Co-op Essentials: What They Are and the Role of Members, Directors, Managers and Employees

This is an educational guide for teaching basic information about cooperatives. It explains what cooperatives are—their business, principle, and structural characterizations, and the responsibilities and roles of cooperative members, directors, managers, and employees. Five chapters make up this guide. Chapter 1—What Are Cooperatives?, is the most extensive chapter and generally describes where and how cooperatives fit into the American system of business, their unique principles and practices, and their defining structural characteristics, and it introduces the roles of the major cooperative participants—members, directors, manager, and employees. Chapters 2-5 go into further detail about the participants. Chapter 2 gives an overview of cooperative members, Chapter 3 describes directors, Chapter 4 discusses the cooperative manager, and Chapter 5 explains employees.(31 pages) They also provide presentation slides to accompany this guide, found at: https://www.rd.usda.gov/files/publications/CIR11_Co-opEssentialsPowerpoint.pdf