The international symposium on Co‑op Identity and Energizing the Co‑op Brand gathered 429 participants from 52 countries – spanning from Brazil to Ethiopia and Ireland to the Philippines.
Hosted by the International Centre for Co-operative Management at St Mary’s University, it used 25 presentations, workshops, panel discussions, and interactive sessions, 46 speakers from 11 countries explored brand and identity through ten topics including public awareness, policy and law, sustainability reporting, digital storytelling, credit unions, and membership loyalty and engagement.
Following a keynote from International Cooperative Alliance director general, Jeroen Douglas, discussion of common branding and the international Co-op Marque featured Lisa Zentner, director of communications, Co-operatives and Mutuals Canada, who recommended the adoption of a formal national identity system alongside a country-customised version of the Marque. In contrast, Ellie Yanagisawa, co-founder, Transverse Cooperative in the USA, argued that co-ops must stand out by developing unique branding kits and experimenting with distinct logos and style guides.
To create stronger communities through relationship building, programme development, and sustainable solutions, co-ops were presented with Old Medicine, New Structures by Nicole Borner and Cheyenne Robinson from Trillium, a native-led, women-owned co-operative based in the USA. It is named after a plant native to North America and Asia whose root and rhizome are prized in traditional herbal medicine.
Borner and Robinson argued that credibility in co-ops comes from a strict alignment between structure, culture, and practice. Beyond promoting traditional co-operative values, they argued that co-ops must embrace holistic wellness – incorporating spiritual, emotional, physical, and mental values – into their core structures. This could be achieved by hosting co-op events such as music, meditation, yoga, dance, and outdoor walking, they said.
To promote long-term sustainability, Jon Olaizola-Alberdi, a researcher and lecturer from Mondragon University in Spain, delivered a session on Sustainability Reporting as Part of Branding & Telling the Co-op Story. He urged co-ops not to treat sustainability reporting as a mere “compliance checklist”, warning that this approach leads to “mission drift and symbolic decoupling”.
Related: We speak to Erin Hancock, programme manager for the symposium
The session highlighted the current lack of a universal reporting model, meaning co-ops must devise their own reporting architectures. When doing so, Olaizola-Alberdi challenged delegates to ensure that reporting does not “just prove we do no harm”, but proves the “inherent superiority of the co-operative model in driving the ecosocial transition”.
In the session Moving from Co-operative Values to Measurable Impact: The Co-operative Social Balance (BSCoop) Framework and the CoopImpact Platform, Paula Arzadu, head of education, training and research at Cooperatives of the Americas, strongly urged co-ops to adopt the BSCoop framework. Unlike traditional corporate financial audits, BSCoop focuses on internal self-evaluation and continuous improvement. By embracing this model, said Arzadun, co-operatives can shift from isolated individual reporting to a shared, collective narrative, improving their ability to engage with members, colleagues, and new customers.
The importance of human storytelling in the digital sphere was emphasised by many speakers: co-ops may have a unique business story to tell, but rarely shout about it loudly enough to be heard in a crowded space. Video was highlighted as the best performing format on most channels and co-ops were encouraged to use it with an authentic voice and to experiment with different formats to engage consumers based on the four S’s – streaming, scrolling, searching and shopping.
On the thorny subject of AI, delegates heard that the tech is being rolled out so quickly that many co-ops struggleto keep up. Any co-ops using AI were urged to be transparent about its use and to ensure their communications are authentic and not artificially created.
With so many platforms being controlled by big tech companies, delegates were urged to find alternative new channels by Dawn Walker, designer and researcher at Cosocial Community Cooperative, a Canadian non-profit co-op. In her session The State of Social Media: Next Steps to Update Your Cooperatives’ Digital Strategy she encouraged co-ops to explore using Mastodon. This decentralised social media platform is part of the Fediverse – an open social media ecosystem of non-profit and community-run platforms.
On the final day delegates heard about credit unions from Ireland, Canada and Ethiopia. Yetnayet Teklewold Gelan, founder and manager of Premier Plus Springfield Training and Consultancy in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, presented In Between Principle and Pressure – The Challenge of Sustaining Cooperative Identity in Saccos. Saccos – savings and credit co-ops – remain vital institutions for financial inclusion and social empowerment in Africa but their co-operative identity is being increasingly challenged by market models.
The core problem, warned Gelan, is that many saccos have prioritised loans over member education and participation. To ensure their long-term their sustainability, she urged all saccos to uphold their co-operative values and promote their democratic structure.
Related: Saccos can improve financial inclusion for refugees and migrants, says report
The need to maintain co-operative values in a competitive world was also stressed by Blake Sandham, head of growth and member experience at the Coastal Financial Credit Union in Nova Scotia, Canada. In the session Digital Convenience, Local Loyalty, Human Connection: Modernising Co-operative Member Value in a Small-Market Credit Union, he asked people to reconsider how they define loyalty and to work harder to earn it. To do this required focusing not just on transactions but also belonging and demonstrating how membership matters.
Delegates were also updated on the worldmap.coop by Tom Ivey, community development manager at DotCoop based in Oxford, UK. To date over 84,000 co-ops have been registered and Ivey urged co-ops not yet on the map to provide their data because “visibility is the first step to connection”.
Many speakers across the four days of the symposium reiterated the challenges of the very low awareness of the co-operative model across the world. With a cost-of-living crisis and continued shocks to the global economy caused by conflict, rising prices and climate change, delegates were reminded that there has never been a more important time for the movement to come together and present an alternative which puts people before profit. Despite the challenges, all the speakers emphasised that co-ops were well placed to help people across the world navigate an uncertain future.
A workshop on 14 May prior to the main three-day event focused on the co-operative difference in a session called What Makes Your Co-op Different? Reverse Engineering Your Market to Find Your Edge. Miguel Valencia, from Design Action Collective, and Raquel Victoria Navarro, worker-owners and digital strategist at Radiant Consulting in the USA, discussed ways to reverse-engineer corporate marketing to highlight co-op advantages.
Co-ops must translate their unique governance structures into direct, value-driven marketing, they said, by highlighting their democratic structure as a unique selling point rather than just another value.
Recordings of all sessions and speaker slides can be accessed via the symposium webpage.
