Currently, NASCO staff are focused on wrapping up 2014 and preparing for the upcoming year. We’ve uploaded course materials from over 50 NASCO Institute sessions to our website, are facilitating conversations between members that began in the Annual General Meeting, and are in the closing stretch of NASCO board elections (hooray voting!).
As we move forward into 2015, we’re setting dates and a location for the Staff and Managers Conference (to be announced very soon!), preparing to launch our Cooperative Internship Network (want an intern? let us know!), scheduling member visits for early next year, beginning to work on a number of new cooperative development/expansion projects, and filming dozens of cooperative educational videos for our Shared Resource Library.
The NASCO board is very excited to welcome its new members in March and is working with NASCO staff to design a new, more robust board orientation and training program.
The Canadian Association for Studies in Co-operation (CASC) is currently accepting proposed papers, panels, roundtables, workshops, and case studies for their annual conference. The conference will be hosted in Ontario at the University of Ottawa, June 2-4, 2015 - this year’s theme is "Co-operatives - Capital Idea(s)." Please see the linked Call for Papers for more information - proposals are due January 26, 2015 [please note that the original deadline has been extended].
Voting is now open for the NASCO Board of Directors! Each year, NASCO members nominate and elect candidates to the NASCO Board. All Active Member cooperatives are eligible to vote. Ballots and candidate statements were sent to your co-op by mail and email, and are also available here.
1) Letter to Active Members about voting
3) Ballots
Ballots are due on Friday, January 30th.
Santa Barbara Student Housing Cooperative (SBSHC) is hiring an Executive Director! This is an exciting opportunity for a motivated leader to take on an executive organizational leadership position for a successful affordable student housing cooperative.
SBSHC is a 501c3 non-profit corporation operated and governed by its resident members. Founded in 1976, SBSHC just opened its fifth building in 2013 in beautiful Santa Barbara, California. Please visit http://www.sbcoop.org to learn more about the co-op. The full job posting is linked here.
Yesterday, October 29, 2014, was the nominations deadline for NASCO’s 2015 board election. As you probably know, this is the first year with a new election schedule involving nominations in the fall and voting in the winter. We originally set the October deadline in order to allow more time for cooperatives to discuss the candidates and vote before the winter holidays. However, many members were not expecting nominations to be so early, and did not have adequate time to discuss and nominate candidates.
In order to allow for more thoughtful nominations and more engagement from members in the election process, we have decided to extend the election timeline. The new timeline is:
Nominations due: Sunday, November 30, 2014
Ballots distributed: Wednesday, December 3, 2014
Voting closes: Friday, January 30, 2015
Results announced: Monday, February 2, 2015
Spring board meeting: TBA in March 2015
We hope this will give many more people the opportunity to seek nominations, and that more cooperatives will be able to consider candidates for the board. The original nomination materials are here.
College Houses, a NASCO member co-op in Austin, TX, is hiring two positions: an Administrative Coordinator and a Maintenence Coordinator. Both positions are full-time. Cover letters and resumes will be accepted until October 17, 2014. Please see linked postings for more information.
