The latest issue of the Cooperative Business Journal from the the Nat'l. Cooperative Business Association has an editorial by CEO Paul Hazen in which he espouses the benefits of cross-marketing between cooperatives and selling of services to each other. He cites the credit union-related success story of Spire FCU and Wedge Natural Foods, both Minnesota cooperatives, introducing a jointly marketed credit card to each other's members. Both coops gain from the deal. Wedge members get a better credit card from a financial institution that keeps profits local. Wedge also gets a small portion of Spire's revenue from credit card fees. In return , Spire gets access to the 14,000 potential cardholders who belong to Wedge.
This kind of partnership strengthens the cooperative business model and expands the public's understanding that cooperatives are a better way of doing business. There's mileage to be gainged by credit unions and cooperatives in this kind of arrangement as the financial crisis changed the public's sense of what's valuable in business . . . a greater focus on ethics and social values, both of which cooperatives embody.
Hazen reports that public research polls time and again show that consumers would rather do business with a cooperative if given the choice.
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5 years ago
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