There is a moment at every co-operative annual meeting that you don’t get at a shareholder AGM. It’s the moment when an ordinary member – not an analyst, nor an institutional investor, nor a board appointee – stands up and asks a question that the leadership actually has to answer.
This week, the Channel Islands Co-operative Society holds its Annual General Meetings – Tuesday in Guernsey and Wednesday in Jersey, and with it, elections for one director per island.
I sit on the CI Co-op board as a non-executive director and Chairman, so I have a particular interest in both the process and the principle. But I want to use this moment to say something broader about why co-operatives deserve more attention and more credit than they typically get.
What a Co-operative Actually Is
It sounds simple, and the simplicity is the point. A co-operative is an organisation owned and governed by its members – the people who use it, work for it, or both. Profit, where it exists, serves the membership and the mission rather than external shareholders. Decisions are made through democratic structures, not concentrated in the hands of those with the largest financial stake.
That model is older than most modern corporations. The Rochdale Pioneers established the principles in 18441. And yet in a world that has spent 180 years being told that shareholder primacy is the only serious model for running an organisation, the co-operative continues to thrive – quietly, durably, and often in places where it matters most.
There are over three million co-operatives worldwide, with more than a billion members. They employ 280 million people2. The largest consumer co-operatives turn over billions (The 300 largest cooperatives and mutuals generate USD 2.79 trillion in turnover). The model is not a historical curiosity, it is a living, functioning alternative – and in many communities, the only serious one.
The Seven Principles
The International Co-operative Alliance defines seven principles that guide co-operative organisations globally3. They are worth spelling out, because they are more radical than they sound.
Voluntary and open membership. Co-operatives are open to anyone who can use their services and is willing to accept the responsibilities of membership. No discrimination, no exclusivity.
Democratic member control. Members govern. They elect representatives, set policy, and have a genuine voice in how the organisation is run. One member, one vote — not one share, one vote.
Member economic participation. Members contribute to and democratically control the capital of the co-operative. Surpluses are allocated to members in proportion to their transactions, not their financial stake.
Autonomy and independence. Co-operatives are self-governing. Where they enter into agreements with external bodies – including governments – they do so on terms that preserve their democratic control.
Education, training and information. Co-operatives invest in the knowledge and capability of their members, elected representatives, managers, and employees.
Co-operation among co-operatives. The movement is not purely competitive. Co-operatives actively work together – locally, nationally, and internationally. Though this is done within the legislative restrictions.
Concern for community. Co-operatives work for the sustainable development of their communities. Not as a marketing strategy. As a founding commitment.
Read that list and ask yourself how many of those principles are embedded in the governance of the organisations that shape most of our economic lives.
Member Participation — The Thing That Makes It Real
Of all these principles, the one that co-operatives live or die by is democratic member control.
Participation is the engine. Without it, a co-operative’s democratic structures become formalities. The AGM becomes a rubber stamp. Elections go uncontested. Decisions that should belong to the membership get made, in practice, by a small group of people the membership barely knows.
This is not a hypothetical risk. It is a pattern that has played out in co-operatives around the world — not through bad faith, but through the entirely human tendency to let processes atrophy when they feel comfortable and stable.
The antidote is genuine engagement. Members who turn up. Members who vote. Members who stand for election. Members who ask questions that require real answers.
That is harder to sustain than it sounds. Life is busy. The connection between casting a vote for a co-operative director and the quality of your weekly shop is not immediately obvious.
And yet it is real — because the people in those governance roles make decisions that shape the organisation, its investment, its values, and its relationship with the community it serves.
This Week: CI Co-op Annual Meeting
Which brings me to Tuesday and Wednesday.
The Channel Islands Co-operative Society annual members meeting sits at the heart of how the CI Co-op governs itself. This week it does so on both islands – Guernsey and Jersey – with elections for one director in each.
These are not ceremonial positions. Co-op directors are responsible for the strategic oversight of an organisation that is genuinely woven into daily island life. The shops, fuel, pharmacy, funeral, employment, charitable giving and partnerships with local community groups – CI Co-op is not simply a retailer. It is embedded in the islands – social and economic – in a way that a supermarket owned by a distant holding company simply is not.
The director elections are the moment when that ownership becomes tangible. When the abstract principle of member governance becomes a real choice made by real people about who they trust to steward an organisation that serves their community. When the board and executive come alongside members for open and honest dialogue.
What is so encouraging is that there are a large number of candidates in each island – seven in Guernsey and 11 in Jersey.
If you are a CI Co-op member, you have a vote. That vote is not a formality. It is the thing that distinguishes this organisation from every other place you could spend your money.
Why This Model Matters for the Channel Islands
Guernsey and Jersey are a community of 170,000. At this scale, the abstract becomes real very quickly. The CI Co-op has a membership of over 128,000. That’s 75% of the entire population of the Channel Islands.
When a large organisation in the islands makes a decision – about investment, employment, its relationship with the community – it is felt. Not as a statistic, but as a tangible impact on you or someone you know.
The co-operative model is unusually well suited to environments where scale is small and relationships are dense. The accountability it builds – through membership, elections, democratic governance – is not a constraint on good decision-making. It is a condition for it.
I have sat in CI Co-op board meetings and felt the difference that community accountability makes to the quality of deliberation and care for the community. You are not deciding for abstract shareholders in a spreadsheet. You are deciding for people who shop with you, who work for you, and who live alongside you. That changes the conversation.
A Note on Standing for Election
If you are a CI Co-op member and you have ever thought about standing for the board – this week is a reminder that the path is open.
Co-operative governance needs people with a range of backgrounds and perspectives. It needs people who care about the organisation and its community, who are willing to invest time in understanding how it works, and who will ask honest questions in the boardroom.
The skills needed aren’t particularly unusual. Commercial judgment, community awareness, a commitment to the organisation’s values and a willingness to be genuinely independent when the situation requires it.
If that sounds like you, in any future cycle, I’d encourage you to explore it seriously.
Co-operatives Are Not Nostalgic. They Are Necessary
There is a temptation to frame co-operatives as a charming historical alternative, the kind of thing that works in theory but can’t compete with the efficiency of shareholder-driven capitalism.
The evidence doesn’t support that framing. Co-operatives have survived depressions, wars, and repeated predictions of their irrelevance. They have done so because they solve a problem that shareholder-driven organisations structurally cannot: they align the interests of the people who run the organisation with the people the organisation is supposed to serve.
That is not a minor advantage. In a world increasingly concerned with who benefits from economic activity and who doesn’t, it is a foundational one.
The CI Co-op annual meeting this week is a small, local, practical expression of a very large idea. One member, one vote. Governance that belongs to the people it serves. An organisation accountable to its community because it is owned by its community.
I think that’s worth turning up for.
Guernsey meeting begins at 6.30 pm at St Pierre Park on Tuesday 19th May;
Jersey meeting begins at 6.30 pm at Radisson Blu on Wednesday 20th May.
The CI Co-op Annual General Meeting takes place this Tuesday and Wednesday. If you are a member, check your correspondence for details of how to participate and how to cast your vote in the director elections.
Jon Bond is a non-executive director of the Channel Islands Co-operative Society and a director of Sark Shipping. He runs Evans Bond, an accounting and advisory firm based in Guernsey and is principal of Melius Consulting Limited. He writes at jonbond.biz.
The views expressed here are his own.
- In 1844 a group of 28 artisans working in the cotton mills in Rochdale established the first modern co-operative business, the Rochdale Equitable Pioneers Society https://ica.coop/en/rochdale-pioneers ↩︎
- https://ica.coop/en/cooperatives/facts-and-figures ↩︎
- https://ica.coop/en/cooperatives/cooperative-identity-values-principles ↩︎
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