If you’re a cooperator living or working near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania or Denver, Colorado, chances are you’ve joined us for one of the first two events in a series of regional Cooperative Policy Roundtables we’re hosting nationwide in partnership with the Cooperative Development Foundation and local stakeholders.
We’ve got five more regional events—in Billings, Montana; Sacramento, California; Madison, Wisconsin; Maple Grove, Minnesota; and Olympia, Washington—planned for later this year.
If you live or work in Montana, Idaho, Wyoming or the Dakotas, consider attending our next regional cooperative policy roundtable in Billings, Montana on August 28.
In partnership with the Montana Cooperative Development Center, Native American Development Corporation, North Dakota Association of Rural Electric Cooperatives, South Dakota Value-Added Agriculture Development Center and Rocky Mountain Farmers Union, we’re thrilled to help spur discussion among local leaders, policymakers, and cooperative business and development experts around establishing a national policy strategy for cooperative development.
If you’d like to attend the Billings, Montana roundtable, send an email to Jan Brown, Executive Director of the Montana Cooperative Development Center.
This year’s regional policy roundtables are part of ongoing research funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to quantify the social and economic impact of cooperatives—part of the philanthropy’s longtime focus on healthy communities. This work began with a framework for measuring co-op impact developed in partnership with the Urban Institute and will result in a policy paper meant to inform needed policy changes at the local, state and federal levels.
The roundtable series will culminate at this year’s Co-op IMPACT Conference from October 2-4 in Arlington, Virginia. Register now to attend our opening plenary session featuring the best ideas from local leaders, policymakers and cooperative development experts across the country. We’ll identify the most significant strategic national, state and local policies, financing mechanisms and other systems and structures that currently support or impede cooperative development. And we’ll present crowd-sourced, actionable ways to achieve an enabling policy environment in which cooperatives can thrive.