The outreach portion of our duties continues to expand. In addition to the continuing executive training program for directors and management of the value-added New Generation Cooperatives, we have been requested to conduct leadership training for members as well as director training programs for specific cooperatives. We will be  doing three of those programs in Spring 2001.

The leader development program will be a unique experiment as QBCC staff will work with task forces made up of co-op members. It will be a year-long effort to address strategic issues identified by them as well as their management. Training in leadership, analysis skills, strategic planning, presentation techniques, and roles within a cooperative will be intermingled with their activities. It will culminate at the end of the year in a presentation of recommendations and rationale to the co-op's management team. The "learning through action" process should prove valuable to all involved.

These are tough times for agricultural cooperatives, particularly the local supply and marketing cooperatives, but also the value-added cooperatives formed in recent decades. The local cooperatives are facing a rapidly changing business environment in their community with farm consolidations and reductions in rural population, in other words, their consumer base is disappearing. At the same time, technological changes in transportation and communication bring a new threat in the form of e-commerce and regional competitors.

The value-added cooperatives are facing typical start-up problems of under-capitalization, getting new processing technology to work as advertised, and decreased margins due to market conditions. There is a tendency to cut budgets and support for training under these conditions. However that is not the answer.

Difficult times require innovative thinking, i.e., "out of the box" openness to new ideas and solutions, dialogue with others in the industry, networking, and dependence on facts and analysis. In a classic 1964 article titled Marketing Myopia, Theodore Levitt states that growth stops not because the market is saturated, it stops because there has been a failure of management. Management needs to create the environment where the business is viewed as a customer creating and customer satisfying organism, as buying customers not selling products. As consumer wants and preferences change, and the number and type of competitors change, cooperatives must also find new ways of competing and "buying consumers".

Participation in conferences and training programs provide vehicles where ideas are shared, new approaches discussed, and "cooperative" solutions are found.

Upcoming Executive Training Sessions

There are still a few openings available for a high level program designed for new generation co-op directors and management. The three-day session March 13-15 will feature:

Marketing Strategies for the 21st Century --
Focus on Finance: Financial Danger Signals and Alternative Sources of Capital.

The program will contain in-depth analysis and interpretation of financial statements, finance based case studies, a comprehensive study of the array of capital resources available to cooperatives and their associated risk levels, and general financial management strategies available to cooperatives.

Once again the location is the beautiful Arrowwood Radisson, just north of Alexandria, Minnesota. The cost per session is $425 per person, which includes all meals. In addition, lodging at Arrowwood is $89 per night, excluding tax, and reservations are the participants responsibility.

Other future sessions include:

Board Decision Making Under Conflict
December 10-12, 2001

This program will include a review of basic rules of parliamentary procedure, how to deal with disagreements without being disagreeable, negotiation skills, leadership development, and responsibilities of the winners/losers. A combination of presentation, discussion and case study will be used.

Investment Analysis: Requests for Proposals, Evaluation of Consultants, Interpretation and

Evaluation of Feasibility and Business Plans

March 14-16, 2002

Topics to be covered are: relationship of strategic planning to the proposed action, content of the request for proposals (RFP), evaluation of proposals, evaluation of consultants/in-house personnel, monitoring the study, evaluation of the analysis, recommendations, making the decision and monitoring implementation. A combination of presentation and case studies will be used in the program.

Markets--Discovery, Analysis, Development and Implementation

December 11-13, 2002

This program will address: discovering the opportunities, what the consumer will buy in the future, marketing basics -- product positioning, price strategies, place (distribution strategies) and promotion, successful market entry and development strategies for both consumer and business-to-business markets, role of contracts and alliances, logistics -- moving your inputs and products efficiently. The training program will use a combination of formal presentation and discussion. It will heavily involve industry professionals as presenters. There will be small group sessions with case studies and substantial time for interaction with the training team.

 Bob Kuylen and his daughters Stephanie and Sarah visited the Burdick Center booth at the ND Farmers Union conventioon in Minot.

Co-op training materials are now available for vocational instructors and others interested in a short, introductory business course. The Quentin Burdick Center for Cooperatives at North Dakota State University has created four modules that explain co-op principles, how to start a cooperative, new generation co-ops that range from bison to pasta production, and the many non-agricultural co-ops in the United States.

The cooperative center wrote the text with beginners in mind. "We want to spread co-op fever through high school and college classrooms," said author, Kathy Coyle. "We want today’s youth to understand how working together may turn a profit as well as provide a service currently lacking in their community."

"One of the most successful sporting goods companies in America is a co-op, REI. You name it, a business can be set up as a co-op whether it is farm-related or not. Your county may have a cooperative arrangement with other counties to purchase its supplies, enjoying a lower price thanks to their buying co-op. Your dentist, hardware dealer, and grocery store manager may buy their inventory and supplies from a cooperative at a reduced rate because they are members."

You may preview the first module narrated by Coyle on the Burdick Center for Cooperative’s web site: www.ag.ndsu.nodak.edu/qbcc , select "educational materials". The instructor’s notebook and visuals on a powerpoint zip disk are available for $20 by writing:

Co-op Modules, Burdick Center for Cooperatives,

North Dakota State University, PO Box 5636, Fargo, ND or bill_nelson@ndsu.nodak.edu or call 701-231-1016.

Outreach

A short course on cooperatives recently reached teenagers in our region.

High School Outreach

A fifty minute presentation on what makes a co-op unique, the wide variety of cooperatives in the world, and future possibilities for towns like Scranton and Colfax in North Dakota and Hawley in Minnesota, were highlighted at high school presentations.

The students also taught the instructor. In Colfax, a small community thirty miles southwest of Fargo, Kathy Coyle got a lesson on small town ingenuity. County residents banded together to raise over a million dollars to build a state-of-the-art agriculture building to ensure the viability of that program for many years to come.

Coyle to join the USDA Rural Development Team

When Bill Nelson offered Kathy Coyle a research and communication position in the Burdick Center three years ago the former television news anchor was surprised to find herself in the agricultural economics department.

"I kept on relating things to my relatives who farm north of Fargo, because that's the closest I could come to a background in farming," Coyle shared. "My cousins are members of American Crystal Sugar and Dakota Growers Pasta, two new generation co-ops that have generated interest from many corners of the world.

I grew up taking the sugar plant for granted in Moorhead but at the Burdick Center I had a chance to share our area's achievements with students, and even foreigners who traveled to the Red River Valley to learn how co-ops have made a difference."

Coyle will now take that message to rural Minnesota as a community and co-op development specialist for the U.S. Department of Agriculture. She will be based in Detroit Lakes, forty-five miles east of Fargo, serving a twelve county area in northwestern Minnesota.

"My first project at NDSU was developing a tourism plan for southwestern North Dakota. I plan to use a great deal of that knowledge in the beautiful resort region of Minnesota. In 1998 I was trying to picture how to best promote the rugged buttes near Bowman, now I'll have the loons and pine trees of the Gopher state to work with. Community and co-op development are wide-open topics so it could range from tourism to housing projects to cooperative business start-ups."

"My work with the Burdick Center also sparked my interest in the power people have when they work together to manufacture and market their goods. I realize it won't happen overnight, but I look forward to the opportunity to put what we've studied at NDSU, into practice. Another factor is the importance the USDA has put on the Burdick Center and the local land grant university. I have a great deal of respect for NDSU after receiving my masters degree here, and now as a student in the new communication Ph.D. program. I have been assured the university will remain an important partner in the federal government's efforts in our region. That means a lot to me," emphasizes Coyle.

After May 1, Coyle can be reached at the USDA Rural Development office, 809-8th Street SE, Detroit Lakes, MN. phone: 218-847-8910