Connecting with candidates in existing cooperatives, building societies, trade- and credit union elections
Social media powered movements reached a critical mass in vitalizing old democratic institutions of political parties with Corbyn and Sanders breaking old laws and trends of politics. Similar movements that managed to mobilize people to take part in the democratic process using social media could happen in other big and old democratic institutions: cooperatives, building societies, credit- and trade unions.
Maybe social coop could do something regarding this. Few ideas:
1. Make a list of specific proposals on how some coop/credit or trade union could advance new ways of cooperativism.
Examples:
- Could they start using Loomio to make some of their decisions?
- Could they shift hosting their website on WebHosting.Coop?
- Could they start using or producing open source more?
2. Contact candidates in those elections to offer them help if they support our proposals. See if there's members from social coop who could be eligible to stand or vote in coop elections where our proposals could be advanced.
Examples:
- We could loan money for their campaign, and then have them pay us back from their meeting allowances (possibly with interest) in case they win.
- We could help do their campaign ads graphic design, and other social media campaigning (helping them with ad targeting, etc.)
It's relatively easy to see when big coops and credit unions have new elections, and find who the candidates are or were. It gives a possiblity to make a schedule and have big "call list" for outreach as it's relatively easy to find the candidates email/Twitter/Facebook.
3. Hypothetical example case
- Finnish coop HOK-Elanto owns the biggest grocery store chain in Finland.
- They have a webshop. What if we would campaign for them to use opensource ShareTribe (also Finnish) alternative in their webshop?
- Lowest number of votes that got a candidate a seat in Helsinki was 358.
- A representative serves for 4 years and gets 650 euro meeting commission per meeting, and there's at least 2 meetings per year.
- We could help this candidate with designing and targeting campaign ads, and loaning 300 euros to be used in advertising.
- If the candidate is elected, we will get 350 euros from the first meeting commission.
- The 50 euro interest will also get a membership in social coop, and the representative is encouraged to participate in our activities.
4. Long-Term Vision
In the long term there's hopefully a network of elected representatives from old and big existing cooperatives looking for new ideas collaborating with newer and smaller platform cooperative actives that look for some resources those big and old cooperatives have.
There's big coop and credit union elections happening all the time around the world. And I'm sure I'm far from being the only one who would love to engage in those, but don't know how.
We talked about being inclusive and diverse earlier. Big problem from that perspective for us as internet based, English language coop with 1 $/month membership fee is that we are not inclusive towards large portion of the developing world. This could be a way to do outreach there.
In coops that are based in the developing world, the campaign budgets are smaller so similar help would be relatively bigger. We coud lower or get rid of the "interest" in case of winning, or give donation to the campaign with no strings attached at all.
Sam Toland Sat 4 Nov 2017 4:14PM
I like the focus of this thread.
I do think key first step is evangelism among the traditional movements and of course the newer movements, and then move from there. I would take a look at what solidfund is doing...
I think the use of democratically controlled funds set aside for different purposes is potential groundbreaking, and a fund that could support the activity you are proposing could have an impact on what are currently stagnant institutions would could be revitalised with the right support of the right activists.
Michele Kipiel Mon 6 Nov 2017 2:00PM
This is very interesting! As I am in the middle of a relocation, I have very little mental energy to go through all the implications of this, but I will definitely take the time to think it through in the coming days and come back with a sensible reply.
For the time being, I can say this looks very interesting and I like where we can go from here...
Jake Schlachter Wed 8 Nov 2017 4:10PM
Hi, Leo!
In the long term there’s hopefully a network of elected representatives from old and big existing cooperatives looking for new ideas collaborating with newer and smaller platform cooperative actives looking that look for some resources that those big and old cooperatives have.
This is very much part of the vision of We Own It, my organization! We're currently focused on building a network of reform campaigners in the US, largely from the electric cooperative sector but also beginning in credit unions. We've supported some candidate election campaigns (not as easy as it sounds in the US REC world) and will be doing a lot more of that work in the future.
It’s relatively easy to see when big coops and credit unions have new elections, and find who the candidates are or were.
The project of identifying the candidates, open seats, and election cycles of the 840 RECs is a pretty big challenge for us. If you have ideas for how to crowd-source this, I'd be very interested to discuss!
cheers,
Jake
Jake Schlachter
We Own It: The national network for
cooperative member rights, education, and organizing
[email protected]
(937) 838-4404
Madison, WI
Leo Sammallahti Mon 9 Apr 2018 11:29AM
Brilliant stuff you're doing, don't hesitate to ask if I can help!
"The project of identifying the candidates, open seats, and election cycles of the 840 RECs is a pretty big challenge for us. If you have ideas for how to crowd-source this, I'd be very interested to discuss!"
I can only imagine, as I know only about the Finnish situation, where there's three big cooperative elections.
This site has a list of 21 US credit union elections that are held in 2018 on the bottom of the page. Some of the CUs have information of candidates (example). It seems that US CUs have relatively high threshold to get elected as only one or few seats are typically up for grabs.
What I was thinking more were elections like this one, of the Finnish coop bank elections that was held few months ago and where I stood as a candidate. I received about 90 votes with about 120 dollar budget. Would've needed 530 votes to get elected. It was the head branch of Helsinki and the biggest financial group in the country, with 10 most voted candidates of Helsinki being selected.
The elections also have a "I side with" type Quiz that users can take, and allows sorting the candidates also by age/interests/gender.
These sort of lists might make it easy to look for candidates, check their answers & Twitters/Facebook feeds, and see if there's some who might seem like their interests might align with ours.
So to crowdsource it I would suppose that we would first:
- Find volunteers by asking if people are members of a coop/credit union, and contacting them before election deadlines asking if they are interested to run
- Come up with proposals on how some credit union or a cooperative might support our causes
- Slice the list of candidates for each volunteer to check from Facebook and Twitter those candidates, and seeing if they have posts that might indicate they might be interested
- Emailing them and individualizing the email based on the content in their FB/Twitter feed
I can always volunteer to do this, and will run in all three major coop elections in Finland seeking to advocate for the platform cooperative movement.
If I remember correctly @matthewcropp has also stood as candidate in Vermont Federal Credit Union elections, hopefully he will stand next time too and we can help him in the campaign :).
Nathan Schneider · Sat 4 Nov 2017 3:39AM
Great stuff here, Leo! I love the direction this is headed. I've definitely been trying to on-board the US establishment co-ops.