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About us
What the New Zealand Cooperative Association is, and what we do
The NZCA brings together the country's cooperative and mutual businesses in a not-for-profit incorporated society with the following aims:
- to encourage, promote and advance New Zealand cooperatives and mutuals;
- to act as a representative Association for those engaged as cooperatives;
- to promote discussion and cooperation with decision makers at all levels of government designed to further the interests of the cooperative movement;
- to collect, verify, and publish information relating to the cooperative movement;
- to provide services and expertise to those engaged in the cooperative industry and to carry out research into all aspects of the movement.
Registered in March 1984 as the New Zealand Agricultural Cooperatives Association, the name was changed to the New Zealand Cooperatives Association in May 1997.
Resources and structure
With an office in central Wellington, the Association employs an executive director, this role being filled by Ramsey Margolis. A bookkeeper comes in two mornings a month, and we enjoy the services of volunteers who come to us through Volunteer Wellington.
At each November’s annual general meeting, members elect a council to provide governance for the Association, as well as a chairperson who gives direction to the executive director at their regular meetings.
Achievements
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Information
The Association gathers and disseminates information to members on cooperative issues and developments in New Zealand and around the world. As well as maintaining this website, a newsletter, Cooperatives News, is sent out every second month, with a Cooperatives NEWSFlash going by email to member primary contacts and individual associate members when important information is to be shared. -
Education and training
The Association has ongoing training and education programmes with specific cooperative-focussed content, seeing as this is not available elsewhere. This training is targeted primarily at directors, members and senior managers of co-ops and mutuals. -
Legislation
The Association maintains a close watch on issues under consideration by government which could affect the operation of cooperatives and mutuals.
The NZCA took the initiative to argue for specific cooperative company legislation when the Companies Act 1993 was being prepared, succeeding in changing the minds of the politicians who considered that separate cooperative legislation was not required.
The Association then drafted the Cooperative Companies Bill and, through regional seminars, involved cooperatives in its refinement and eventual submission. The Bill was approved by Parliament in 1996. -
Visiting specialists
We maintain dialogue with key cooperative specialists overseas – in Australia, the Netherlands, the USA, Canada and the UK in particular – and seek opportunities to bring speakers to New Zealand for forums around the country on topics relevant to the operation and future of cooperatives.
As an active member of the International Cooperative Alliance, we also have access to a large pool of cooperative practitioners and specialists from the Asia Pacific region and around the world.
Current focus
- Ensuring that Members of Parliament and government officials are kept up to date with developments in cooperative and mutual business.
- Publishing information on the cooperative and mutual business models as a way of encouraging them to be better understood and relevant for today’s needs.
- Encouraging cooperatives that are seeking a non-elected director to find someone with experience of cooperative business.
- Through the Cooperative Advisory Group, providing advice and assistance to those who are examining the possibility of starting a cooperative business.
- Seeking to ensure new international accounting standards being developed by the IASB, the FASB and the JACB do not cause the equity of cooperative companies and industrial and provident societies that are Association members to be redefined as debt.
- Seeking to have higher education courses on cooperatives and mutuals at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels.
- Pushing to have the basics of cooperative and mutual businesses taught at secondary schools when teaching the fundamentals of business and the available business models under New Zealand law.
