Co-ops are owned by their members and driven by services, rather than profit, making them a unique way of doing business. The first U.S. cooperative was a town mutual insurance company organized in 1752 by Benjamin Franklin.
- Like Ben Franklin’s company, many town mutuals got their start when neighbors joined together to insure their farms and homes—primarily because big insurers ignored them or charged exorbitant prices.
- Today, town mutuals primarily serve farmers, rural homeowners and some small main-street businesses.
Cooperative health maintenance organizations (HMOs) were organized after passage of the federal HMO Act of 1973 to help consumers address the problems of rising health-care costs and physician shortages.
- Cooperative HMOs are different from for-profit HMOs, which operate more like insurance processors. Co-op HMOs are not-for-profit health care providers that own medical facilities and employ medical staff.
- Cooperative HMOs devote every dollar of their surpluses to facilities, benefits and services that are advantageous to their members and communities.
Rural electric, telephone and cable cooperatives were formed when the cost of expanding service to rural areas discouraged for-profit utilities from serving these areas.
- In 1936, Franklin D. Roosevelt signed the Rural Electrification Act, establishing the Rural Electrification Administration as a lending agency to finance the extension of electrical systems to rural areas.
- Today, the REA has been renamed the Rural Utilities Service, with broad responsibilities for rural infrastructure and services.
- With an emphasis on providing service rather than reaping large profits, cooperatives have brought electric, telephone and cable services to the countryside, thus vastly improving the quality of life in rural areas.
The men and women who launched the U.S. credit union movement in the early 1900s were searching for a solution to the financial service problems of the working class.
- By organizing financial cooperatives, ordinary citizens gained access to savings plans and reasonably priced loans—financial services previously available only to the wealthy.
- Nearly a century later, credit unions are still doing what they originally set out to do: providing financial services to their member–owners and operating for service rather than profit.
- Today, many of these cooperatives have expanded their scope, offering their members Internet service, home-security systems, a first-response system for seniors and others at risk, and many other services until recently unavailable in rural areas.
- Increasingly, credit unions are offering computer programming that allows their members the option of conducting their financial affairs without leaving their homes or businesses.
Before 1850, the earliest dairy cooperatives were pooling milk from neighborhood farms, processing it into cheese and shipping it to urban areas for sale.
- Today, the Upper Midwest’s dairy cooperatives vary in scope from bargaining associations to fully integrated marketing and processing cooperatives to small, local cheese-processing co-ops.
Early agricultural supply cooperatives focused on lowering the cost of basic farm production supplies.
- Today, these cooperatives provide a wide range of services and products in response to the changing needs of the farmers and communities they serve.
- While farm supply cooperatives continue to provide feed, seed, fertilizer, chemicals, petroleum and other products and related services to farmers, a number have diversified by opening convenience stores, grocery and hardware stores, truck stops, car washes, restaurants and other businesses to meet local needs.
The Farm Credit System has an unparalleled 89-year history of exclusively serving U.S. agriculture and rural America. Congress established the Farm Credit System in 1916 to guarantee American agriculture a reliable source of credit.
- Today, through its network of borrower-owned lending institutions and branch offices, the Farm Credit System provides more than $90 billion in loans to farmers, ranchers, rural homeowners, agricultural cooperatives, rural utility systems and agribusinesses.
- Farm Credit consists of four regional Farm Credit Banks, and one Agricultural Credit Bank, which provide funding and affiliated services to nearly 100 locally owned Farm Credit associations and numerous cooperatives nationwide.
- Farm Credit institutions are organized as cooperative businesses, each owned by its member–borrower stockholders who have the right to participate in director elections and vote on issues affecting the institution's operations.
In the past 19 years, cooperative housing has caught on in urban areas in the Upper Midwest.
- Controlled and managed by residents, cooperative housing can take many forms, from high-rise apartments to single family housing.
- In urban areas, housing cooperatives have helped to revitalize and stabilize older neighborhoods and have created a housing alternative that gives people a stake in their living arrangements and a new sense of security and community.
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