We need your support!
We want more co-sponsors! Please ask your Representative to demonstrate their commitment to strengthening communities and creating jobs by becoming a co-sponsor of this bill.
In your letter, tell your Representative about your co-op, make it personal to you and their district. Use the talking points available at to highlight the impact co-ops can have in their district. Tell them how the National Cooperative Development Act would help their district.
It would be a tremendous win for the cooperative movement in the United States if we could have a large number of co-sponsors for this bill-from both urban and rural areas and from both "sides of the aisle." Especially as we near the international Year of Cooperatives, an early 2012 passage of this legislation would demonstrate America's reconition of the social and economic benefits of cooperative enterprise.
The National Cooperative Development Center will...
- Award grants to nonprofit organizations, colleges and universities provide technical assistance to cooperative or groups seeking to form co-ops.
- Provide guidance, best practices and technical assistance to communities seeking to establish cooperatives.
- Create a revolving loan fund to provide seed capital to groups attempting to form cooperatives.
- Provide funding to train providers of technical assistance an support existing professional development for organziations engaged in cooperative development.
- Establish cooperative development centers in areas that do not have them.
To support you...
NCBA has created text for you to include in a letter (see below my signature).In addition, the site contains a number of resources that can support your effort, including talking points. I encourage you to visit the site.
Please send your letter as soon as possible so that we continue the momentum of congressional support on this legislation.
Visit the US House of Representative Directoryto access the website or other contact information for your Representative.
If you have questions about contacting your Representative or the National Cooperative Development Act, please contact NCBA's Director of Public Policy, R.L. Condra at or 202-383-5480.
I hope you'll join with NCBA in working to strength rural and urban areas of the United States through cooperative enterprise.
Sincerely,
Paul Hazen
Text for your letter
Dear Representative,
I'm writing to ask that you become a co-sponsor of the National Cooperative Development Act, which will empower Americans and strengthen communities cooperative development in urban and rural areas.
The National Cooperative Development Act would establish a National Cooperative Development Center to provide capital, training and other resources to foster cooperative development. The Act would strengthen communities and generate jobs by spurring cooperative development and thereby, advance the economic stability of local areas; increase the circulation of capital locally; and develop, attract and anchor new productive capital in urban and rural underserved communities.
Cooperatives are values-based, business owned and controlled by those that use the cooperative's services. In the United States, more than 29,000 cooperatives operate in every sector of the economy and in every congressional district; Americans hold over 350 million co-op memberships. US cooperatives generate 2 million jobs and make a substantial contribution to the US economy with annual sales of $652 billion and possessing assets of $3 trillon.
Cooperatvies operate across all sectors of the US economy and include agriculture, food distribution and retailing, childcare, credit unions purchasing, worker-owned, housing healthcare, energy and telecommunications cooperatives. Cooperatives promote the fullest possible participation in the economic and social development of all people.
Please become a co-sponsor of this important legislation.
Sincerely,