Hey, Cooperation Nation, this is Smooth Co-operators, a Belfast Community Co-op program.
We are here to talk to you about the Cooperative Business Model and the Belfast Community Co-op
in particular.
I'm Emily.
I'm Alessandra.
And today we are going to talk to you about Principle 7, Concern for Community.
But before we get there, we have a few announcements.
First off, this is our last episode of the season.
We are wrapping up the end of the year by wrapping up the Cooperative Principles.
I'm pretty excited about it.
I also wanted to share with everyone that I am officially retiring from the Belfast Community
Co-op.
It's been an amazing 12 years, an amazing community, amazing coworkers.
And I've been just so grateful to get to know all of you.
That's it.
Okay.
I think it's hard to put into words what you have meant to the Co-op and what you will
continue to mean and all the knowledge that you'll hold and the relationships that you
formed, the standards that you've held the board to, and the governance that they've
been able to put forward because you've been able to keep them in line and remind them
of what they promised that they were going to do.
I think that that really shows in where we are now as an organization.
So thank you.
I promise to keep an eye out and never let those standards slip.
I'm watching you.
Just kidding.
Okay.
So shall we get to the principles?
Hey, let's do that.
Okay.
Shall we remind everyone what the seven Cooperative Principles are?
I sure don't know what they are, so I hope you remember.
I do.
Okay.
So the principle seven is open and voluntary membership.
Principle two is democratic member control.
Principle three is member economic participation.
Principle four, autonomy and independence.
Principle five is education, information and training.
Principle six is cooperation among cooperatives.
And today's principle, principle seven is again concerned for community.
That's amazing.
Yeah.
So the International Cooperative Alliance defines P seven as cooperatives work for the sustainable
development of their communities through policies approved by their members.
So what does that mean?
I think we should start by going back to 1844.
Rochdale Equitable Pioneer Society.
They came up with a set of rules.
This particular principle really hearkens back to something called law first, which was
laid out for the purpose of improving the financial, social and living conditions of
its members.
The shop that they started was part of it, but it also was about providing employment,
housing and education and resources to their community.
So how do we do that for our community today?
In so many ways.
It's really true.
I wanted to start by reading our end statement.
Yes.
The end is a policy that the board has put forward as part of our governance structure.
And basically it answers the question of why do we exist?
And it helps to guide the general manager in the choices that they make so that they
are following within what the board believes is the entire reason for the organization.
So our ends are written as the Belfast Community Co-op exists so that our member owners and
our community will have a thriving, just and sustainable local food economy, a source of
healthy, nutritious, affordable food and water, an efficiently managed, democratically governed,
inclusive cooperative enterprise, a greater understanding of health, food systems, cooperatives
and economic and environmental sustainability, and an invested, engaged and empowered staff
that thrive in a safe, respectful, inclusive and equitable workplace.
So when I read that out loud and I remind myself that all of those things exist so that
our community will also have them, I'm reminded that our farmers and producers are part of
our community.
Our employees are part of our community.
The people who deliver food to our store are part of our community.
When the co-op makes decisions that are the best for the owners, it's also the best for
the community, which is also the best for the co-op.
So it's just this kind of really nice circle where we're not some big, extractive business
that's here to just like make a huge amount of money, leave a path of destruction and
then pull out of this community.
We know that our very roots, the very success of this business rests on the small community
that we live in.
Like I think we always joke that Belfast is a small town or Waldo County is a small town,
but I have also heard that people feel like Maine's a small town.
You can go somewhere in Maine and chances are you might know somebody wherever you're
going.
It happens a lot.
And so I think too, when other places talk about shopping locally, they're really talking
about like 50 miles or whatever in Maine.
We consider a local product anything that's from Maine because we're such a big state
with so few people in it.
We really make sure that that viewpoint really encompasses the entire state.
I think last year we sold just over $3 million worth of local produce and products, which
is super cool.
And then I was thinking about how it balances out where for our employees, we paid out in
pay and benefits a little bit over $3 million.
So that's really a lot of money just going straight out into the community because the
people who live here obviously are a huge part of the community.
At this point in time, 90% of our workers meet the MIT living wage scale.
And so that means that MIT puts together all these calculations.
They decide what's the minimum amount of money that you need in order to have a life that's
not in poverty.
That's amazing.
I mean, I've been aware of that, but just hearing you say that out loud, it feels really
impactful.
It's super cool.
What are some other ways that the Belfast Community Co-op reaches this principle of concern for
community?
I think we've done a lot of work over the years to solidify our foundations in this
community.
One of the big things that we've been doing that we've been talking about quite a lot
is the Common Sense Program because that puts money directly from our shoppers into the
hands of nonprofits that our owners want to support.
Over $73,000 last year came through our registers and we keep none of that money.
At 100% of those donations from the community go to these community nonprofits.
And there's some other things that we do.
We also have what we call our core program, and that's cooperative ownership reaching
everyone.
And that is for people who are receiving some sort of financial assistance from the government.
Generally, we're looking at programs that are focused on food, EBT, SNAP benefits, WIC,
Supplemental Security, income, programs like that.
I think that is definitely impactful for a good portion of our community.
How do you sign up for a core?
That's a program you have to sign up for?
The best way to do that is actually to reach out to our ownership services team.
They can be reached at ownership at Belfast.COP.
They are us.
It's me.
You can reach out over email, but maybe you can also get some more information in the
store about how to sign up for that.
Yes, we do have a flyer also and a letter about all of the details.
You bringing up core and how the co-op has put down roots in this community and been
trying so hard to be sustainable here makes me think of the two Belfasts.
There's this Belfast that is people who live maybe in downtown or moved here to be farmers
or homesteaders.
Then there's folks who have been in Belfast for generations and generations.
I think that one thing that the back to the landers missed out on in the 70s was the chance
to reach out to folks who had lived in Belfast for a really long time.
One thing that I have been doing as the outreach coordinator is trying to work a lot with high
school students and trying to work with the middle school garden program so that these
kids at a young age come to the co-op and see that it's just another store.
There is a perception that the store is exclusive.
Maybe there's some misunderstanding about what it means to be an owner.
Hopefully we're trying to make that language sound a little bit more reasonable.
It's not this thing that's exclusive.
It's something that's inclusive.
Only if you want to be an owner do you have to be an owner.
But trying to bring those kids into the store to show them that the store is just a store
like any other store.
Maybe through the refining of our ends we've decided to serve a wider range of people.
We've decided that it is important to the co-op to serve our owners and to serve our
shoppers and it's important to serve our community even if they don't shop with us.
Where we live and exist is important.
Again, even if those people don't shop here, maybe they work here.
Maybe they deliver food here and we want to take care of them because we want that to
be the model that we send out into the world is that model of concern and that model of
care.
Something that was really cool that happened this year is that we introduced the WIC program
to the store.
WIC is Women, Infants, Children, it is a program that helps women, infants and children obtain
food.
It's like prenatal to five years old.
You go into the local office.
I think they also start to do Zoom meetings.
That's cool.
Due to COVID.
Basically you get a food prescription.
They do a lot of physical assessments and they decide you need more fiber, you need
more protein, you need to be drinking milk every day.
They load this food prescription onto what looks like a debit card.
You come in and you buy per item instead of per dollar, which is really cool.
You can come in and get a gallon of milk, whatever that gallon of milk is.
As long as it's the right percentage or whatever.
We also have done a bunch of smaller things that happen annually the way we participate
in the community.
We generally get a team together to participate in the Keeping Belfast Beautiful cleanup in
April.
I know I've done it.
I know you've done it.
It's been really fun.
It's so fun.
I love going out there and picking everything up and then going to the community gathering
at the end where everybody is eating together and you're seeing all the different teams
come together who have been assigned different parts of Belfast to clean up.
It's just really great.
We donate a lot of food.
Well we donate more like apples and bananas that people can drop by in the morning.
They pick up all their supplies to do the cleanup and they can pick up breakfast for
themselves.
But as you were saying that, it was reminding me that when we encourage participation at
the co-op, we're encouraging people to feel like their owner is there, to help someone
bring out their groceries or know where something is and help a fellow shopper.
I think with Keeping Belfast Beautiful, when you are part of a team that cleans up the
streets just once a year, that's when the big cleanup is.
It means that you take more ownership over the space for the whole rest of the year.
There's a little bit more, I don't know, maybe accountability for yourself that you're like,
oh yeah, I'm going to help with this beautiful place where I live.
I have noticed for myself, I take note of where the public trash cans are and if there
is litter on the sidewalk and I know I'm within a reasonable, I'm definitely picking that
up.
That is because of the Keeping Belfast Beautiful.
The strip that the co-op cleans every year is the same strip that I walk to work every
week and a couple of my co-workers.
It's funny because we already know where the trash is going to be because we walk it so
often.
That's the only way we can get there.
Some of the other things we do annually just to participate in the community is we get
our workers together and our board and we march in the pride parade that's held.
We have sponsored their permit in the past and sponsored the student organization that
tends to organize it.
The other thing that comes to mind also is the Neighbor for Neighbor giving tree.
I know a lot of the businesses, downtown businesses, especially participate in that, but it is
something that I've been doing for several years as part of my job and it's just the
warmest, most lovely thing and it definitely brings a community spirit to the co-op.
Absolutely.
When we drop those gifts off, the people at WCAP are just so happy to see us and so thankful.
The people who take tags at the co-op are so generous.
Yes, they are.
It's really incredible.
Yeah.
A lot of these organizations we're talking about are nonprofits and so I just wanted
to take a minute to say that nonprofits tend to be mission-led and community-oriented
and the co-op is community-oriented, but it's not a nonprofit.
There have been a couple people over the last year even who have asked me if we're a nonprofit
but we're not.
We're for-profits so nonprofits don't pay taxes on their income and we do pay taxes
and we also can profit share at the end of the year.
So if we're profitable, we give back a portion of that money to our owners.
Patronage dividends.
Yeah, there's a few other things that had crossed my mind when I was researching this
particular principle.
We had talked a little bit about when it says in the actual principle that the co-op is
work for the sustainable development of their communities.
What is our community?
Like, obviously it's the local people.
It's where we actually are located.
But as a co-op, we are a community of other co-ops and so we have done things in the past
where we will use part of our donation fund to help a co-op who is struggling and they
are doing some sort of campaign or they're looking to do an expansion.
Not just with money but also with our time.
You and I recently have met with a local co-op that the resource that they needed was our
experience.
The resource they needed was our time and we want to see them thrive.
And so we said, of course we'll meet with you.
Yeah, that's great.
And we shared that with our community.
And another community is our natural landscape community.
Our little pollinator friends.
We do have a native pollinator garden in front of our parking lot that we specifically put
there to show native plants, to increase the biodiversity, help with our native populations.
You've worked with that.
Can you tell us a little bit more?
Sure.
We think of the pollinator garden as an island.
It's a safe space for pollinators and other insects and birds to take a break if they
get lost in town.
A lot of times they're really vulnerable.
There's not a safe place for them to find shade or find food.
And so that's what the pollinator garden is there for.
When we started to design the outdoor spaces at the renovated store, a lot of the design
features that were proposed by the civil engineers were really well thought out.
And we're going to keep the flow that they have chosen.
We are working with Fedco to source local native and edible plants for our landscape.
And so that will be obviously for us as the community, but it will be for the greater
community that we're thinking of.
I'm really excited about that.
It's going to be beautiful.
As you may have guessed, we do quite a number of donations.
And that is actually in Alessandro's wheelhouse.
I brought a list of all of the places that we donated to over the last fiscal year.
So that began in October of 2022 and ended in September of 2023.
And it's a list of 43 organizations.
And I'm just going to list them because I think it's pretty rad.
So these organizations came to us and said, hey, will you sponsor or donate money or food?
Or we approached them and we said, hey, your mission is super important to us.
How can we help you this year?
So it's always a mix of both.
Some people we have really long standing relationships with.
Some are new this year.
I love it.
Here we go.
2023 Belfast Area High School Project Graduation, AcadiaCon, the All Roads Music Festival, Ames
Elementary School, Belfast Child Care Center, Belfast Community Radio, the Belfast Curling
Club, Belfast Has Pride, Belfast Pride Parade, Belfast Soup Kitchen, and Belfast Summer Nights,
Brazilian Capoeira, Business After Hours with the Chamber of Commerce, but still I am one,
Pass Elementary School, Center for Wildlife Studies, the Ecology Learning Center, the
Eric Overlock Skate Park, Friends of Belfast Parks specifically for their water fountains,
the Game Loft, the G-Bam Food Cupboard, Keeping Belfast Beautiful, Maine Community Foundation
for their Lewiston Area Response Fund, Maine Food Convergence Project, Maine School Garden
Network, Moffka, Mount View Cheerleading Team, New Hope Mid-Coast, Our Town Belfast, Out
Maine, PAWS Adoption Center, Peace Ridge Sanctuary, Permitors, Principal Six Conference through
Cooperative Maine Business Alliance, the Restorative Justice Project of Mid-Coast Maine, the Rock
Coast Roller Derby, the Sterrett Children's Center, the Sturgeon Mural, Troy Howard Middle
School Parent Teacher Group Teacher Fund, United Mid-Coast Charities, the Vermont Farm
Fund to Help with the Flooding, Waldo County Pet Food Pantry, Waldo County Triad, Waldo
County Woodshed, WCAP, and Window Dressers.
That's an impressive list, and I know that we use this word a lot, but impactful.
Yeah, I feel so proud reading off all of those organizations, and what's really cool is,
you know, I either talked with or emailed all of these people, and so that's just strengthening
all of these community relationships.
As we were sitting here talking, I was like, okay, what is sustainable development?
Like, I love a good metaphor.
I love to be able to visualize a thing that I'm thinking about, and I feel like sometimes
capitalism feels like it is the get rich quick scheme.
But you and I have both started seeds, and when you have seedlings that get super leggy,
it's not good.
They grow too fast, they're too tall, they fall over, they get yell, they just get really
delicate.
And not as healthy.
They're not as healthy.
Whereas if you have the proper amount of light, and good well draining, and nutritious soil,
and the appropriate amount of watering, your seedlings don't grow as fast, but they grow
stronger.
And I think that when I think about the Belfast Community Co-op, and why the community is
so important to us is because if we grow too quickly, or we just become an unhealthy organization,
and the whole community will suffer from that.
Absolutely.
And when we have this sort of, I think of us as some sort of strong stout tomato plant
or something, and we're just like, give us some time.
We need to extend the season, but we're going to bear a lot of fruit.
And we're just sort of this evergreen community member, and we want to do well in business
to do better in the community.
The whole point of running a business that does well is to treat our farmers and producers
and employees and community members and owners better.
Yes.
All right, folks.
That's piece seven, Concern for Community.
I'm sure that we could talk about this for a lot longer.
But also, all Sounder's going to give us a couple updates on what's been happening with
the renovation.
Well, we were just told this morning that we just had some countertops and tables delivered
for our meat preparation room and our prep kitchen for the cafe, which I think is funny,
with renovation.
A lot needs to be done, and the timing of those things sometimes is difficult.
But we have somebody working on our team who is able to find a storage space, and so now
we know that whenever that piece of the puzzle is ready to be built, that we are ready.
It's been a long time since we have done an update, and I don't quite know where we were
at the last time we talked.
Our general manager does a weekly update video, and they're all on YouTube and Instagram
and Facebook.
And if you look them up on YouTube, Belfast Community Co-op renovation playlist, that should
bring it up for you.
But we're starting to put the brick up around the shop for me.
Bump out.
We have the new roof got put on.
I'm not quite sure if that was done when we were last on the show.
That one took a long time.
Yeah.
We're starting to take apart the receiving room in the back and building the tower for
the hydraulic lift.
I don't think we had even done so much.
It's happened so fast, really.
We poured the patio, but we also poured the whole front with the new curb and the new
drainage.
We regraded the parking lot.
It was all closed down.
There were three spots some days.
That has been the most tough for everybody, for people inside, but also for our shoppers,
coming to find a place where they could park to get their needs met.
In the store, it was just really not happening.
But that really is fixed for now and should be this way for quite a long time.
We're still planning on doing a grand reopening in June.
And I think that what will happen sooner rather than later is all of the construction will
start to move onto the sales floor.
If you go into the store and you look up, you can see that a lot of the tiles are gone.
We're starting to reroute plumbing and electricity and internet and heat ducting.
So all of those parts of the project that we can access, we are starting on those and
definitely doing the planning.
And we will be taking apart the sales floor in little pieces starting in the new year.
And all of that will be communicated well before it happens.
We have a really amazing planning team.
They're very detail oriented and they don't really start to move on stuff until they have
the whole picture so that all the workers can be safe and all the shoppers can be safe
and people can really anticipate what the shopping experience is going to be like.
Also if the construction project has you down, but you still want to support your local community
co-op, you can shop online with Shop4Me.
It's pretty easy to make an account and everything that we have in the store is online.
And you can also select it so that you're only shopping locally or you're only shopping
the sales section or you're only shopping in wellness if that is the product that you
need to find.
It's pretty easy to do and then you park in the parking lot and they bring your order
out to you.
It's really great.
It's a nice program.
Yeah.
We have board meetings pretty regularly every month even.
Definitely.
On the fourth Wednesday.
Generally.
At six o'clock generally.
At the library generally.
We say generally mostly because things can get switched around particularly if there
is a holiday season upon us.
Holiday season.
Exactly.
Am I just saying on that?
Yes you did.
I loved it.
Yeah.
Because it is the holiday season.
We're not supposed to talk about it because this podcast won't come out until after the
holiday season is over but we're excited and it's going to happen and there's a board
meeting tonight.
I'm sorry you're invited but you won't know about it until you listen to it.
Listen to this.
Hopefully do because we have actually announced it in many places.
We have announced it in many places and if you think oh that sounds so cool how come
I wasn't there you can go online and read the minutes.
You can go online and read the minutes all the way back to 2017, 2014 and those are all
online so if you want to know who was on the board or how we made decisions there you go.
I love reading old minutes.
Well you guys we are so excited that we've been able to talk about all seven of the principles
so excited.
Alright Cooperation Nation.
We'll see you next season.
Bye.
You have been listening to episode number eight of Smoothe Cooperators.
Good luck.