Cooperative | Wikipedia audio article
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Date: 2018-11-27

This is an audio version of the Wikipedia Article:
Cooperative

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SUMMARY
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A cooperative (also known as co-operative, co-op, or coop) is "an autonomous association of persons united voluntarily to meet their common economic, social, and cultural needs and aspirations through a jointly-owned and democratically-controlled enterprise". Cooperatives may include:

businesses owned and managed by the people who use their services (a consumer cooperative)
organizations managed by the people who work there (worker cooperatives)
organizations managed by the people to whom they provide accommodation (housing cooperatives)
hybrids such as worker cooperatives that are also consumer cooperatives or credit unions
multi-stakeholder cooperatives such as those that bring together civil society and local actors to deliver community needs
second- and third-tier cooperatives whose members are other cooperatives
 platform cooperatives that establish an user-owned computing platform, and uses a website, mobile app or a protocol to facilitate the sale of goods and services.
 non-profit community organizationsResearch published by the Worldwatch Institute found that in 2012 approximately one billion people in 96 countries had become members of at least one cooperative. The turnover of the largest three hundred cooperatives in the world reached $2.2 trillion. If they were to be a country, this would make them the seventh largest.One dictionary defines a cooperative as "a jointly owned enterprise engaging in the production or distribution of goods or the supplying of services, operated by its members for their mutual benefit, typically organized by consumers or farmers". Cooperative businesses are typically more economically  resilient than many other forms of enterprise, with twice the number of co-operatives (80%) surviving their first five years compared with other business ownership models (41%). Cooperatives frequently have social goals which they aim to accomplish by investing a proportion of trading profits back into their communities. As an example of this, in 2013, retail co-operatives in the UK invested 6.9% of their pre-tax profits in the communities in which they trade as compared with 2.4% for other rival supermarkets.The International Co-operative Alliance was the first international association formed (1895) by the cooperative movement. It includes the World Council of Credit Unions. A second organization formed later in Germany: the International Raiffeisen Union. In the United States, the National Cooperative Business Association (NCBA CLUSA; the abbreviation of the organization retains the initials of its former name, Cooperative League of the USA) serves as the  sector's oldest national membership association. It is dedicated to ensuring that cooperative businesses have the same opportunities as other businesses operating in the country and that consumers have access to cooperatives in the marketplace. A U.S. National Cooperative Bank formed in the 1970s.
By 2004 a new association focused on worker co-ops was founded, the United States Federation of Worker Cooperatives.
Since 2002 cooperatives and credit unions could be distinguished on the Internet by use of a .coop domain. Since 2014, following International Cooperative Alliance's introduction of the Cooperative Marque, ICA cooperatives and WOCCU credit unions can also be identified by a coop ethical consumerism label.