Wisconsin Ag Connection - UWCC Receives Grant to Create Co-op Development Tools

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UWCC Receives Grant to Create Co-op Development Tools
Wisconsin Ag Connection - 02/12/2016

The University of Wisconsin Center for Cooperatives has received funding for a four-year research and extension project from the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative program from USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture. The project, titled 'Collective Action in Rural Communities: Mapping Opportunities for Cooperative Conversion and Start-up,' will enhance opportunities for rural cooperative entrepreneurship by providing robust decision-making tools and research-based information to cooperative and economic developers, rural entrepreneurs and policy makers.

Since the Great Recession, interest in cooperatives as a tool for achieving social and economic goals has increased substantially. In rural areas, the cooperative model is particularly important for supporting entrepreneurships, job and wealth creation, and for the delivery of critical services. Due to this demand, there are a growing number of regional and local organizations that offer cooperative development services. The $500,000 project will explore and analyze regional economies to identify the sectors with the greatest potential for cooperative development, and create a suite of tools to support cooperative start-ups in rural communities.

"Cooperatives are essential to rural communities," says Anne Reynolds, executive director of UWCC. "However, cooperative business activity varies widely across regions. We want to find out why cooperatives have been more successful in some areas and use that information to improve cooperative development performance on a national level."

This grant builds on UWCC's existing cooperative development activities, which increase social, cultural and economic capacity in communities across Wisconsin. Since 2010, UWCC has received annual Rural Cooperative Development Grants from the USDA to provide technical assistance to start-up and established cooperatives in Wisconsin and Minnesota.

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