The Cooperative Movement — The hidden power of coops

A group of scholars at the University of Wisconsin recently counted nearly 30,000 cooperatives in the United States operating at 73,000 locations. The vast majority are consumer cooperatives, with 343 million memberships (many people belong to multiple co-ops, hence the number of memberships exceeds the U.S. population). Another 7 million memberships can be found in producer and purchasing cooperatives. Credit unions, which are essentially banking cooperatives, have 92 million members. Electrical utility co-ops reach 42 million Americans. Agricultural cooperatives have three million members.

Read it at Energy Bulletin
The hidden power of coops
by Michael Shuman