Co-op Emergency Fund
The Cooperative Emergency Fund is one of CDF's most important funds. Over the past 20 years, the CEF has given out more than $275,000 for cooperative relief efforts in the wake of 10 disasters. Some of these disasters include: Hurricane Katrina, the 2004 Indonesian Tsunami, September 11th, the Kenyan bombings and many others.
Monies raised are funneled through organizations familiar with the specific regions afflicted by disaster. Past relief efforts on our end have gone to help ailing cooperatives amid devastation through the hands of organizations like ACDI/VOCA, The ICA Group, The National Cooperative Business Association, and The Federation of Southern Cooperatives / Land Assistance Fund, to name a few.
The goal of this fund is to help re-establish the cooperatives of ailing countries devastated by disaster so that they can once again serve their members, and their respective countries.
In the wake of the Haitian earthquake tragedy, all contributions received on our home page (on the right hand side) through the first half of this year will go toward long term rebuilding strategies for Haitian cooperatives.
A few of CEF's endeavors:
1997 North Dakota Flooding Raised: $2,836
1998 Kenyan Embassy Bombming Raised: $9,779
1998 Nicaraguan Hurricane Raised: $31,265
2001 El Savador Earthquake Raised: $17,661
2001 September 11th Attacks Raised: $30,399
2004 Indonesian Tsunami Raised: $39,198
2005 Hurricane Katrina Raised: $121,700
Uses of Katrina Fund
(Hurricane Katrina struck in August 2005 and CDF gave out grants through July 2008)
The Katrina Cooperative Recovery Fund was established by the Cooperative Development Foundation in September 2005 to help the long-term recovery of rural areas of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. The Fund took this opportunity to introduce cooperative development as a collective, alternative development strategy. It received and gave out more than $120,000 to assist cooperatives and their members and groups interested in forming cooperatives. All contributions went to this effort; nothing was taken in administrative or any other fee.
$113,000 went to the Federation of Southern Cooperatives (FSC), a cooperative development organization active in 10 Southern states and CDF’s on-the-ground partner. This was used for:
- a feasibility study for a fishing cooperative in Plaquemines Parish
- computer and workforce development
- technical assistance and resource development to help with long-term and permanent recovery and rebuilding lives ad communities using the cooperative model
- cooperative development training for economic developers and people and communities interested in starting cooperatives to help rebuild; areas included worker, housing, food, fishing, dairy, marketing, and production cooperatives
- work with credit unions to help them raise resources to help families with loans for recovery from Katrina damage
- technical assistance to the Plaquemines Parish Fisherman’s Cooperative
$6200 went to CooperationWorks, a national network of cooperative development organizations. It was used for scholarships so economic developers from the Gulf region not affiliated with CooperationWorks and who were working on economic and community recovery initiatives could attend two of CooperationWorks’ week-long training sessions in cooperative development. Topics included cooperative legal structures and taxation, finance, capitalization, and governance and visits were made to several co-ops in the vicinity of the training venue.
As with all of our emergency relief efforts in the past, it will be for long-term rebuilding of the damaged coop sector there. CDF does not extract any admin fee whatsoever (and never has for any of our 10 emergency efforts in the past!). In fact, because we're accepting online donations through Google checkout, there will be no bank fees taken out whatsoever either- which is something no other charity that is collecting money for Haiti can say.
