives. In Finland the biggest bank and the retailer are cooperatives with around 2 million members both. They have contested member representative elections with 16% and 21% voter participation in the biggest branch. If Nationwide Building Society would have 16% voter participation rate in a contested board election, it would mean a democratic exercise with around 2,5 million brits voting. That would demonstrate the cooperative/mutual difference to a lot of ordinary people.

Totally agree on behaviours: the key was always about the practice (the doing) of cooperation being how we learn.

On umbrellas - and https://www.docservizi.it/en/ is one of my favourites in this arena - I also agree. What' we've seen with the rapid - almost overnight - appearance of local Mutual Aid groups is that they don't need structures, or rules or bank accounts and all that paraphernalia, at least in the short term. Of course these things become hugely useful and valuable as things develop, but what comes first is the urge to meet a need and to cooperate to make that happen. In Platform 6 we've gone some way down this road by becoming an Open Collective host, which enables cooperative projects to get started and begin practicing cooperation without needing a bank account.

Some of the stuff I've done around the idea of "Co-operation as a Service" also stemmed from this umbrella approach: when initiatives start up they very commonly don't think too much about governance or rules and technical stuff like that - they want to get on and meet the defined need, whether that is feeding vulnerable neighbours or building software or making widgets. By offering places and services where these initiatives can flourish without having to be diverted by all the technical stuff of being an organisation, and by creating those places and services such that cooperation is the default from day one then we can encourage and accelerate the processes of practising cooperation.

@Leo Sammallahti I worry that focusing on member participation in big cooperatives simply leads to member disillusionment. Take the example of the Cooperative Group. Member voting is in hundreds of thousands, but motions are passed with Stalinesque margins, and the relationship to everyday experience of your local Co-op shop is tenuous to say the least.

The Co-op has now “got” this to some extent with its member pioneer programme. Except that “getting” this means they are issuing top-down instructions telling member pioneers to be more bottom up and attempting to organise the community response with the Co-operate app and site https://co-operate.coop.co.uk/ . Tempted to say they should rename it “Co-opterate”

Surely more fruitful is for ‘big cooperation’ to be an enabling framework for small cooperation. I don’t think this is the same as the old ‘think global, act local’ slogan. I think it’s a shift that is driven by digital.

@Graham That’s really interesting. So, are we really talking about flexing Coase’s ‘boundary of the firm’ in two distinct ways: Cooperation as a Service, or One Big Co-op (like https://www.docservizi.it). Both reduce the effort and friction. Both downplay the importance of the corporate boundary .

Or are they really the same thing?

I think they are the same thing.

I don't :)

OK. Perhaps we can describe them as two facets of the same strategy.

You sound like a pair of lawyers

That's not good.

Good points, although I also think that the existing democratic mechanisms in big cooperatives are greatly under-utilised. The fact that there are very few motions and none of them are truly contested (just like almost none of the board positions in building societies) is a testimony of this.

For example, in the last Finnish S-Group retailer election my campaign pledges were putting forward motions (that in S-Group is voted on by elected representatives, not members) to fund an accelerator program for new coops and use worker cooperative job agencies when hiring temporary staff. I imagine Co-operative Group could implement something similar, perhaps through membership motions, although the latter might be tricky since I'm not aware of worker cooperative owned staffing agencies in the UK.

Electoral politics seem to be limited almost solely for public sector positions - local councils and the house of commons. Same sort of energy of ideas and candidates competing with each other seems to be lacking in other elections, such as those of coops and unions.

@Leo Sammallahti That’s good. Did you get elected? I think for big coops to fund new cooperative business ideas is good - a sort of ‘corporate venturing’. But isn’t there a danger that the democratic input ends up all being about what the big co-op funds rather than what it is and does? A kind of coop CSR? So with the Co-op Group, the member pioneers are increasingly viewed as community workers, ‘engaging’ with the community on how the Co-op distributes largesse. Meanwhile the staff are paid just over minimum wage.

No - got exactly 100 votes, would've needed around 300 to get elected :(.

One way that would enable less top-down approach for big coops to support smaller ones could "Co-op Coupons" or vouchers that could be used in number of different cooperatives. Here's some thoughts about it:

"Many consumer cooperatives already issue coupons and vouchers - enabling those coupons to be used in more cooperatives could be one way to implement it, perhaps by requiring the other cooperatives to also issue similar coupons and vouchers. Could they join together as a cooperative that would be responsible for issuing the vouchers and the coupons?

Supporting cooperatives through coupons and vouchers could have some benefits compared to other ways of support, such as grants. The decision on how the support should be allocated would be done by a large number of people based on the ability of cooperatives to provide goods and services that people want, not by having a panel of experts evaluate applications and trying to estimate hypothetical future projections. For a big cooperative that wants to support new cooperatives, there might be additional benefits. If such a cooperative decides to simply donate money to new cooperatives with grants, the members might see it as their money being given away by the managers. If the same money would instead be used to give members cooperative vouchers or coupons, the members would be more likely to see it as an additional member benefit given to them."

This is more of a thought exercise than a precise plan.

However that doesn't address your main point about whether democratic input by members should be primarily about how to allocate funds for other projects - indeed it's just another way for them to do so.

I often hear people criticise big coops for not being true to their cooperative principles, which is not without merit. But it also raises the question - what should they do exactly to be more cooperative? Contested board elections in building societies would be one such thing. Don't have the answers but would be interested to hear thoughts from other people.

@Leo Sammallahti I think your last question "'what should they do exactly to be more cooperative?" is exactly right. There is too often an expectation that big coops should conduct themselves as if they were a small worker coop. It feels like the bar is set at a level that a large organisation could not possibly meet. But there are real changes that can be made I think. When the Co-op Group was being restructured a group of us launched Coop Springboard. This used to be at springboard.coop (now gone) but I archived the pages here: https://chorlton.coop/7-propositions - as you can see, we put forward seven propositions. I’m quite proud of that work we did still.

The Coop Party are facilitating a video meeting event at 1.00 today on the economy. NEF leading it I understand. They had a huge influence of the Coop and Labour Party and a I stated earlier, I think we should be acting at all levels.

Shaun I am very interested in initiatives based on a SMart model. I met one of their organisers at a Coops Congress and use the example often with self-employed workers. I am trying to find people interested in a Trades Coop, based on the model (for self employed builders, plumbers, carpenters etc. Do let me know where you are at with your work.

I think cooperative behaviour and cooperative values and principles are obviously central to a broadly more cooperative economy, but without lots of formal cooperatives (and a broad range of solidarity enterprises), with rules, legislation, regulation etc. I fear that Coop decay will set in early.

Mark usefully mentioned Mutual Aid, and I have noticed Adrian Ashton is really active in engaging with the groups. I do think that conversions and start-ups are real possibility, but if they are advised by Accountants, Solicitors and the usual 'business advisors', we know they wont be best advised.

Cooperative Finance (inc Credit Unions, Community Shares, Coop Banks and social and solidarity investment banks need to be in the same discussions and I think coop Accountants and legal advice should be part of our collective offer. Dev Coop is talking to 3rd Sector Accountancy Coop about this including trying to get the Coop sector to use them.

I agree numbers of coops are not the key, but the number of coop members and their activity in their coops is. Coop Development the Development Coop and Platform 6 need to have a strong coherent profile. I would like the return of regional investment collaboration which we could do informally and to let a 1000 cooperative and solidarity flowers blossom.

@John Merritt we are proposing a SMART-like co-op as something the Greater Manchester Combined Authority could help us construct (resource and political backing). Very early stage. May get nowhere.