Cooperative 101
A co-operative is a legally incorporated corporation that is owned by its members, who use the co-operative's services or purchase their products. They can and do provide virtually every product or service, and can be either for-profit or non-profit enterprises.
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Cooperatives include different activities/services from housing to transportation, farming to solar energy, financial services to marketing; they are owned by their members, which could be consumers, producers, workers, businesses or organizations, municipalities, and other co-ops.
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One of the ways cooperatives differ from other business structures is their adherence to cooperative principles and values that reflect social, political, and business concerns. Cooperatives trace the roots of these principles to the Rochdale pioneers, who established the first modern cooperative in Rochdale, England in 1844. These principles have been refined, adapted, and reinterpreted over time. The seven principles used by the International Cooperative Alliance today are generally accepted by cooperatives worldwide.
The history of the cooperative movement concerns the origins and history of cooperatives across the world. Although cooperative arrangements, such as mutual insurance, and principles of cooperation existed long before, the cooperative movement began with the application of cooperative principles to business organization.
Northwestern University established the first student cooperative house in 1872. There were a few other co-ops in the 1800’s and before World War I, however these early efforts are not well documented.
The first cooperative models were intended to meet the housing needs of women, who were beginning to attend college in greater numbers after the Civil War and had difficulty finding a place to live in predominantly male rooming houses. The majority of these early efforts were University-owned or sponsored in some way and the word "cooperative" meant shared work, instead of user control (as we know it today).
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