October 1, 2025

Written by Rick Hummell, Communications Specialist

For more than two centuries, cooperatives have helped ordinary people join together to gain economic power and improve their lives. Driven by people rather than profits, co-ops thrive in big cities, small towns, and rural areas – wherever there’s a need to be met.

October traditionally is recognized as “Cooperative Month,” a time when cooperatives make a special effort to educate the public about their member-owned and member-controlled business form.

Under the theme, “Cooperatives Build a Better World,” and with 2025 designated by the United Nations as the “International Year of Cooperatives,” this year’s Cooperative Month also provides an opportunity to envision a cooperative future.

Now is the time to lift up the people-centered businesses at the heart of our communities and economies, and trumpet the cooperative business model as an effective option for building an economy that empowers everyone during challenging economic times. As businesses face inflation and supply chain issues, cooperatives provide stability and opportunity. As employees question their role in the economy, cooperatives are creating dignified, empowering jobs with paths to ownership and wealth-building.

According to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), there are at least 30,000 cooperatives in the United States providing more than $700 billion to the economy. Yet while national, regional, and local polls consistently show that Americans like the idea of doing business with a cooperative, many people still don’t understand what co-ops are. That’s what Cooperative Month is all about: drawing attention to the many benefits of the worker-, producer- and user-owned business model, and letting people know that cooperatives are all around them.

In general, a co-op is a business organized, owned and controlled by the people who use its services. A co-op operates for the benefits of its member-owners and provides goods and services at the lowest possible cost. Cooperatives operate in most industries, including agriculture, childcare, energy, financial services, food retailing and distribution, health care, insurance, housing, purchasing and shared services, telecommunications and others.

In the U.S. and around the world, cooperatives operate according to the Seven Cooperative Principles: Voluntary and Open Membership; Democratic Member Control; Member Economic Participation; Autonomy and Independence; Education, Training and Information; Cooperation Among Cooperatives; and, Concern for Community.

When people join together to form a cooperative, the business is founded on their needs and values: cooperative buying power and economic advantage; community commitment and interaction; democratic principles; and people helping people.

While investor-owned businesses have a structure that pushes them to deliver profits to shareholders, cooperatives have a structure that pushes them to meet their customers’ needs. Cooperatives put people ahead of profits. Cooperative earnings are returned to members through improved services, lower prices or refunds.

Cooperatives have stood the test of time and remain an innovative and integral economic force, ranging from small buying clubs to Fortune 500 companies.

The tradition of celebrating Cooperative Month has deep roots in the Midwest, as it was former Minnesota Governor Luther Youngdahl who signed the first official October Co-op Month proclamation in 1948 at the request of the Minnesota Association of Cooperatives, now Cooperative Network. Soon, the celebration spread to other states.

In 1964, Co-op Month became a national event when another Minnesotan – former Minnesota Governor Orville Freeman, who was then U.S. Secretary of Agriculture – proclaimed a national Cooperative Month.

During October, Cooperative Network and the greater cooperative community celebrate the power of cooperatives and the vital role they play in building stronger local communities and a better world for everyone. Celebrate with us.