California Center for Cooperation Development

General Cooperative Education and OutreachCCCD provides education about how the co-op business model can be used to create and save jobs, create housing opportunities, offer childcare, help farmers or entrepreneurs join together to gain purchasing power or better compete in the marketplace, increase food security though cooperative owned groceries, and capture other opportunities by working together. Our website, public outreach, and responding to inquiries are mediums for education. During 2022, www.cccd.coop logged 27,445 unique visitors who used the site's start-up tutorial, downloadable publications, co-op news, videos, and links to additional resources. During 2022, CCCD responded to more than 296 substantive telephone and email inquiries. CCCD also reaches out via Facebook and other Social Media Platforms.

Cooperative Conferences and EventsIn 2022, CCCD convened our annual Agricultural Director and Executive Conference online in January. After two years of convening our annual California Co-op Conference online, we convened the conference in-person with safety protocols. The conference was scaled back, but included 95 participants, and included full track of workshops in Spanish on one of the days. A full day track focused on starting and operating a Limited Equity Housing Cooperative. The workshops were open to all and MCLE accredited for attorneys. CCCD staff also presented and participated in online conferences and events.

Technical AssistanceCCCD provides technical assistance in many ways, including development assistance, governance training for co-ops, and responding to requests. Development assistance includes performing feasibility & business planning, start-up, expansion, and related support. We have had increased interest in housing and worker cooperatives resulting in expanded assistance to those co-op sectors. We started the year assisting our first resident owned community as a Certified Technical Assistance Provider for ROC USA, a national non-profit dedicated to helping residents cooperatively purchase their manufactured home park. We engaged in education about resident ownership and worked with several communities on resident ownership, unfortunately land prices were too costly to make resident purchases feasible.