Did you miss NASCO Institute this year? Maybe you lost your notes, or missed a workshop that sounded really exciting? Whatever the reason, we’ve got you covered! We have uploaded course materials from forty-five different workshops from this year’s conference. Check them out here! We’ll be posting videos from the event to our website soon, too. Enjoy!
After providing member cooperatives a two week extension to submit their annual dues in order to vote in the Annual General Meeting, ballots have been counted and results are in! We are please to announce that the new Active Member Representative, serving from March 2016 to March 2017, will be Carina Mata, from ICC Austin!
It was a very close election (7x6x4x2), which reflects that commitment and enthusiasm that all of the candidates displayed. Thank you all for participating, and congratulations Carina!
We've extended the deadline to nominate candidates for NASCO's board of directors, to correspond with an extension in the deadline for submitting dues payments. The new election timeline is:
November 13, 2015: Nominations due
November 18, 2015: Ballots sent
January 31, 2016: Ballots due
February 3, 2016: Results announced
You can continue to submit nominations to us until midnight, CST, on Friday, November 13.
One of NASCO's members, the Berkeley Student Cooperative, is currently accepting applicants for two professional jobs, their Member Resources Supervisor position and their Rochdale & Fenwick Apartment Manager position.
More information about these positions can be found by visiting their hiring website (hicom.bsc.coop) or by clicking the links above.
We have extended the deadline to apply for Low Income Scholarship Funding to attend NASCO Institute 2015! If you missed the deadline, it is not too late to apply. We will accept applications until October 16, 2015, and notify people by October 20, 2015. (People who applied by October 05 will still be notified by October 09 in order to get the early registration rate). NASCO's scholarships are able to support registration and travel costs for folks who are low-income, rural, from marginalized groups, youth, and others who face financial barriers to attendance. Please pass this update to others in your cooperative who might be interested in applying!
Over 400 participants will converge on Ann Arbor, Michigan from October 30th through November 1st, 2015 to share ideas, learn new skills, and look at issues affecting the cooperative movement worldwide. Since 1977, NASCO's Cooperative Education & Training Institute has been widely recognized as one of the most important training and networking opportunities available to members, directors, staff and managers of group-equity cooperatives. The annual NASCO Institute is always a one-of-a-kind opportunity to network with hundreds of cooperative leaders and employers, to caucus about pressing issues, and to work on building an inclusive and accessible cooperative movement.
For more information, visit: https://www.nasco.coop/institute
Since 1930, cooperatives across the United States have joined together in October to celebrate our collective history and shared impact as a movement. Various co-ops recognize this holiday in different ways: some organize educational events, others throw parties, even more use this as an opportunity for community outreach, the Cooperative Development Foundation holds a 5 kilometer race through Washington DC, and we’re holding a Co-op Photo Contest!
We invite you to share your plans with us as you celebrate Co-op Month, or Co-op Week in Canada (October 11-18)! Share photos of your co-op celebrating #CoopMonth with the NASCO community on Facebook or Twitter, or email them to coop.month@nasco.coop. Prizes will be announced at NASCO Institute!
In May 2015, the Student Cooperative Organization and NASCO Properties purchased a new co-op house in Athens Ohio. The Student Cooperative Organization was established 25 years ago to serve students at Ohio University, and has operated an 8 bedroom coop in Athens since that time.
With the purchase of a second house in Athens, the number of co-op spaces available has doubled to 16. Members of the coop have finished moving into their new house, dubbed and are beginning to settle in and create an identity for the new house - including selecting a name for the new house, “Firehouse 69.”
In addition to the two houses operated by Student Cooperative Organization and NASCO Properties, Athens is also home to a worker-owned cooperative restaurant, as well as a cooperative co-working space for professionals. With this much local interest in cooperatives, we hope to see more co-op development in Athens in the near future!
We're pleased to announce that the program for the 2015 Staff & Managers Pre-Conference has been finalized! This all-day program, held on Friday October 30th, serves as a networking and learning forum for co-op staff, managers, and administrators from across Canada and the United States. The Staff and Managers Pre-Conference supplements NASCO Institute programming offered on Saturday and Sunday and allows more space for participants to connect with one another and dig deeper into specific issues.
The pre-conference will feature a four-hour interactive workshop, led by Matt Hancock of the Praxis Consulting Group, that will engage participants in exploring how their co-ops can be developing a culture of collective leadership, share best practices from cooperatives in the United States, Spain and Italy, and explore the role that leadership plays in a co-op’s success as a profitable business. This session will focus on ways of incorporating mentorship (staff-to-staff and staff-to-members) into the process of leadership development and the vision of collective leadership.