The New York Cooperative Summit is a one-day event brings together New York State cooperative members, leaders, organizers, and allies to share practical tools and strategies for starting, sustaining, and scaling the co-op ecosystem across the state. In 2024 the Summit was held in Syracuse and attracted 100 attendees, and this year the event is moving to Albany and anticipating 150 people.
What should I expect from the summit?
This content for this year's summit focuses on how cooperatives can find technical assistance and develop the skills they need to grow and thrive, how they can work together to meet New Yorkers’ material needs, and how they act together as part of a broader movement for democracy and economic justice. The agenda features a dozen workshops with co-op leaders from across the State, a dynamic keynote panel, and facilitated networking spaces.
Our keynote panel will be a conversation between Melissa Marquez, the recently retired CEO of Rochester's Genesee Co-op Federal Credit Union and a lifelong co-op and community development leader, and India Walton, the former Democratic Nominee for Mayor of the City of Buffalo and a current worker-owner at Rose Jade Consulting and board member of Cooperation Buffalo.
Workshops will discuss a wide range of topics including strategies for converting existing business to cooperative ownership, an overview of active campaigns to pass state legislation to grow the cooperative movement, an introduction to the cooperative finance ecosystem, labor union and co-op collaboration, co-op development in immigrant communities, tools for better group decision-making and conflict management in co-ops, lessons from local co-op ecosystems around New York, lessons from efforts to build cohesive and political powerful co-op movements in other states, co-op start-up 101, and much much more.
Read the rest and register for the Summit (sliding scale $0-70)
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