Grow your own… Co-op

Aim of the activity:
To experience the challenges and rewards of setting up and running your own Co-operative enterprise. This activity can be treated as a role play game or taken more seriously and carried through to the setting up of a small-scale co-operative enterprise.

What you will need:
Pens and paper;
Flip chart sheet and marker pens

Suggested warm-up:
Try some more of the new games from Activity 2.

What to do:
Start off by brainstorming the needs of your community – particularly those which are not being fully met at present. Community could mean group, WF district, school or local area.

Are any of these things which could realistically be provided by young people - do you have the necessary skills?

Some ideas: tuck shop; car washing; gardening; odd jobs; babysitting; youth credit union; mediation service; youth LETS; recycling.

Once the group have agreed on an idea you can move forward in many different ways. Here are some suggestions of the steps you might take:

Market Research
This is done to try to judge whether your co-op idea is viable. You should seek to find out all about your proposed area of business activity - who your customers will be, how much they are willing to pay, whether the 'market' is growing, who potential customers are and whether there is room for co-operation between you and them, etc. You could start off with making a list of useful questions and then seek to answer them.

Business Plan
The information that you find out during market research will be used to produce a business plan. This will help you to focus your ideas. By producing a plan (which doesn't necessarily have to be followed rigidly) you actually turn ideas into practical and realistic objectives and targets to aim for.

You may also find that some of the potential members of the co-op have different ideas, and the plan brings them all closer together or at least points out some possible areas of disagreement before you start.

The production of the plan involves all members discussing all aspects of the proposed idea - and agreed decisions being written down for the benefit of your own clarity and outside persons who may have an interest eg: lending money etc.

The finished business plan could include:

information about you:

• Who are the proposed co-op members?
• What relevant skills and experience do you have? (everything you can think of which shows that you have all the necessary qualifications to make the co-op work.)
• How much time and commitment can you give to the co-op (be realistic!)

information about your proposed 'market':

• How many customers do you expect to have?
• Who will these customers be? (or what sort of people will they be?)
• Who will you be competing with?
• How will you advertise your product or service?
• How will you sell it to customers?
• How will you set prices? (how much do your competitors charge?)

information about your proposed operations:

• Where will your activity take place?
• Where will you get supplies that you need?
• What equipment will you need?
• Are there any legal considerations e.g. food hygiene regulations?
• Who will undertake what tasks?
• How much do you expect to have to spend on setting up your co-op?
• How much will your first supplies cost?
• How much income do you expect to get?
• What will you do with any surplus money the co-op makes? (You might consider running the co-op to fund raise for a particular cause).
• How long to you intend the co-op will operate for? (It make be necessary to put a limit on this, say, three months)

information about the rules of your co-op:

• How are you going to decide what should happen in the co-op?
• What will you do if there is a disagreement?

Finances
By the time you have finished making your business plan you will have worked out how much money you need to get you started. You could try approaching your Woodcraft Folk District or your local Co-op Society for a grant or a loan. If you have produced a convincing business plan, and the amount you need isn’t too great, you should be able to find a sponsor. Alternatively, if the costs are quite low, each member of the co-op could make a contribution to join – say £1 – and those funds could be used as start-up capital.

Democratic Decision Making and Meetings
Regular Meetings are probably one of the most important tools to make your co-op work. It is very easy to think "oh no, not another meeting!" and harder to try to make dull meetings interesting. Once your co-op is up and running you could, perhaps, set aside 10 minutes each week at your Pioneer group meeting to deal with the ‘co-op business’.

Keeping records
It is important to keep good records of what is going in your co-op. For example, you will need a treasurer who keeps a record of all the money that is spent and all the income that is generated. Your Woodcraft Folk District Treasurer may be able to help you with advice on how to keep financial records. It is also a good idea to record all decisions you make at meetings in a ‘Minute book’. This can be referred back to at any time, particularly if there is a disagreement about what had been decided in the past.

Whatever co-operative enterprise you decide to embark on, good luck! Setting thing up is hard work but there will be plenty more hard work to come when you start washing cars, collecting old newspapers, or whatever. Hopefully you will find it worthwhile and will learn a lot about your own skills and abilities, about ways of working with other people, and about the benefits of co-operation.