As someone who has personally spent nearly all of my adult life working at a financial cooperative – a credit union – I have had the pleasure of witnessing first-hand the benefits that cooperatives provide to hundreds of thousands of Mainers every day. Though many people reading this have likely used or are part of a cooperative, the economic impact and contributions that cooperatives provide to our local economy is many times a well kept secret.

When I tell people what I do and where I work, they nod and smile. But I can tell that although some of it sounds faintly familiar, they’re still not quite sure what it all means. If time permitted, I would explain that it means helping people going through financial challenges in unique and individual ways: modifying or restructuring thousands of loans to affordable options; waiving or refunding hundreds of thousands of fees; reaching out to individuals just to see if we could help; and recognizing that helping is not just what we do – it’s who we are. We’re not just helping people but our members who are why we exist in the first place. But time does not usually permit. And still, that would barely scratch the surface.

In her 2014 paper, “Benefits and Impacts of Cooperatives,” Jessica Gordon Nembhard, a professor of social economics at John Jay College, put it this way:

“Cooperative businesses are community-owned private enterprises that combine consumers with owners, and buyers with sellers in a democratic governance structure. Cooperatives solve the general economic problem of under or over production, business uncertainty, and excessive costs. Cooperatives address market failure and fill gaps that other private businesses ignore, such as: provision of rural electricity or other utilities in sparsely populated areas, provision of affordable healthy and organic foods; and access to affordable credit and banking services, to affordable housing, to quality affordable child or elder care, to markets for culturally sensitive goods and arts.”

Cooperatives are all that and more. Cooperatives bring communities together. They’re community-based business anchors and are focused on making our communities stronger and filling a need. They distribute, recycle and multiply local expertise and capital within a community.

In an age when communities have become all too divided, cooperatives create a sense of belonging, and of purpose. A co-op is a place where one member is no more or less important than another member. The primary purpose of a cooperative is to serve the community in which it operates. Since co-ops are not-for-profit entities, a majority of the profit goes towards fulfilling the social, economic and cultural needs of the community. When a co-op does well, it benefits the community as a whole, making it both stronger and more united.

Because co-ops are exclusively controlled by members who shop at and use the business regularly, they will always exist to better their communities. Since members of the community own and operate a cooperative business, they will always have the incentive to benefit one another. The members will want the co-op to help the community because they are a part of it  and the community will always want to support the co-op because it invests in the betterment of the community. Essentially, co-ops are the epitome of not just “buy local” but “own local.”

Perhaps that’s why co-ops are so strong in Maine; Mainers have long had a unique commitment to supporting our own.

If you’re looking for a sense of community or a sense of belonging that comes with supporting and benefiting from a common purpose and mission, look no further than one of the hundreds of cooperatives in Maine. Cooperatives bring people of different backgrounds, income levels and experiences together. When that happens, we are all better for it.

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