Outside the U.S.

Mondragón, located in the Basque region of Spain, is a network of 264 companies, approximately half of which are worker cooperatives. Now the largest corporation in the Basque region and the seventh largest in Spain, MCC is also the world's largest worker co-op with over 34,000 members as of the end of 2007 and total employment of over 100,000. By 2010, co-op membership is expected to grow considerably to between 72,000 and 77,000, once Eroski, a network company that is mostly located outside of Basque County, completes the cooperative conversion process. Read more about Mondragón Corporación Cooperativa...

Outside the U.S.

Alberta Heritage Fund

http://www.finance.gov.ab.ca/business/ahstf/index.html

Established in 1976 to ensure that oil revenues accrue to the benefit of Albertans, the fund since then has provided $27.6 billion, which has been used for Albertans' priorities including capital projects, health care, education, roads and tax reductions. The Heritage Fund earned approximately $1.1 billion from its investments during the 2004-05 fiscal year. Read more about Alberta Heritage Fund...

Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee

http://www.brac.net

Founded in 1972, BRAC has become one of the world's largest non-governmental organizations, registering a membership of four million women. BRAC works in 65,000 of the country's 68,000 villages, covers a population of 78 million, has organized nearly 120,000 village organizations, and operates with an annual budget of US$196 million as of the end of 2003. BRAC has expanded most rapidly since 1989, when it worked in only 4,000 villages and had a budget of $20 million. Read more about Bangladesh Rural Advancement Committee...

Co-op Atlantic

http://www.co-opsonline.com

Co-op Atlantic is the wholesaler for the network of consumer cooperatives in Atlantic Canada, and functions as a second-tier cooperative, providing expertise and services to its member co-ops. Canada's second largest regional cooperative wholesaler, Co-op Atlantic serves 171 member cooperatives and 219,000 member-families in Canada's eastern provinces. Read more about Co-op Atlantic...

Co-op Kobe (Note that this site is in Japanese only)

http://www.kobe.coop.or.jp

Established in 1921, Co-op Kobe has grown to become Japan's largest cooperative, with over 1.45 million members in 2002. Read more about Co-op Kobe (Note that this site is in Japanese only)...

CoopZone

http://www.coopzone.coop/en/home

This site, organized by the Canadian Co-operative Association, is focused on providing two things: a national Canadian network of cooperative developers, and an on-line clearinghouse of information, tools and resources. Information available on this site includes links to federal and provincial cooperative legislation, a considerable amount of resources on worker cooperatives, information on business logistics, and links to co-op consultants in each province of the country. Read more about CoopZone...

Desjardins

http://www.desjardins.com/en

As the largest cooperative financial group in Canada and the largest private employer in Quebec, Desjardins represents a vast network of financial services cooperatives in Quebec and Ontario with approximately 20 subsidiaries across the country. With more than 40,000 employees and some 6,500 elected caisse officers, Desjardins focuses on improving the human capital of its employees, partnering and working within the community, and sustainable development policy that strikes a balance between the economy, society and the environment. Read more about Desjardins...

Fonde du solidarité FTQ (Solidarity Fund)

http://www.fondsftq.com/en/accueil.aspx

The Solidarity Fund QFL is a labor-backed development capital fund that helps create and maintain jobs in Québec by investing in small and medium-sized businesses in that province. Since its inception in June 1983, the Fund, whose assets stood at $7.3 billion as of May 31, 2008, has become a hub of knowledge, resources and contacts for Québec companies and a key player in the Québec economy. Read more about Fonde du solidarité FTQ (Solidarity Fund)...

Fundación para la Educación Superior

http://www.fesi.org.mx/

FES was established in 1964 as a university foundation designed to mobilize funds for education and research. In 1975, the government recognized FES as a “commercial financing company,” which permitted it to seek resources in the capital market, make loans, and thereby accumulate capital. Soon thereafter, FES expanded its mission to include the promotion of social development activities, and it began investing its profits in social programs in six areas: health, education, economic and social development, children and youth, the environment, and civil society support. Read more about Fundación para la Educación Superior...

Grameen Bank

http://www.grameen-info.org

Grameen Bank is a pioneer in the microfinance field and is well known for practices that have since become common throughout the world, such as village lending circles where the group guarantees payment by each individual. Having started by lending $27 to 42 villagers in 1976, the GB to date has offered credit to 3.36 million borrowers and disbursed $4.27 billion in cumulative loans. It works in 44,636 villages, operates 1,229 branches, and employs nearly 12,000 people. Read more about Grameen Bank...

Grameen Family of Enterprises

http://web01.grameen.com

In 2006, the Grameen made history, when together with founder Muhammad Yunus, it became the first community development financial institution ever to win the Nobel Peace Prize. But Grameen does not just do micro-lending through its bank. Today, Grameen social enterprises exist in many sectors, including clothing production, cellular telephone service, information technology services, rural education, and energy production. Read more about Grameen Family of Enterprises...

Japanese Consumers' Co-operative Union (English language site)

http://jccu.coop/eng/

Japan's consumer cooperative movement—the world's largest—is composed of 572 member co-operatives with a combined individual membership of 22,016,000, or thirty percent of all Japanese households. Read more about Japanese Consumers' Co-operative Union (English language site)...

Kiva (operates internationally)

http://www.kiva.org

Kiva aims to facilitate micro-lending between individuals in wealthy countries and social entrepreneurs in the developing world. Through its website, individuals can make loans for as little as $25 which are pooled to support business ventures. Kiva does this by partnering with micro-lenders abroad, which screen the businesses to which the lending dollars raised go. When the loan is repaid, a lender can choose to withdraw their funds or re-loan to a new business. To date, over 54,000 lenders have participated, with a repayment rate of over 99 percent. Read more about Kiva (operates internationally) ...

La Lega

http://www.legacoop.it

Italy's largest umbrella group for cooperatives, La Lega promotes the interests of the cooperative sector at all levels of government, and conducts research to measure and influence public opinion about cooperatives. La Lega (or Legacoop) covers more than 17,000 cooperatives: approximately 5,000 worker co-ops, 3,000 agricultural co-ops, 2,000 consumer co-ops, 5,000 housing co-ops, 2,000 mixed-form co-ops, and hundreds of specialized co-ops in such fields as transportation and fishing (Smith 2001). Read more about La Lega...

Microfinance Information Exchange (MIX) Market

http://www.mixmarket.org

Acting as a global, web-based, microfinance information platform, the Microfinance Information Exchange (MIX) Market has a goal to provide information on public and private funds that invest in microfinance, providing an important resource for those within the microfinance sector and the public at large. To date, the MIX Market maintains data on 1383 microfinance institutions, 103 investors and 182 partners. Read more about Microfinance Information Exchange (MIX) Market...

Mondragon Unibertsitatea

http://www.mondragon.edu/en

Created through the association of three educational cooperatives, The Mondragon Unibertsitatea is a cooperative university belonging to the Mondragon Corporation. The University consists of four main departments, Polytechnic, Business Studies, Humanities and Education, and Culinary Science. Their teaching model combines classroom experience with the 230 companies associated to the Mondragon co-ops to guarantee social accessibility, a hybrid of work and study, and the development of research. Read more about Mondragon Unibertsitatea...

Owenstown

http://www.owenstown.org

The Hometown Foundation of Scotland, dedicated to community development, has initiated a plan to create a town run as a cooperative. Conceived in the image of Robert Owen, a founder in the socialist and cooperative movements, Owenstown is set to have 8,000 homes for families of various sizes and incomes and will strive to be carbon neutral. The cooperative will be run by a board of trustees until the town becomes sufficient enough to elect its own board members. It is currently in the planning stages and seeking community feedback. Read more about Owenstown...

Rabobank

http://www.rabobank.com

Comprised of 152 independent local Rabobanks, their central organization – Rabobank Nederland -, and several subsidiaries, Rabobank Group is an international financial service provider administered by cooperative principles and values. Offering retail banking, wholesale banking, asset management, leasing and real estate services, Rabobank Group has nearly 60,000 employees, serving more than 9.5 million clients across 46 countries and is considered among the world’s 25 largest financial institutions in terms of Tier I capital. Read more about Rabobank...

Seikatsu Club Consumers' Co-operative Union (English language site)

http://www.seikatsuclub.coop/english/index.html

Established in 1965 as a buying club for families to purchase affordable, pure milk, SCCCU has evolved into a movement concerned with building alternative production, consumption, social welfare, and activist networks. It has spawned producer co-ops, social welfare organizations, an activist political network, an environmental program, and a program to support world peace. Today, it is an association of 22 consumer co-ops and 8 associated companies, with 250,000 individual members. Annual sales for the last fiscal year (April 2003-March 2004) were $690 million. Read more about Seikatsu Club Consumers' Co-operative Union (English language site)...

Self-Employed Women's Association

http://www.sewa.org

Founded in 1972, SEWA is India's first and largest trade union of informal sector workers, with a total membership of 694,551 self-employed women and a population coverage of around one million. SEWA also provides members services, often through cooperatives. As of 2002, SEWA's membership included 89 cooperatives, with a total membership of 41,393 workers. Read more about Self-Employed Women's Association...

The Co-operative Group

http://www.co-op.co.uk

The world's largest single consumer cooperative, the Co-operative Group has over three million individual consumer members and 144 corporate consumer members, which in turn represent millions of consumer members nationwide. The Co-operative Group operates over 1,700 grocery stores, over 3,000 retail outlets, and 29 department stores, and employs over 75,000 workers. Read more about The Co-operative Group...

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