Elementos que retardan una aplicación

One way for food co-ops to keep their running costs down and pass on savings from overhead expenses was to rely on unpaid volunteer support. However, all the co-op organisers I spoke to reported that getting the majority of members to volunteer their time to run the co-op was a considerable challenge. At TPS, on average fewer than 20% of members turned up for work shifts. The reasons given to membership co-ordinators were mainly lack of time or lack of interest in the kind of shop-floor work required of them at the co-op. Similarly at True Food, many members would come and shop at the co-op but not find time to support the co-op with their labour. One co-founder of True Food spoke about the importance of participation and the variability he saw among members in their commitment to the co-op:

Then, the É challenge to us in the future is participation. We cannot see ourselves, as I said earlier, differently to whatÕs going on in the rest of the society. Society, in my view, and communities have been fragmented in the last 20-30-40 years and we are having to rebuild our communities. And to get people to participate is actually very very hard. We have some fantastic participation, literally hundreds of hours a month. Our chairman you know is the hardest working guy IÕve ever met. You know, heÕs got a full time job and yet as a volunteer he makes a remarkable effort and many other people do too. But we are a co-operative of 450 members and many hundreds of our members just pay 10 pounds a year and thatÕs it. Now I canÕt go out and drag people in by their collar and say, Ôlook youÕre a member of True Food, help usÕ. They are likely to leave. Some of them are doing 68 hours a week and some of them have young children and some of them have health issues and so forth. But our community is going to become healthy again by participation.

Stroudco required relatively little work from members as it was only open a few hours on Saturdays. But even then it did not receive enough voluntary help from members to run the operation smoothly. There was a small core of members who ended up helping the one part-time employed manager most of the time. At the University Co-op, which required volunteers to help with ordering, distribution and promotion functions, just over 10% of members were actively involved in running the co-op. A co-founder felt that one reason for the lack of involvement of students with the distribution might be because the pick-up is during a working day when most students are busy with their

classes. Nevertheless, he considered getting more students to engage with the operational functions of the co-op a ÔstruggleÕ.

Additionally, getting members to sign up did not always mean a proportionate increase in the number of customers. At two of the co-ops I studied only a small section of membership were regular customers at those co-ops. At TPS, members were not the main customers of the co-op. On two occasions that I served at the tills, I found that only around 15% of the customers I served were members. Thinking that this might have been an anomaly, I asked the product buyer if she knew the percentage of members and non-members among all those who shopped at the co-op. She replied that she did not track this statistic regularly but had done so on one occasion and found a figure similar to mine. She estimated that not more than 20% of members were regular customers at TPS. Also at Stroudco, regular orders were made by only 10 to 15 members from a total of around 50 in 2011. After marketing the co-op at many local events in Stroud and getting the membership number up to around 200, the weekly orders increased to only about 25 per week in 2012. This showed that even though marketing efforts had been successful in attracting significant membership, it was still difficult to get members to change their existing shopping patterns. Few new members became regular patrons of the co-op.

Analysing the member surveys at TPS and Stroudco pointed to a few reasons for the discrepancy between membership numbers and purchasing behaviour. Members were used to a wide range of product choices and a certain price level at mainstream supermarkets. The sustainable food co-ops did not meet those price and choice expectations in many product categories. Therefore, despite supporting the values of these co-ops, some members found it onerous to accept the limitations they encountered in changing their preferred grocery store. Moreover, a few members of TPS who had been inspired to sign up due to the television documentary did not live or work in the vicinity of the co-op and hence could not shop at the co-op regularly. Inconvenience was another factor. Stroudco required members to collect their delivery on Saturdays within a certain time-window every week. This, according to some members, made it inconvenient compared to other options they had for shopping local and sustainable food in the town such as at farm shops or at the farmersÕ market.

An aspect of the co-op that appeared to be crucial to member participation in many cases was its ability to function as a Ôsocial hubÕ. In the TPS survey, some members expressed their wish for opportunities to socialise with other members. This interest was not just about working together for the co-op, but to get to know other like-minded members, have fun together with them in events, such as parties and quiz nights, and develop more relationships in ways that went beyond the activity at the co-op. At TPS, I saw some such relationships flourish between very active members who regularly volunteered their time on the shop floor and in the committees, and frequently attended the co-opÕs events. However, this was a small group relative to the size of the membership. There may have been members who did not have any interest in or time for involving themselves with the co-op outside their role as conscious customers. Yet, it was evident from survey responses and also from my conversations with some members in the store that they expected more opportunities for socialising.

At Stroudco, there were fewer opportunities for co-working than at TPS, but also few other socialising occasions for members to get to know one another better. I had the opportunity to speak by phone to about eleven members who had stopped ordering with Stroudco after making a couple of purchases. My questions explored their reasons for doing so. One member said the co-op did not meet her expectations of being a ÔwelcomingÕ community. She explained:

To be honest with you, it wasnÕt what we kind of imagined it to be..and there was...I donÕt know how to put this really. Honestly, it wasnÕt very friendly. So there wasnÕt this feel from it that people were being friendly, that people were very welcoming. We kind of went up to pick up the stuff and people would be on the computer. There wasnÕt really any engagement there. It didnÕt feel like an engagement I guess. And we went there another time and people were sat down there and kind of having a meeting. It was almost like we were an inconvenience to the lot because there was a meeting going on. I kind of had a view of it, a kind of imagined view that it will be very sort of community feel and people would be more friendly. I may sound a bit banal but that was one of the things.

I emphasise that only one member made such a comment and her experience might have been an isolated one, but this kind of feedback is not easy to give in a telephone call to a representative of the co-op. Hence, I suspect that some other members may have felt the same. Stroudco had in the first few months of its existence organised farm visits and some social events. However, in the six months I was in touch with its management and received the co-opÕs monthly newsletters, I did not come across any socially engaging events that could address this memberÕs concerns. In a slightly

different comment, however, another member gave an example of how she found the co-opÕs staff helpful:

They were really helpful and really nice. I didnÕt quite get it at first. I walked all the way there and then my order was too heavy. So [the co-op manager] actually dropped my order to my house. So that was really helpful.

Thus, at times StroudcoÕs staff went out of their way to support the co-opÕs customers. When the other member spoke of co-opÕs organising members not engaging with her on her visit, it was not customer service that she found lacking. Instead, she was perhaps looking to have a friendly chat as an opportunity to participate in a community that gave her a social sense of belonging with people who shared her interests in sourcing local food. More interaction with other members through events and group activities may have facilitated that sense of community. A co-founder of True Food mentioned that in his experience some people joined not because they were interested in sustainable food, but because they wanted to be part of a community. He hoped that creative ways of bringing people together in networks of interdependence Ôwill bring about changes in the fragmentation of participationÕ within the co-op.

At the University Co-op, a co-founder felt that drawing members together, through social events and activities such as sharing recipes, could encourage more members to increase their participation at the co-op and provide volunteer support. Some student- members had provided feedback that the low price at which they were able to order fruit and vegetable boxes had made fresh and local food accessible to them for the first time in their lives. This was especially the case with those students who had before joining the co-op neither made a conscious choice about buying their own food nor cared about food provenance. The founding members wanted to change the way students engaged with the co-op. They did not want them to see the co-op just as a cheap fruit and vegetables shop. Instead, they envisioned the co-op as a vehicle to educate students more about where their food came from and how it was grown, and also develop in students an understanding of the nutritional and environmental implications of food choices. This process of learning, they felt, could be best stimulated through social engagement with other members at the co-op. Unfortunately, organising these opportunities for learning and socialising on a regular basis had not been easy due to lack of adequate volunteer support.

However, at the Pimlico Co-op, getting members to socially engage with each other was not a problem. This buying group was small and most members were already acquainted with one another to some extent. They had a shared interest in environmental sustainability expressed through their involvement in the Transition Town movement. They also used to meet socially, aside from their association with the co-op. Their group was therefore well integrated in their sense of shared purpose and commitment to environmental sustainability. The founder of the Pimlico Co-op elaborated on how he felt community support gave members of his food buying group an opportunity to transition from an awareness of sustainable food consumption to its everyday practice:

That [pro-environmental behavioural] change in people is possible because as part of the Transition Movement you start to meet lots of people who have similar ideas, who then start to work together, socialise together and they as a group start changing and they become more and more similar in their thought patterns. So thereÕs not exactly a peer pressure but thereÕs a whole support group around you who can help you. While someone may watch Farm for a Future individually at home seeing it on television or whatever and may think Ôyeah, this is great, I should make a differenceÕ, but then they watch the next film and ok theyÕve forgotten the first one. Unless thereÕs a burning desire in them to make the change, they wonÕt make the change. But if youÕve got a group of 20-30 people who you are meeting every single day and you know youÕre working together, you are going out, you are growing food together, you are drinking together, you are socialising, you are watching the same kind of films. You get together to watch films together. ItÕs much much easier. Especially if you are there, typically in these environments, you share meals. So when you meet in the evening everyone brings something to the table. So it just becomes much much easier to make that transition.

This kind of close-knit community where members shared much more than food purchasing practice, was missing, for the most part, at the other four co-ops. Therefore, although all these co-ops, to varying degrees, made sustainable food options available to interested members and customers, attracting and motivating members who were less versed with consuming sustainable food to deepen their practice through social engagement and learning was only possible to the extent the co-ops created opportunities for members to socialise, outside the function of collectively running the co-op.

5.2.3.1 Discussion with reference to other studies

The need to balance volunteer participation of members with paid staff as the co-opsÕ operations grew in scale and complexity was highlighted by RoncoÕs (1974) work on the 1970s wave of US food co-ops. Sustaining membership participation was recognised as

a challenge by many of the co-ops Ronco reviewed. Similarly, other studies on food co- ops have identified reliance on members as volunteers as a particularly difficult aspect of managing co-opsÕ operations (Freathy and Hare 2004; Murtagh and Ward 2009). Smith et al. (2012) found in their evaluative study of some English co-ops that the more established co-ops were more likely to have a mixed model of using both paid employees and member volunteers. Cotterill (1983) identifies an inverse relationship between size and membership participation in co-ops, but also suggests that remaining small may not always be a viable option. He observes (ibid.: 126):

If volunteer labour fails to offset diseconomies of small size, the small is beautiful hypothesis fails the market test. Co-operatives that insist on remaining small will then be driven out of business by their larger, more cost efficient competitors.

The trade offs between maintaining a small organisation supported exclusively by volunteers and the need for inducting hired staff and introducing more bureaucracy and hierarchy in the organisation was a matter of active debates within many of the 1970s US co-ops that experienced growth (Ronco 1974; Cox 1994; McGrath 2004).

It is hard to envision how a co-op can foster a community around a shared purpose of sustainable food consumption and create opportunities for social learning without finding ways to get members to engage with one another as well as with the environmental objectives of the co-op. Some studies of co-ops have shown that activities that engage members to interact with each other, such as meetings, training sessions, celebrations, and task committees, help members to increase their acquaintance with each other and build interpersonal relationships, fostering both self-confidence and finding value in further association and group participation (Majee and Hoyt 2009, 2010; Bradbury and Middlemiss 2014). Additionally, Quarter and Midha (1999) found that members of a co-op can learn through informal processes, most importantly, through direct experience of practice and observation, through discussions with other members in meetings or one-to-one chats, and by asking internal experts and other members. But for these informal processes to be effective, there must be adequate opportunities for members to interact inside and outside of the co-op, feel comfortable with each other and develop a sense of trust and understanding with each other. Also, Ronco (1974: 86) discusses ways to inculcate more commitment among members and suggests that a food co-op must Ôprovide opportunities for members to get together away from the co-op, help members develop political skills, and keep open channels of

Ôparticipation chainÕ model draws attention to developing skills and resources, mobilising participation opportunities and motivating members based on their interests to improve membership commitment to the co-op. Co-operative organisations can appeal to membersÕ individualistic as well as collectivistic motivations (Birchall and Simmons 2004a, 2004b). Some scholars have pointed to the ability of co-ops to cater to the material needs of a neglected segment of the marketplace or specific communities (Freathy 2003; Novkovic 2008). Food co-ops can make certain products more available or more affordable by leveraging collective bargaining and offering member discounts. These Ôselective incentivesÕ (Olson 1965) can thus attract member participation. However, Birchall and Simmons (2004b) found in a study that for a significant majority of participating members collectivistic incentives such as Ôshared goals, shared values, and a sense of communityÕ outweighed individualistic incentives (Birchall and Simmons 2004b). Hence, as discussed earlier in this chapter, cultivating a sense of shared purpose itself may enhance participation.

Furthermore, for stimulating membership recruitment and participation, the intrinsic satisfaction gained simply from a Ôneed to belongÕ or desiring a Ôsense of communityÕ can be an important factor. For instance, in the study of Welsh food delivery projects, where no selective material benefits were available to volunteers, their motivation to get involved was built on their sense of community belonging and community service, influence of social networks and the need for social engagement and interaction with other people in their community (Elliott et al. 2006). Baumeister and Leary (1995) draw from a large body of empirical work to put forward their thesis that the Ôneed to belongÕ, i.e. the motivation to form at least a minimum number of enduring interpersonal relationships that are characterised by frequent interactions, emotionally pleasant experiences and a mutual concern for welfare, is a fundamental drive for all humans. In terms of understanding motives for group affiliation, they suggest that it may not be necessary for some people to derive pragmatic benefits or self-esteem through group associations. ÔPeople may simply desire to belong to groupsÕ (Baumeister and Leary 1995: 521). However, studies show that the Ôneed to belongÕ is satiable and once people feel fulfilled with the quality and quantity of their social relationships, they may not make further efforts to build new relationships (Gere and MacDonald 2010). The implications of this for recruiting members and volunteers in community initiatives