Suzi Carter recently joined Food Co-op Initiative after working to help launch recently opened Friendly City Food Co-op, among other community development projects. This presentation covers strategies for fundraising success, and how co-ops can best serve and motivate their members in each stage of co-op development.

1. Fundraising Triumphs and
Keeping Members Engaged
for the Long Haul!

2. Fundraising Triumphs and
Keeping Members Engaged
for the Long Haul!
Suzi Carter
suzi@fci.coop
540-416-2667 (COOP)
foodcoopinitiative.coop

3. Telling your story

4. What is fundraising?

5. Fundraising
= relationships

6. Why do people give/join?
• Because their friend joined
• Because you asked them
• For their own reasons!

7. So what? How does this
apply to co-ops?

8. Who are you engaging?
Potential members:
• “Just browsing”
• “I’m waiting until you’re open”
• “You’re a bunch of hippies”
• “I don’t eat healthy”
• “I love what you’re doing! But I
don’t have the money right now.”
• “I’m here with my friend.”

9. 4 Cornerstones in 3 Stages

10. 4 Cornerstones in 3 Stages

11. Membership growth?
Membership fantasy?
Membership plateau…

12. Endowed relational capacity

13. …only gets you so far

14. vs. Earned Relational Capacity

15. Moving people to take action

16. Shoring up infrastructure

17. Shoring up infrastructure

18. Taking stock: research, listen

19. Set goals and tell everyone
• Why are you doing this?
• Plan it
• Test it
• Simplify it
• Use traditional and new forms of media

20. Decide your activities
• Who’s your team?
• Where are your members?

21. One-on-one

22. House Parties

23. Small events

24. Big events

25. Collecting info, building momentum

26. Leveraging media

27. Evaluating Activities
• Did it build membership/loans?
• Did it drain our energy or resources? (ROI)
• Was it worth it?
• Who could do it next time?
• What did we learn?
• Did the press cover it?
• Was it fun?
• Was it the right thing to do?
• Did the board love it? Did members love it?
• Did it bring goodwill to our co-op?
• Did it attract past the core?

28. Other Ideas

29. Other Ideas

30. And ideas that flopped

31. Lessons learned
• Use templates
• No such thing as bad press
• Work with and through your members
• Always think, “Who can do this?”
• Use your university
• Break up small tasks into smaller tasks
• Event toolbox and 3-prong spiel
• Make friends with media; become a connector
• Don’t do anything alone
• If you don’t announce it, it never happened
• Admit mistakes, ask for help

32. Remember Your Role
REPEAT:
I WILL NOT DO EVERYTHING.

33. Iron Law of Organizing
Never do for someone else what
s/he can do for herself/himself.

34. Job of the Organizer
• Identify and recruit the people
needed to do the work of
starting the co-op
• Give them the tools they need
to be successful
• Keep them working together
effectively

35. Thank you!
Suzi Carter
suzi@fci.coop
540-416-2667 (COOP)
FoodCoopInitiative.coop
Questions?