About us
What the New Zealand Cooperatives Association is, and what we do
The Cooperatives Association brings together the country's cooperative and mutual businesses in a not-for-profit incorporated society which exists to:
- promote the cooperative and mutual business model;
- encourage and support New Zealand cooperative and mutual enterprise;
- act as a representative association for those engaged as cooperatives and mutuals;
- promote discussion and cooperation with decision-makers at all levels of government designed to further the interests of cooperatives and mutuals;
- facilitate and coordinate services, expertise and research in support of the cooperative and mutual business model;
- collect, verify and publish relevant and useful information relating to cooperative and mutual enterprise.
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
At each year’s annual general meeting, held generally at the end of November, members elect a council to provide governance for the Association as well as a Chairperson who gives direction to the Executive Director. The current Chairperson is Taranaki dairy farmer Blue Read, formerly Chairman of the Fonterra Shareholders Council.
With an office in central Wellington, the Association employs an Executive Director, this role being filled by Ramsey Margolis. An Office Administrator, Daphne Grant, comes in four days a week and from November 2011, Chris Park, has been employed as a part-time Social Media Marketing & Comunications Officer. We also enjoy the services of volunteers through Volunteer Wellington.
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 quarterly, with a Cooperatives NEWSFlash going by email to member primary contacts and 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 Association 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 cooperative and mutual enterprise.
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
- Planning, raising funds for and implementing New Zealand celebrations for the UN International Year of Cooperatives 2012. The Association has a Steering Committee that is organising this initiative.
- 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 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. The Association has an IAS Working Group.
- Seeking to have higher education courses on cooperatives and mutuals at both undergraduate and postgraduate levels. The Association has a Tertiary Education Working Group.
- 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.
How the Association Supports Member Businesses
Association Executive Director Ramsey Margolis gave a talk at the August 2011 Cooperative Education Seminar entitled How the Cooperatives Association Supports Member Businesses.
To download a PDF of the presentation which accompanied this talk click here.
