Exploring Shared Benefits for Co-ops in NYC

Ashley Taylor, Catherine Murcek, Matt Berlin

December 12, 2018

Agenda

• Brief Introductions over dinner -- 15 min
• Share your name, preferred pronouns, and which co-op / organization you’re with
• Presentation -- 45 min
• Breakout groups -- 20 min
• Pair up, each pair discuss pros and cons of 1 or 2 specific options
• Group Discussion & Feedback -- 30 min
• Next Steps & Evaluation forms -- 10 min

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• Different Kinds of Benefit Programs

Loyalty Programs at One Store (frequent flier)

Loyalty Program Across Merchants

Focused purchasing (We Buy Black, B Corp)

Sponsored loyalty programs (Valley REC)

Time banks and local currencies and barter/trade

Shared purchasing (bulk goods, insurance, etc)

Shared Marketing Efforts

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Single Merchant Loyalty Programs

Function:

• Store keeps track of sales by customer offering discounts for frequent or specific purchases
• Belly and other services all manage this for small stores

Goals:

• Stickiness: people prefer to show where they have points
• Drive Sales: knowing customer helps push products
• Data Value: customers data used internally and sold externally

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Advantages: easy and at scale low cost

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Disadvantages: hard to use across companies

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Marketing Across Merchants: Network ID Card

• Advantages
• Low cost, low maintenance, simple
• Each business could decide precisely what perks they would like to offer (SF uses 10% across all co-ops)
• Considerations
• Which businesses to include? (ie. Just NYCNoWC members? Just worker co-ops? Any solidarity economy organizations? Democratic workplaces?)
• No system for tracking
• Some places might feel like they are giving more than others

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Marketing Across Merchants: Trading System

• Trades between specific co-ops (Samamkaya & 4th St Food Co-op trade)
• Description = two co-ops offer a discount to the members of each organization
• Nice and simple but not widely used
• These co-ops have just decided to expand their discounts to apply to all co-ops. Could this be scaled up for all NYC co-ops to adopt?

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Marketing Across Merchants: Focused Purchasing

• Programs that encourage people to buy from a defined community of merchants
• Keeps money in an economy
• Co-op principle 6: cooperation among coops

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Member Rewards: Credit/Debit Cards

Pros:

• members get money back on purchases
• data on purchasing habits (can lead to group purchasing)
• we can build loyalty, brand, and even communicate via monthly statements.

Stickiness:

• It seems only big corporate banks (rather than local credit unions) have the infrastructure to implement

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Rewards Card & App Examples

• Local First / Obsidian payment card partnered with Discover (Durango, CO)
• Union 1199 program with Mastercard led to shared purchasing discounts
• Main Street Market app used in Ithaca, NY
• Level Up app used broadly with large food chains
• Square Loyalty program

- Sticking point - many of these examples require a large number of people and lots of funding and maintenance, and dealing with huge corporate banks

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Member Pooled Purchasing

Mid Hudson Fuel Buying Coop (Stone Ridge, NY)

• $10 yearly membership fee, members then negotiate a discount on home heating oil (hard to tell, ≈10%)
• 493 members, started in fall 2013, all volunteer
• Desired but limited support for energy efficiency and other good stuff

Consumers Energy Cooperative (Mount Kisco, NY)

• (less well known to presenters)
• $20 (one-time?) membership fee, negotiates savings with multiple oil companies (also maybe 10%ish)
• 1,300 members, started in 1981

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Member Supplemental Benefits

Touchstone is a coalition of energy coops that provides supplemental benefits to all of their members

• Pharmacy discounts
• Cash back shopping and coupons
• Pre-negotiated discounts on on hotels, vehicles and other products and services

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Alternative Currency Programs

Function:

• Create a market for otherwise neglected or undervalued services
• Digital and physical ways of managing the ledgers

Goals:

• Incentive certain behaviors beyond what cash can do ?
• Build community reliance rather than far away - companies/institutions
• Stimulate a local economy

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Advantages: an alternative way to value labor and goods outside of the global market economy that undervalues sustainability and equality

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Disadvantages: hard to scale and maintain

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Alternative Currency Programs - Examples

• Curitiba Brazil Garbage currency
• Care Banks
• Montpelier food bank
• Berkshares
• Calgary Dollar

Each system creates its own rules, its own unit of exchange, to govern the exchange/sharing of one specific resource or to create an entire currency system.

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specific

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general

2. Group Discussion

• Each participant takes a turn sharing thoughts and preferences

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Considerations

Mechanism (discounts, trades, loyalty, membership)

Size / Can We Do It (enough customers, enough businesses)

Scope (coops, solidarity economy, all small business)

Value to Participants (e.g. Would our collaborator Matt really care if he got a discount at Samamkaya yoga?)

Ease / Cost of Implementation (photocopied vs. “real” Visa card, digital vs. physical)

Social Responsibility Test (e.g. Do we want to deal with big banks for credit cards, offer bulk purchasing at Walgreens?)

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Next Steps

• Schedule a time to meet with us and give your feedback and input. We will be hosting smaller group meetings over the next 3 months. Please write to us to join us for one of these, or with any other thoughts/ideas to cmurcek@gmail.com.
• Spread the word to your fellow worker owners and other solidarity economy friends and encourage them to send us their feedback as well
• Join us for a meeting in May to find out all the assimilated information and help devise a plan for implementation!

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THANK YOU!

• To you for your time, energy, and caring
• To CEANYC and NYCNoWC for helping with our research
• To NYCNoWC for creating member-driven programs like this one and allowing us the budget for food and interpretation

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