Stopping by the Coop on a snowy evening……miles to go before we sleep

Thanksgiving, since I’ve been coordinating the Community Dinner for Equinox anyway, always sneaks up on me. It’s a really busy stretch and then all of a sudden, bam, it’s there. Sort of smacks me in the face that I haven’t taken the time to give thanks properly. As I try to fit in the time for reflection and review (usually in early December), I start to take a mental inventory of what’s happened in the last year. Here at the Coop that is a full list. Let’s have a look.

This year the board has been fairly stable. We welcomed a few new members, Lenore Gensburg, Jim Monsonis and Duke Bouchard. We’ve been able to maintain an excellent working relationship and are enjoying the fruits of our labors. Linda Lawrence recently resigned from her post (thanks for your participation), so in April we’re expecting four seats to potentially change, and are beginning to think about filling them. We invite you to do the same.

In the store, the Collective Management Team (CMT) has completed its first full year at the helm. Congratulations! Our new front end manager for the year recently relocated to the city, and we now welcome David Jimenez to the front end post. We also have hired Jeff Navarre as our Personnel Administrator, so please feel free to drop in and meet him if you haven’t already.

Our committee structures are strengthening, too. We passed new bylaws. We adopted a new personnel manual. We’ve added a few new members to the finance committee this year, and the personnel committee as well. Nutrition and Membership remain strong and the newly established governance committee is beginning to participate regularly. Over the summer the strategic planning committee grew by leaps and bounds, and is now regrouping to determine next steps. We surveyed our members, studied our market, hosted focus groups and took some time to talk. We’re still looking for members for the Special Events and Communications committee, so if you have any gifts that you can share, please give us a call.

Our November membership dinner was a great success. There is still talk about a recipe book, but we haven’t seen any yet. Stay tuned. We voted to adopt our mission statement, statements of conscience, move ahead with considering expanding our space and opening a conversation with the BID.

We did financially well this year. We were able to put some money into savings, give bonuses to our staff with over ten years experience at the member dinner, distribute equitable staff bonuses for the year end, and if you are a working member, you’ll be receiving your bonus in the mail soon if you haven’t already. We also invested in some equipment that is needed to streamline the store (all moveable), and donated $5000 to the Community Foundation.

Pretty soon you’ll be receiving the budget and a narrative in the mail for your vote on January 11. Thanks to the CMT members, who budgeted for their departments, to Cindee for pulling it all together, and the rest of the committee for all their good questions and hard work.