The NASCO Cooperative Hall of Fame, created in 1989, honors the best of our movement. We use the Hall of Fame as a means for NASCO member co-ops to provide broader recognition to individuals who have made a truly significant impact. This year, a committee of former Hall of Fame inductees and NASCO board members selected three individuals to join the Hall of Fame:
Are you excited about the cooperative movement and eager to participate in the world of cooperatives beyond your home cooperative?
Do you have experience with board governance, grassroots fundraising, meeting facilitation, co-op management, or committee leadership?
Do you want to be part of a bi-national organization that develops new cooperatives, manages common equity houses, and reaches thousands of cooperators in the U.S. and Canada with cooperative education?
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.