Formation
Setting up and registering member-owned enterprise.
Focus — Livelihoods, Enterprise & Community Prosperity — Cooperatives
COOPERATIVES
IDEAS WE SUPPORT.
World Seed Fund supports people whose ideas improve how cooperatives are formed and run for the members who own and use the cooperative.
Why this area
COOPERATIVES
IN CONTEXT.
Cooperatives succeed on governance as much as on trade. Ideas qualify when both are taken seriously.
Scope of the area
WHAT THIS AREA
INCLUDES.
Illustrations of scope, not a fixed list. If your idea belongs here but is not described below, introduce it anyway.
Governance
Decisions, accounts, and trust between members.
Trade
Aggregation, processing, and bargaining power.
Finance
Member capital and access to credit.
Criteria to qualify
WHAT A COOPERATIVES
IDEA MUST SHOW.
All five criteria apply. An idea does not need to be complete or proven — it needs to be specific enough that we can judge it, and grounded enough that a next step is possible.
A defined problem, in a defined place
We need to understand exactly who is affected, where, and how they cope today. General statements about a global challenge are not enough to qualify.
- Names the place, community, or system where how cooperatives are formed and run fall short.
- States the situation today in plain terms — member income, volume, governance health, or surplus distributed.
- Explains what the members who own and use the cooperative do now, and what it costs them.
Human insight behind the idea
The idea should come from knowledge of the situation — technical, scientific, operational, cultural, or lived — rather than from an assumption about it.
- Draws on direct knowledge of how cooperatives are formed and run in that place.
- Accounts for why earlier cooperative development programmes did not hold here.
- Was shaped with the members who own and use the cooperative, not only for them.
A credible next step
There must be a specific thing that can be attempted next, at a scale that can be observed honestly, with a stated way of judging whether it worked.
- A defined pilot with a stated size — members, cooperatives, or volume traded.
- A stated measure of success — member income, volume, governance health, or surplus distributed.
- A timeframe within which the result can be judged honestly.
Value for people and place
The benefit should be meaningful to the community or system the idea serves, and describable in terms they would recognise.
- Improves income, bargaining power, and shared ownership for the members who own and use the cooperative.
- The benefit is described in words the community itself would use.
- Does not shift cost, risk, or harm onto neighbouring people or systems.
A path to keep working
Ideas qualify when someone can plausibly own, operate, fund, and repair the result after the first phase of support ends.
- A named cooperative union, apex body, or registrar able to carry the work after the first phase.
- Running costs, materials, and skills obtainable near the work.
- Ownership, permission, or agreement that lets the work continue.
Evidence & boundaries
WHAT HELPS,
AND WHAT DOES NOT.
Evidence can be modest. A careful account of a small trial is worth more than a projection.
Evidence we look for
- Any observation, record, or measurement of how cooperatives are formed and run in that place.
- Costs, materials, or time recorded from a small trial, however modest.
- Notes, letters, or agreements from the members who own and use the cooperative or the cooperative union, apex body, or registrar.
Usually outside this area
- Broad proposals about cooperatives with no named place and no named people.
- Equipment or funding requests with no operator and no running cost.
- Work that transfers cost, risk, or harm to neighbouring people or systems.
Submit an idea
INTRODUCE YOUR
COOPERATIVES IDEA.
There is no application window and no required format. Answer these four questions in your own words and we will read them.
Who is affected, where, and how do they manage today?
What do you know about how cooperatives are formed and run that others working on it may not?
What could you attempt next, and how would you judge whether it worked?
Who continues the work afterwards, and what keeps it running?
Human potential is everywhere. Opportunity should be too.