NASCO member co-ops only– we're conducting our second Annual Member Survey! Your responses help us understand our membership, ensure our programming meets our members' needs, and advocate for the positive impacts of co-ops on individuals and communities.
Every individual who completes a survey will be entered into a drawing to win one of the following prizes:
As summer comes to an end, Corrigan Nadon-Nichols, our Director of Development, is stepping down from his position. During his five years on staff, Corrigan has made some enormous contributions to NASCO. He will surely be missed! However, he won’t be going far as he is moving on to exciting opportunities in the local Chicago cooperative movement. Supporting our staff as well as members to grow and evolve is part of our work at NASCO. We are sad to say goodbye to Corrigan, and we wish him happiness and success!
NASCO launched several new property ownership programs, including Lots in Common and NASCO Community Ownership. Lots in Common has been spun off from NASCO’s staffing, and NASCO Community Ownership went under due to the financial crisis of 2008.
The NASCO boards and staff worked together to create a contract for setting expectations of staff. Several large cooperatives in the US withdrew from NASCO membership, while several large cooperatives in Canada rejoined.
NASCO developed a focus on diversity and inclusion, both in governance and in its educational programming. A number of community-based cooperatives became members of NASCO, bringing new points of view. By 2005, about half of the member groups were community-based, although student groups were still much larger and held about 90% of the individual co-op members.
To better assist those many groups and individuals who wanted to start new cooperatives, the Campus Cooperative Development Corporation (CCDC) was incorporated as an affiliate of NASCO in 1988. Funded and controlled through its own membership structure, CCDC contracts with NASCO for staffing. CCDC can provide all of the stages of development assistance from project feasibility through financing and organizational design.
In the late 1970's NASCO, once again, focused some of its efforts on the federal government. Along with many other cooperative groups in the late 1970's, NASCO assisted in lobbying for the federal legislation which created the National Co-op Bank (NCB). Such efforts by NASCO and the National Cooperative Business Association (NCBA) finally resulted in the National Consumer Cooperative Bank Act of 1978.
In the spring of 1968, participants in a conference sponsored by the University of Michigan Inter-Cooperative Council proposed the organization of a group "for the purpose of expanding the cooperative movement across college campuses." That fall, a group gathered in Chicago to organize NASCO. NASCO's creation in 1968 meant that, for the first time in 20 years, student co-ops began working together towards their common interests.
NASCO is the successor of the North American Student Cooperative League (NASCL). NASCL was founded in 1946 with the assistance of the Cooperative League of the USA, now known as the National Cooperative Business Association (NCBA). Although there was a need for NASCL, it was never a strong organization and after the mid-1950’s existed largely in print. The needs for communication, assistance, education, lobbying, and other services did not end, however, and NASCL remained as a concept, particularly in Ann Arbor, Michigan.