Communicating Your Value Phil Kenkel Bill Fitzwater Cooperative Chair The original cooperative principles include “A Duty to Educate”. However, member communication is a weak point in many cooperatives. Communicating the value of the cooperative is a particularly difficult challenge. Communicating value is not just delivering a standard message. It’s involves identifying what each member perceives as valuable. In communicating value, it’s not just what is said, but how it is said that makes the difference. There are several tools to enhancing your member communication efforts. The first tool is to make it personal. Cooperative members, like everyone else in our society, are flooded with information. Because of this overload of communication it is helpful to segment your communications. Cooperative members are different. They are farming at different scales, use different services and product, are located in different parts of your trade territory and are at different stages of life. Organizing your newsletter with sections for customer groups such as “grain markets”, “agronomy” or “petroleum” or with periodic reports on branch locations can make them more appealing. Some cooperatives take it to the next level by targeting specialized email or print information to sub-sets of members based on their characteristics or patronage patterns. The second tool is to be informative. Most newsletters do a good job of describing changes in cooperative operation or infrastructure. Your communications should also provide information what is happening in the industry in which the cooperative operates. Giving members the big picture view on market demands for grain quality, fertilizer price volatility or OSHA regulations can help them appreciate the cooperative’s efforts to position to continue to meet member needs. The more that members can see through the cooperative to the market forces, economic trends and political landscape that shape your business environment, the better they appreciate the cooperative’s strategies and investments. A final tool is to promote the cooperative difference. Newsletters can provide a profile of a board member, highlight the board member nomination committee or simply encourage input and suggestions. All of these efforts remind members of their unique ownership role. Reminding members of your patronage and equity retirement payments over the last ten years can help highlight the financial difference of cooperative membership. You can also remind members of cooperative’s role in fostering competition and supporting rural America. As part of their response to the attack on Capper Volstead the National Council of Farmer Cooperatives has developed some excellent talking points on the cooperative advantage. You can find them on their web page. Next month is Cooperative Month so it is also a good time to check out the Cooperative Month Toolkit at www.coopmonth.coop 9-2-2010