Capturing the Spirit

by Mark Glaess, Manager, Minnesota Rural Electric Association

It's not a new concept. Indeed, it was the driving force for starting many of our cooperatives. It continues to be the driving force behind what we do. But the new ICA principle will also help keep us focused as we go forward.

Now, as cooperative members and leaders throughout the world stand up and pledge to provide service to their communities, it is appropriate to pause and ask ourselves how we are doing.

• Consider the letter sent to the Carlton County Cooperative Power Association. A mother wrote to say the co-op changed her son's life.

  John had attended an energy camp sponsored by the Carlton co-op and it inspired him to become a lineman. He was about to enter a lineworker training school, and the co-op gave him the desire to pursue this career.

• At Wright-Hennepin Electric Cooperative, Manager Dave Larson was concerned about the problems of battered women in his community and service territory. The co-op donated security systems that were given to women at risk. Larson and his co-workers don't know the women they have helped, but they have made their community a safer, better place to live.

• Consider the elderly woman trying to remain in her home in west-central Minnesota. She was desperate. She called her co-op. Runestone Electric insulated her home and made repairs. "You saved my life," she told the cooperative.

• Nearly 300,000 Minnesota homes do not have safe sewer systems. Cooperative Light and Power of Lake County serves 4,329 members. It is now working to provide adequate sewer services to its members.

The new cooperative principle is at work in northeast Minnesota, as it is in Runestone territory, and as it is in the Wright-Hennepin territories of the Twin Cities metropolitan area.

Member economic participation is part of the community cooperative principle.

• Business was leaving Jackson, in southwestern Minnesota. Federated Rural Electric Association leveraged $178,000 in an economic development loan to entice a life insurance company to locate in the area. The insurance firm created 100 new jobs.

• And in southeast Minnesota, Tri-County Electric secured a $400,000 zero-interest loan for a software company in Caledonia. This is creating 150 jobs for that community.

• Since 1986, Minnesota's electric cooperatives have returned more than $100 million in patronage payments to its members. This money rolls over and over. The payment of capital credits created nearly one-half billion dollars in economic assistance and economic activity within the respective communities, based on what economists call the multiplier affect of economic activity.

This was the intention of the rural electric cooperatives from the very beginning.

President Franklin Roosevelt declared in 1935 that he wanted the Rural Electrification program to be a social service agency. He liked the idea of electric cooperatives helping those most in need. While the co-ops have been a serious business throughout their history, they haven't lost sight of that earlier objective.

The REA is now called RUS, for Rural Utilities Service. It continues to be a financing agency working with local co-ops.

And members continue to do their part. One important way of providing assistance within their communities is through Operation Round Up. Members round up his or her electric bill to the next dollar. At an average of six dollars a year, co-op members can generate hundreds of thousands of dollars in assistance funds.

Red Lake Electric uses its Round Up dollars to assist community projects in the Red Lake Falls area. Stearns Electric sent money to the Jacob Wetterling Foundation. Agralite Cooperative helped purchase an ambulance to serve the Benson area. Wright-Hennepin donated money to assist the burn center at St.Paul-Ramsey Hospital.

More than 20 Minnesota cooperatives provide hundreds of thousands of dollars to help these members ad non-members alike. It recalls the biblical message, "As you have done to the least of them...," and it supports the cooperative principle of helping building communities for all residents.

As we pause to consider the new ICA principle, we note that 28 Minnesota cooperatives have provided close to $10 million towards creating jobs. Another 20 co-ops help fund charitable organizations. More than $100 million in capital credits have been returned to cooperative member-owners.

We are also reminded of a fundamental difference that separates the electric cooperative from other electric providers. We weren't formed strictly to make money for our investors by providing a necessary service. We were formed as cooperative business units to improve our members' quality of life... their quality of living.

We haven't lost sight of that purpose. The ICA principle will help keep that principle fresh in the minds of future generations of members.

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