 This is the, what is a co-op webinar. And so I'm the head of membership at Co-op's UK. I've been here for around 11 years, working with co-ops, advising and supporting and helping create new co-ops. So I'll hopefully weave in some examples of co-ops I've worked with over the years and give you my take on what is a co-op. So this webinar will be roughly 40 minutes, I hope, and we'll go through five areas really, what is a co-op, obviously the different types of co-op, where co-ops have come from, bit of the history and why the context of co-ops back in 1844, what the co-op movement looks like now, not just in the UK but around the world and why co-ops are still relevant today. And then finally, from our point of view, a bit about Co-op's UK and how you can get involved. And then, like I say, we'll pick up any final questions at the end. So the big question, what is a co-op? I wrestle a lot with this. There's a very detailed, long internationally agreed definition of a co-op with values and principles, guiding notes and all manner of detail there. But that's not that useful when you're trying to explain to your family or you're in the shop talking to a customer and they say, what is a co-op? And so I'm going to try and boil it down to what I say. And then throughout this whole webinar, with all the examples and the things I say, create your own description, your own understanding of what a co-op is so that when you are explaining it to other people, it sounds real, it's using real examples and coming from your point of view. So for me, a co-operative is, a co-operative is boils down to two cool things for me. The first bit is what it does. So for me, what a co-operative is, is it's a group of people working together to meet their common needs. And it's really as simple as that. I sometimes say a co-op is a tool, it's a tool to solve the problem, but it's that link between, it's not doing something on your own, it's doing something with a group of people and you're not doing it for any reason, you're doing it to meet your common needs and that of the other people in the co-op and really at its absolute core, that is what a co-op is. For a more kind of description, I suppose, or the characteristics, a co-op is a business, it's owned, controlled and primarily for the benefit of its members. And I'll break that down a bit more and go into members in particular detail a bit later. But I do say a business, that's what I talk about. I deal with a lot of people setting up businesses and so that's the language I use. If you're not comfortable with that language, you can say an organisation and enterprise. But for me, a co-op is a business, it trades, it uses the market to solve problems for people. Some co-operatives do rely on funding or donations from people to get going or to help them continue to work in areas where there's market failure and you can't survive just off trading. But for me, every co-op should have some element of trading and income-generating link to it. Obviously, co-ops are owned by their members and again, I'll go into lots more detail of that later. But that is pretty critical to a co-op. Ownership should be very diverse between all of its members. And ownership isn't like being a member of a golf course or a gym, it's about ownership. You fundamentally own that business. You're a shareholder to use that language if that business is ever sold or merged. The members, the owners make the decisions about that. The members make the decision who sits on the board, who are the ultimate directors, chief executives, et cetera of that organisation. And the members also control that business. And by controlled, we talk in the co-op movement about one member, one vote. So for a co-operative, you're voting or your control over the co-operative isn't based on the number of shares you have. It's one member, one vote. And that's really crucial again for co-operatives. And then finally, just for this bit, a co-op is primarily for the benefit of its members. And by that, I mean, co-operatives do good things and they do good things in their community. But then ultimately self-help organisations, they're about people coming together to meet their own common needs, not a philanthropic exercise where one group of people are coming together to help another group of people. And so although lots of co-operatives do operate in the community sector and for community benefit, we always say to be co-operative, those beneficiaries and those users of that community service really should be the members and really should make up some of the owners of that organisation. And so I would say this should always in a co-operative be direct benefit to the members because for me, that's one of the reasons why a co-op is successful. Just to deal with the kind of the elephant in the room, that comes up a lot when talking about what is a co-op. What is a co-op? Usually someone will say, oh, it's that shop on the high street, isn't it? And that's very true. And quite rightly so, that co-op is a 10 billion pound business with thousands of outlets all around the country. And its roots go all the way back to the Rocksdale pioneers and the people who really nailed the name co-operative. And so, yeah, the co-op is a supermarket, it is a corner shop. But it's more than that, obviously. There's over in the UK, over 7,000 different co-ops of all shapes and sizes, even within the retail sector, the convenience store sector, there's 15 different co-op retailers. And they all work together to bulk purchase goods and services and to produce own branded goods with the co-op mark on it. That's right the way up in the north with Scott Midd, which is a Scottish retailer, right the way down to the Channel Islands in the south, in the Channel Islands. And they all do very similar things. But co-ops are just operating in retail. Another example, and I'll give many examples today, is Calvertz. Calvertz is a design and print business down in London, and that's owned by its workers. So as opposed to the co-operative group, which is owned by its customers, Calvertz is owned by its workers, and it's all about design and print. Whereas if you're in America, if you live in a rural part of America, your energy, your electricity is probably provided by an electricity co-op. Just a completely different sector, a different country. But just to highlight some of the diversity. As I've mentioned a couple of times already, membership and members is absolutely critical to what a co-operative is and why they are important. So members are the foundation of every co-op. Like I've said, it's why they exist. Co-operatives exist to meet the needs of their members, they're owned and controlled by their members. But who are their members? For me, I deal with a lot of people setting up co-operatives, and I always, my advice to them as always, whatever the purpose of the co-operative is, whatever the need the co-operative is trying to meet, that and that conversation drives who the members of that co-operative should be. So one of the examples I would give is if there's a need in the community to save the local village shop or village pub because it's closing and no one else wants to buy that shop or that pub, then the community have a need, the customers of that shop or pub come together and might want to save that shop or pub. And they're probably the best-paced people to be the members, the owners of that co-operative, as opposed to the people who work in the pub. Whereas if you're in the centre of London, you're a creative agency with really highly qualified staff, delivering high knowledge-based work, but in a sector with lots of different customers, lots of diversity of customers, you probably wouldn't be a consumer co-operative. You would probably be a co-operative owner and run for the benefit of the workers in that co-operative. So just to give both sides of it. So for me, yeah, the members, the members are absolutely critical for what is a co-operative. And like I've mentioned, the members may be the customers, they may be the producers of what the co-operative sells, they may be the surrounding community. And really, particularly when you're talking about starting a co-op, is the most crucial decision of a start-up journey. Who are your members? And equally for co-ops who are growing and have been going for a very long time, not losing sight of your members and particularly there's distinction between who your members are and who your customers are. Just a quick point on shareholding or that ownership thing. Members can invest in their co-op. They are shareholders, a lot of the early co-ops were only created because their members invested in them to get them off the ground. And that's part of a lot of co-ops in the community sector today where they issue community shares to raise finance to build wind turbines, buy shops, et cetera. So co-operative members very much can and do invest in their co-operative and they can get return on that investment. But, and this is the big but from a co-operative point of view, the reason why a member invests in their co-operative is not just for making money, not just for the financial return on that investment. The main reason a co-operative asks its members it asks its members for money and for those members to invest is to support the purpose of the co-operative. And they are allowed to pay interest on those shares but not at full kind of financial rates, if that makes sense. So it's not an issue and it's something we at Co-operative UK deals with the financial conduct authority with all the time about how much can a co-operative pay to its members and that's something we changes from year to year. At the moment, it's probably around five, six, seven percent return. Moving on to legal structures and a big question people tend to get asked about is a co-op different than a company? You know, is a co-op a company? And that sort of question just to say really that yes and no, it's a difficult one. Co-operatives can essentially be any legal form at all. That complicated diagram on the screen is all the different forms a co-operative could take. Some forms are better than others. So yes, co-operatives can be companies. It's one of the forms they can take. But no, not all co-operatives are companies. I have to say it changes over the years. Back in the 70s, most co-operatives were setting up as companies whereas now a lot of co-operatives are setting up using something called the society model because it's much easier to raise finance. And as I'll kind of mention a bit later, co-operative people are pragmatists at the end of the day and they will use whatever legal forms are best for whatever they want to achieve. We're not going to talk about legal forms really today. If you've got questions about legal forms, you're actually setting up a co-op. We can help, we do help, but that's not really the focus for today. Talk to us, talk to our legal team if you are really interested in legal forms. So moving on to different types of co-op, just to give you a bit of a flavor. Here's four very different co-ops. And like I said before, co-ops come in all shapes and sizes in all, operate in all sectors. And as I've mentioned, with different core groups as the members of those co-operatives. So just to give you a quick flavor of the sorts of co-ops out there in the UK. On the top left, we've got Outlandish. This is a tech co-op based in London of both employees and self-employed workers. They build tech, very complicated data solutions, websites, that sort of thing. They set up originally as a private business with a few founders and they rapidly realized that the value in their business is the workers, the knowledge-based workers. And so they opened up and converted their ownership to the rest of the workforce and have now become a very thriving tech business working with everybody from UNICEF to the BBC and have subsequently spawned a whole network of tech co-ops down in London out of a co-working space they operate called Space4. And it's just a really good example of in any other business, it would just be a normal tech agency. But because they chose to be a co-op that's informed a lot of the activity they do, the clients they focus on what they do with their profits. So like I say, they're a worker co-op. Another worker co-op but a very different sort of worker co-op is Leading Lives in Suffolk. They were originally part of the local primary care trust and then during that whole period of austerity and conservative focus on privatization and spin-outs, they had to spin out from their, they had to spin out, they could have gone into a private business, they could have set up a social enterprise, they could have done all manner of different things but they decided that to get the best care because they're in the health and social care, to get the best care for the people they support, they believed a worker co-op and that business being owned by the workers was their best route to both supporting the needs of the people they care for and providing really good quality valuable services to the local primary care trust. So they spun out, I think about five or six years ago now, they've repeatedly been issued contracts to deliver that work in and around Suffolk and they're going really well. So again, just a really good example of a business operating in a, not for a property sector, but doing it in a cooperative way and at scale. They now operate all over Suffolk and the surrounding region and they've got around 400 worker members. Bottom left, very different sort of co-op is the Edinburgh Student Housing Co-op and part of a network of student housing co-ops which are growing all over the country. It's an example of a housing co-op and there are many, many different housing co-ops around the country but this is interesting because it's a student housing co-op and it was really grown out of this whole issue of poor student housing and so in Edinburgh, a group of students got together, lobbied their local university, found a great but issues under repair space and they set up into a student housing co-op and we've been supporting them ever since. I was up there last week, visiting them as they redo their basement to turn it into a common space. What's interesting about Edinburgh Student Housing Co-op is it's the largest in the UK at the moment. They operate a housing co-op with 106 beds so that's 106 people living in a housing co-op where they pay rent, they do their maintenance, they're just about to extend their lease for another 25 years and so on the one hand, people may think, oh my God, I can't believe students can be trusted to run a housing co-op. Yes, they can and they can do it very successfully and financially sustainable way. Cops UK is working with a number of other student housing co-ops at the moment to grow the model as we think it's a really good way of, like all co-ops, meeting a very important need. And then finally in the bottom right is Organic Lee. This is an agriculture sector co-op doing what it says on the tin really, organic food and growing, but they don't just grow, they also do a whole range of educational and community activities to supplement their core growing owned by the community. And again, just a really good example of what co-ops can do. So what do all these co-ops have in common? They may be owned by different people, they may be operating in different sectors of different size and scales, but what they all have in common is what we call the co-op principles. And the co-op principles really underpin the what is a co-op story, the description of what a co-op is, the rules by which cooperatives operate and they're internationally agreed. And so all cooperatives all over the world will kind of sign up to these cooperative principles. Quite often they're written into the rules, the governing documents of the co-op or like this, they're written on the wall of the cafe so everyone can see that's the principles we stand by. I'm gonna go into the different principles in more detail later, but really at this stage just be aware that all cooperatives all come with these rules and these principles and those principles came out of and have evolved really over the last 175 years back from the original Rochdale pioneers who first set down some principles in Rochdale, which is kind of what I'm gonna move on to next. So back in 1844 where kind of our story starts, but like with a lot of things it starts before then but I'll go into that later. But for our purposes, you know, cooperatives and our story really starts in 1844. You may have seen this photo of the original Rochdale pioneers or at least 13 of them and just even looking at that picture it's a fantastic picture to see the state of Rochdale back then and who these people were. Who were these people? They were cobblers, they were weavers, they were builders, they were skilled tradesmen. They were skilled tradesmen operating in very difficult situations back in Rochdale and lots of other industrializing cities all over the UK. And what was the situation back then? Was one hotbed for radicals. There was lots of political radicalism, religious radicalism. This whole movement around the vote, the Chartist movement about giving the common man the vote was all around that period of time. And cooperatives were fermented and built out of that time. It was a period of inequality mostly linked to automation, the move from artisan weavers to factory-based weaving and that came across lots of different industries. So people were poor, people were exploited, inequality was growing, people were suffering. And Rochdale was no different than lots of other industrializing cities of the North England and to be fair, other parts of the world as well. And really that really is where cooperatives came from. And again, something that I'll weave in later. That's not that dissimilar from where we are now. So it's no surprise that cooperatives are of interest to people today. The Labour Party's interested in doubling the size of the cooperative economy. Other people, academics at the moment are contacting us. Unions are contacting us. Deliveroo drivers are contacting us. There's this interest in cooperatives at the moment. And actually when you look at when cooperatives first started to flourish, we're in a very similar sort of situation. So where did cooperatives come from? So I kind of equate cooperatives to a bit like football. Insofar as people have always kicked a ball around, they've always played with a ball all over the world, in fact. But really there was a moment in time when people didn't just say, oh, yeah, do you want to go around and kick a football around? They talked about the game of football and what that meant. And so cooperatives is kind of similar to that. The idea of cooperating with others has been around for generations. The Roman soldiers cooperated with each other by saving money together. So if one of them died, money would go back to their families back home. The Fennec weavers in the 17th century I think were the first organization to term use the word cooperative. And they came together to market their weaving goods. Whereas in Rochdale, what happened is they started to use the word cooperative. And crucially, they wrote down the rules. They wrote down the principles of what that meant. And so really similar to football, they started to use the word cooperative. And the principles of what that meant. And so really similar to football. The game of football has been played for generations, but it wasn't really till the 1800s where a group of Cambridge University students got together with some students from other universities and wrote the rules of football. So that when someone goes, do you want a game of football? Everybody knows what that means. It's moved from being a verb to a noun. And really, that's why I kind of use that example to explain cooperatives, because what the Rochdale pioneers did is they wrote the rules of the game of what it means to be a cooperative. I just put those on the screen. So the original Rochdale pioneers are different principles, different rules than the ones we live by today. Some of them have remained the same and evolved. Some of them have been removed. And that's again, part of the cooperative story. Cooperatives by their nature are pragmatic. They innovate, they evolve with the times. And so the Rochdale pioneers had their seven principles. They wrote down those original rules and we've taken them and we've grown them over the years. So just kind of going back to again who those Rochdale pioneers were, they wanted to change the world. Like I mentioned before, they were radicals. They fought for the vote. They got the vote. They wanted to change the world and they got together. They wanted to build housing. Housing was a terrible problem. They wanted to own not just own land, but farmland. They wanted to run factories and pay decent wages. And they wanted to source and sell good quality affordable products to each other because they felt the food was overpriced. Food was at the time cut as it was called. So if you were a mill worker in Rochdale, during the day you would work in the mill. You would get your money at the end of the day. You would walk next door and the mill owner would then own the shop and would sell you products from the shop. And quite likely if you were buying milk, the milk would be watered down. If you were buying flour, the flour would be cut with sawdust and things like that. And so the quality of the food was poor and the shops were quite often owned by the mill owners. And so this was like a big issue at the time. Similar as supposed to how today we're very interested in provenance and fair trade in locally sourcing food. Back then it was, you know, how someone put sawdust in the flour. And so they, yes, they wanted to change the world, but they were also pragmatists. So they started with a shop. They thought, what can we realistically do? What's the need to our members straight away? And they settled on a shop. And really that's where they started. And that's where those original Rothschild principles came from. They looked at all the other people who tried to set up such shops in the past and mostly failed. And they looked at all the people who were, you know, made some successes. And they came up with their rules, which are here on the right. They wanted the shop to be owned by the members. This was actually really important. They didn't have a lot of money. And so to actually get the capital together to rent the space to buy the products, they needed to raise capital from their members. So they said, anyone can be an owner in this shop. You have to pay us one pound. And we'll use that one pound to invest in setting the business up, to invest in the goods we will sell in the shop. One pound doesn't sound like a lot obviously in today's money. Back then, 100 pounds was probably worth in the region of 120 to 500 pounds. So today it would be, I want to set up a shop. If you want to invest, you've got to give 500 pounds. And that's what the Rothschild pioneers did. And 28 people invested. I suppose the equivalent of 500 pounds to set up the Rothschild pioneers. So as well as, you know, they thought that was critical. They linked to that. And again, this was one of their success elements, I suppose, was you invested your money. And irrespective of what you invested, it was one member, one vote. So we're really interested in the people investing in this business, not the amount of money invested in the business. So there was a minimum, that minimum was a pound, but I know other people invested much more than that. Another core principle that's been kept through the ages of co-ops. And again, was one of the reasons why the Rothschild pioneers were successful was the distribution of surplus. So they would sell goods to anybody, but the members would get a distribution of the surplus. In other words, if any profit was made at the end of the year, then only the members would get the benefit of that profit, but they would sell to anybody. And the other things, well, I'm not going to go into too much detail, some of those have changed. Cash trading was a big one at the time. They didn't want people to get into debt, so they wouldn't offer credit. They would only deal in cash nowadays. That's not so much of an issue. And again, political and religious neutrality was really important at the time. Today, we kind of cover that in different ways. So like I say, the core thing the Rothschild pioneers did back then was they were successful. That was actually the core of it. But from that, they wrote down the rules of their success and they then propagated that around to other people. They helped other people replicate their success. People would contact them and say, how has your cooperative been successful? What were the elements? And they would talk about the Rothschild principles. They would talk about the practicalities of running their business with others. And really, that's what switched some people in Rothschild setting up a successful business from a successful business into a successful movement. And really, the Rothschild pioneers created a movement. And although lots of other people, lots of other cooperatives were set up after that point, that's really why we talk about the birthplace of the co-op movement being Rothschild. Just to give a bit of a feel for the timeline, because I find this quite interesting, there's this lovely story how when they were starting up in Rothschild, they tried to get goods from the local wholesalers in Rothschild and the local wholesalers in Rothschild wouldn't deal business with them. They thought they were a bunch of radicals. So they literally had to walk to Manchester to pick up the goods they wanted to sell in the shop with a wheelbarrow and wheelbarrow it the 11 or 12 miles back to Rothschild because the wholesalers in Rothschild just thought they were disruptors didn't want to deal with them. And so they opened up their first shop in 1844 with 28 original members, all putting in a pound. They opened at 8 p.m. on the 21st of December and they sold on that first night butter, flour, oatmeal, sugar. And they were gonna sell candles as well but the local gas company didn't think their business would succeed at all and so wouldn't give them any gas supply. And so they actually had to use the candles to light the shop on that first night. Little does that gas company know that that business was incredibly successful and spurned a whole global movement. But there you go. So yeah, within 15 years that shop grew to be six shops in and around Rothschild and grew to be over 3,000 members just in 15 years and throughout that whole period they also, like I mentioned, helped other people set up cooperatives and follow their success, follow their model all over the country. In 1863, 300 co-ops in the north, there was more than that in total around the country, set up the cooperative wholesale society which is again one of the kind of forefathers of the co-op group based in Manchester. And that wholesale society was exactly what it says on the tin. It was for those cooperatives to source and produce goods together to essentially outcompete the competition by cooperating between each other. And then Co-opters UK itself was created in 1869. So we're celebrating our 150th birthday later this year and going into next year. And again, Co-opters UK was created by those original cooperatives to grow the movement, to propagate the model. They thought it was so important that they wanted to invest in a whole new generation of cooperatives. So that's really where we come from an organizational point of view. And all over the world, they helped set up the international cooperative alliances it's now called and helped cooperators all over the world set up cooperatives. So 175 years later, where are we? Well, their original shop on Toad Lane in Rochdale is now a museum. And people come from all over the world to visit that museum, to see where their cooperative movement has come from. And I find this particularly funny as I'll mention a bit later because of the sheer scale of where the cooperative movement is in other countries. But yeah, people come back to that museum in Rochdale. So if you're ever in Manchester, do take the 15 minute train journey into Rochdale and do visit that museum, it's a wonderful place. But yeah, like I mentioned, what happened 175 years later? There's now from that first co-op shop in Rochdale in 1844, there are at least, and this is the very least, three million cooperatives worldwide. Three million cooperatives worldwide. Just let that figure settle in for a second. Cooperatives employ 280 million people worldwide. I think they reckon that's about 10% of the kind of global workforce, globally employed workforce. But yeah, 218 million people worldwide are employed in co-ops. And they support around a billion people who are members of cooperatives, who source their goods and services from cooperatives, a billion people worldwide. That might sound, from a UK context, ludicrous, you might not think that's believable at all. And I'll kind of go onto that a bit later, but just kind of moving into what the co-op movement looks like now. In the UK, you know, so going from three million cooperatives worldwide back to what it looked like in the UK, 7,000. There's just over 7,000 independent co-ops in the UK. And then, you know, 13 million members of cooperatives in the UK. So again, using the football analogy a little bit, although we may have invented or unwritten the rules of football down, we are certainly not the best players of football around the world. And actually for cooperatives, it's a very similar story, although we wrote the rules of what a cooperative is and, you know, can be called the birthplace of the cooperative movement. Other countries are way better than we are. But yeah, so just a quick look at cooperatives around the UK. There are cooperatives all over the UK, like I mentioned, on the Isles of Sky, up in the North, like I said, right the way down to the Channel Islands, down in the South. There's loads of examples of cooperatives in the UK. I'm not going to talk about examples, really. There's loads of stuff on Co-ops UK's website. If you want to look at co-ops like yours or you want to set up a co-op and try and find a co-op, that's already doing something similar. There are loads of examples on our website or get in touch with us and we can definitely put you in touch with similar cooperatives. But just to kind of focus on the world again, the largest co-op in the world, just because it's put some of this in context, the largest co-op in the world is actually quite boring. It's a bank. It's called Credit Agricole in France and it's a bank. So it's a bit boring. I'm not going to focus on that co-op. I'm going to focus on another of the largest co-ops in the world, which is this one. It's a fertilizer co-op. It's called the Indian Farmers Fertiliser Co-op and it's the largest manufacturer of fertilizer in India. It's got 30% of the market. For me, this is a fantastic example and I use it quite a lot of both the scale of cooperatives but also co-ops are really about practical self-help and meeting really common needs of people and it's not always sexy but that's what really what co-ops are about. So yeah, the IFCO is a great example of a co-op meeting people's needs and at scale and here's some really interesting figures for you. IFCO is a federation of 35,000 co-ops in India. So in the UK, like I mentioned, there's about 7,000 co-ops. In this one sector in India, there's 35,000 co-ops and they provide services to over 50 million farmers. Moving on to another example, kind of in a completely different sector is the Mondragon Group in the Basque Country of Spain. It's again a federation of cooperatives, particularly in the Basque Country but they've now spread out all over the world. They build everything from bikes to white goods, robots and solar panels. They're a manufacturing business and as opposed to the previous one which was owned by the farmers, this business is owned by the employees. It's a worker cooperative employing over 75,000 people. And like I mentioned, it's a federation of different cooperatives producing different things but again, a great example if you've got the time to dig into. What was particularly interesting about Mondragon is they were set up again in a period of exploitation of unfairness of injustice during the Franco dictatorship and the Basque Country essentially had to create everything for itself. It had to create its own shops, its own employment, its own bank, its own university and even its own social security system. So Mondragon runs health insurance, unemployment insurance for its own workers because at the time and I think it's still kind of the case, that system just did not exist, the state did not do that for them. So they did it for themselves. So, why are cops still important today and how can you get involved? Just like to say, I suppose, whether your co-op's 300 or 3 million members, whether you're producing ceramics like the ceramics co-op up there, energy like West Mill solar or whether you're selling food like a co-op on the high street, co-ops are there to meet people's needs and to meet people's needs in a democratic and sustainable way. That's for me why co-op is so important. They're also important in times of the economic injustice whether it's the 1840s, 1970s or all 2020s. And really that's kind of where why co-ops are relevant today. So there's loads of issues going on in society at the moment, whether it's housing, whether it's the precarious, what people politely call the sharing economy, but it's basically how to rip off workers economy, whether it's climate change or whether it's just the retreat of the state from public services. There are loads of issues at the moment that people have needs that need meeting. And for me personally, this is where co-operatives come to their fore and where co-operatives I feel are the solution to these sorts of problems. So just to quickly go back to the co-operative principles, the co-operative principles really underwrite and are the foundation of everything a co-operative does. And even though it's not written in to the co-operative principles to be environmentally friendly or to provide decent jobs because of the fact that co-operatives are member owned because of the fact that they have these underlying principles, it's self-evident that co-operatives do those things. There's no wonder that the co-operative movement was the first to fight for women's rights and women's property rights for the five-day working week for in more recent times fair trade. The court group at the moment is fighting a cause on modern slavery. Mid-County's co-operative is fighting a campaign on plastic and the use of plastics. Loads of co-operatives are at the forefront of different causes and different campaigns, not because they're written into the rules of their business, but because it's just part of their DNA actually, it's their members wanting to do these things. So just really quickly, because my head of comms would kill me if I didn't mention what COPS UK is up to at the moment. What's COPS UK doing in this space? So coming up on the 24th of June, it would be great to get involved in COPS Fortnite, which is two weeks for mass cooperation. This year, our main call to action is do an act of cooperation, whether it's picking up litter, whether it's supporting another co-op, whether it's opening your doors, do something to show and raise awareness that you're a co-operative and you are co-operative. And most importantly, sign up to COPS Fortnite to make sure that you're tweeting about it, you're getting it out there, you're taking advantage of our press team to help with press releases, so that really during that two week period of COPS Fortnite, we're all raising awareness for co-ops. Other things we do at COPS UK, we run a whole gamut of projects, both finance from co-operatives or finance from philanthropic organizations to do cooperative development. So we're creating co-operatives all the time. So if you are thinking of setting a co-op up or you're an existing co-op looking to grow and develop or deal with an issue you're facing, just come and talk to us, whether it's through one of our supported programs or whether you can afford to pay for the support, get in touch with us and we can help solve your problems, we can help you grow and develop. We also run a series of events, both online events and webinars like this, but also a series of networking events and conferences around the country. So do check those out. And just because it's always worth mentioning, we do all this fun stuff, but actually the core of what COPS UK does is we defend your rights to the government. We lobby to make sure that co-operatives aren't forgotten about treated equally with other business forms. And that goes on all the time in the back rooms of Westminster. Simple things like making sure we're not left out of legislation changes, things like that. And it's a core thing of what we do, which might not be sexy, but is very, very important to the cooperative movement. So I think I'm gonna finish at that point, just about on time. Well, thank you, John, thanks for all of that. And interestingly, but probably not unspicingly, we don't have many questions and that's something indicative, I think, of co-operatives. And I think people seem to think they need to know lots about it, then don't know what to ask. But we've got to say, there are no unimportant questions that you could ask. So please do send your questions in. I am, because we're gonna have also another poll because I think it's interesting if we can to find out, if we're able to, to find out, it doesn't look like we can do that one. Do that one. Just a little bit more about your knowledge on this. So if you've got any knowledge at all about co-ops, but you're confused about something or you want to just share something about co-operatives, then please do. But I'd like to ask, John, there are simple questions to ask and it does get complex quite quickly. So can anyone start a co-op? And if they want to start a co-op, what are the tools, what do you need if you're interested in starting any co-op? Yeah, just quickly, because I have to see one that's just come through, don't forget to mention the co-op party. So yes, just to quickly say, the co-op movement has lots and lots of different parts of it. It's quite complex. There's a newspaper, a college, going to be a university, a party, lots of different elements of the co-operative movement. And so yeah, don't forget that, yeah. There's lots of other people doing stuff in and around the UK from a co-operative point of view. Just to quickly go back to, can anyone set up a co-op? Yes, I would say you need at least two people. You can't be a co-op of one, unfortunately. But yes, you can set up a co-op. I get phone calls all the time from people and they always think they're, it's great that they always think they're doing something new and different. That's never been done before and I guarantee you, somebody has set up a co-op like yours before and we've advised them and we can help you do something similar. So it's very rare that you can't set up a co-op in any different sector. Co-ops, particularly at the moment, are thriving in areas where communities are coming together to raise finance, to do something like put up a wind turbine, buy a shop or a pub, take over a library or a community service. They're also thriving in areas where professional creative industry type people are coming together and rather than be exploited for their knowledge and their professionalism, they're coming together in worker co-ops to provide their services direct. So we're seeing a lot of growth in tech co-ops and that sort of thing. And yeah, and housing, student housing in particular. So really there's, the only thing I would say is if you wanna, you can't do an Uber model if I'm honest. So if you want to raise finance from lots of people and bleed billions of pounds a year to set up a business, you can't do that as a co-op. That's not the way co-ops operate. And it's an interesting challenge for us how the cooperative movement competes against investor owned businesses which are willing to burn that sort of money year in, year out. But yeah, co-operatives do struggle with that sort of scale. But on a local basis, on a community basis, co-operatives do, can and do thrive. As far as how to do it, just going in touch with co-ops UK, we set up around 130 co-ops a year and we have an advice team that they've been there and done it. They've seen it. They can give you advice on it and we have a whole network of advisors all around the country. So there will be somebody local to you we can put them in touch with. OK, that's good. We have got some questions coming through now. So that's good. Please keep them coming. Are there UK federations of co-ops? Yes, so co-ops UK itself is a federation of federations, if that makes sense. So there are various housing co-op networks, credit union networks, agricultural co-op networks called supporters direct which looks after all the football and rugby clubs that are co-ops. So lots of different sectors have their own specialist body which does the more practical specialist stuff for that sector and then they're all in turn members of co-ops UK so we can fight for our rights collectively to government. And one of the most recent ones is probably just worth mentioning is there's a tech cop federation called Co-Tec. So if you're setting up a cop in the tech sector, get in touch with Co-Tec, they're great guys. That's marvelous and we did find the poll. So thank you if you're able to see that and just vote on that. So the poll is after hearing the webinar and after hearing what John's been talking about, click some of the responses that relate to you. So I'm pleased to say that most of you are clicking that this motivates me to share what a co-op is with others. 83% which is fabulous. The next one is, wow, if I apply this it could change my life. Interestingly, and I think we'll be pleased that no one is still thinking about the big co-op stores. So that's quite good. But yes, keep sending us your comments and your interest. So anything else that you want to add, John? Just to go back to this bit right at the start, I've put back on is the two things not to forget. If you don't remember anything else from this webinar, remember that co-ops are there fundamentally to help people meet their needs. And if they could meet their needs on their own, they probably would and it probably wouldn't need a co-op. But that's one of the agricultural guys said to me years ago, farmers are a very independent bunch. And if farmers can get together and set co-ops up, then it shows you can pretty much do it anywhere with any group of people. And really that's the thing to remember is, co-ops aren't an end in themselves. Co-ops are a tool to solve people's problems. Yeah, there's another one about members and the direct benefit to members. A question about how do you find volunteer led co-ops? How do they roll out their membership, which is mostly based on volunteers and the community at large? I think for me, I would always try and link, like any sales job, I suppose, if you want people to become members, it's what's the effort versus reward? And if the effort versus reward isn't there, like in any sort of engagement, then it's difficult. And so I would say, if you're expecting your members to volunteer or to contribute, then what do they get back in return? And it's that member benefit element. That member benefit might be really nailing the you're doing good for society. This is a good thing for society sort of sell. It might be, actually, if you volunteer, you'll get training and development. You'll get a discount in the shop or the pool. And it's linking the what rewards are you giving for membership, even if that might just be altruistic rewards to the effort you're expecting. And if you don't get that balance right, then no matter of selling or marketing will be successful. So we're almost coming to the end, just a question on whether the slides are going to be available. And just on the point where people are motivated to share this with others. We've got 91% of the attendees who want to share this with others. How can they do that? So we will, so I'm actually doing quite a number of webinars and sessions like this through Corpse Fault Night. So the slides will be available after this. And in a few weeks time, we'll have a more polished slide deck. And we're really happy to help people propagate this message. You use this slide deck to do their own talks. So if you are interested, yeah, watch this space and you'll get an email note out after the events with the slide deck and how to use it. Thank you. If there aren't any other questions, we want to thank John. We want to thank Co-operatives UK and all of the attendees. It's been a really interesting webinar. As John says, we will be doing more of these. These webinars are part of our Co-op Connections program of events. So keep looking on our website for things that you can get involved in for free. There's a lot of networking events around the country. So if you are able to get to one of those, look on our website for the Co-op Connections events. And we will be doing more webinars as well for free. So it's always worth coming back to the website. And if you're part of a Co-op, if your organization is a Co-op and you're not a member of Co-operatives UK yet, well, please think about that because, again, you get involved with so much of our Co-op Connections events and the networking and you get part of the subscriptions of the newsletters and what have you. So it's really important if you do, if you are part of a Co-op to come on board with us, which would be wonderful. So if you haven't got anything else to add, John, are there more questions coming in at the end? Just thank you. It looks like, thank you. No, thanks everyone for coming. And any feedback on the webinar itself, which bits we should have covered more of, should have covered less of, do let me know. I find it really hard to do this because I talk about Co-ops all the time and it's quite hard to condense it down to a 45 minute webinar. So yeah, do give me feedback on how I can improve the understanding of it. So thanks everyone and see you again soon.