OTTAWA, Ontario - Commitment to community has long been a core value of co-operatives and credit unions worldwide. Now private and investor-owned businesses and banks are increasingly promoting their community contributions in the context of good corporate citizenship. The Canadian Co-operative Association (CCA) believes that it is imperative that co-ops and credit unions reclaim their community values and differentiate themselves in the eyes of members, community groups, and other stakeholders.

CCA, le Conseil Canadien de la Coopération, and the Co-operatives Secretariat have joined forces to ask over 7,000 co-operatives how they contribute to their communities - including ways that are different from other businesses. The Community Involvement Survey will be mailed in late May with responses analyzed over the summer and the results released during Co-op Week in October. Credit Union Central of Canada has fielded a separate survey on community involvement to approximately 700 credit unions. Where questions overlap in the two surveys, the data will be aggregated.

Armed with national statistics, the sector will be in a better position to differentiate itself from investor-owned businesses, and market community co-operative contributions to members, government, media, the general public, and other community partners. And co-operatives will be able to use the information to develop their own community involvement strategies, or see how their strategies compare with community initiatives of other co-operatives.

Community Involvement (CI), one component of corporate social responsibility (CSR), has been identified as an emerging knowledge area for CCA. In addition to the survey, CCA will be publishing three electronic newsletters and two toolkits over the current year. These publications will provide CCA members and their members with the best information on national and international practices, performance indicators, research, trends, and resources in the area of CI. The first newsletter will be sent to CCA members the end of May and members will be encouraged to forward it on to their members.

Input into both the CI newsletter content and the questionnaire design was provided by an advisory council. The Community Involvement Advisory Council members are:

-Michael Barrett (Gay Lea Foods)
-Leslie Brown (Professor, Mount Saint Vincent University)
-Tom Clement (Co-operative Housing Federation of Toronto)
-Dennis Deters (The Co-operators)
-Larry Gordon (CSR Consultant)
-Andrea Harris (Mountain Equipment Co-op)
-Harry Joosten (St. Willibrord Community Credit Union)
-Jennifer MacLeod (Co-op Atlantic)
-Coro Strandberg (CSR Consultant)

Canadian Co-operative Association

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