community supported agriculture (CSA's)
"smart growth" advocates
environmental justice organizations
responsible business associations and
"buy local" campaigns.
The academic centers and institutes may provide valuable information about how
cooperatives function and how local economies have developed elsewhere. The regional
bodies could be valuable liaisons with their membership--offering cataloguing, polling,
promotional, and feedback opportunities. Local government bodies may be interested in
participating in and promoting the cooperation project. The producers of directories have
valuable information they can share both in terms of actual business listings and how to
manage databases of listings. Their constituencies also may be open to using the
cooperative tools. The organizations that promote cooperatives will be sources of
expertise on existing co-ops and co-op development. The various types of cooperatives,
their members, employees, customers and suppliers will of course be the main affected
parties. Cooperative Life and the Cooperative Development Institute are primary
stakeholders as well, since they are the sponsoring organizations.
See the Stakeholders Table in Appendix 4 for a summary of stakeholders' relationships to
the project.
Host Organization
Cooperative Life is the sponsoring organization for the project. It is a membership
organization that represents the interests of cooperatives in the Northeast region as the
Northeast Federation of Cooperatives. Noémi Giszpenc is one of seven elected board
members of Cooperative Life and is conducting this project on a voluntary basis, with the
help of fellow board members and interested volunteers.
The Cooperative Development Institute, a nonprofit located in Greenfield, MA dedicated
to building cooperative leadership and enterprise in the Northeast, started Cooperative
Life in 1999 as a way of offering state-of-the-art business development, marketing, and
federation services. CDI was started in 1994 with the mission "To increase economic
opportunities and benefits for people in the Northeast by fostering the growth and success
of all types of cooperative enterprises." (Cooperative Life 2003) CDI retains the right to
appoint one board member the board of Coop Life (currently that post is held by Bob
Rottenberg, co-director of CDI), and provides the staffing for Coop Life.