Co-op News | Summer Quarterly 2018
Letter from the Editor
The Co-op has recently undertaken what will be a multi-year project: cleaning up our member-ship rolls. The move to single-person membership simplified the way we manage new memberships, clearing up many of the processes surrounding membership shares and how they are returned when someone is no longer a member of the Co-op. It’s now the perfect time for us to take a fresh look at our memberships, one by one, to make sure that each account is in order.
While the Co-op has more than 18,000 members with shares, not all of them are actively engaged in the Co-op. Some have moved out of state and are no longer eligible to be members. A few are no longer shopping at the Co-op. A fair number of members appear to still be in the area and are shopping with us, but our mail is no longer reaching them. On the other end of the spectrum, we have a dozen or so members who are so engaged in the Co-op that they have more than one membership, and likely don’t know it. If you fall into one of these categories, you’ll soon be hearing from us. We want to make sure your membership is accurately reflected in our records.
We also have former members who still have interests in the Co-op, sometimes for less than a dollar. It’s important to us—and required by our bylaws and the state—that we connect former members with any shares or patronage refunds they are entitled to even after they’ve closed their memberships, no matter how much remains. It can be costly to the Co-op in staff time, in mate-rials, and in postage to try to connect with former members. And, oftentimes, a current or former member can’t be reached or doesn’t respond to the Co-op. After three years of attempting to reach a current or former member using the con-tact information we have on record, and with no communication from that member, the Co-op can claim their remaining shares or patronage refunds as unclaimed equity. This process will be part of our clean up over the next few years as well.
Keeping your contact information up to date with the Co-op is vital to ensuring that your shares, patronage refunds and C Share dividends are available to you even if you are no longer a member of the Co-op. Not sure if we have a good address for you? Want to add a phone number or email as additional ways we can reach you? Pick up a Request Form at Customer Service in either store or email us at membership@northcoast.coop to up-date your membership. We’re looking forward to focusing on enhancing member engagement opportunities for all of our current and active Co-op members with an orderly, shiny membership roll on our side.
