CDS Consulting Co-op specializes in providing consulting services to cooperatives in the areas of:
- expansion and growth,
- improving retail operations,
- leadership development and governance and,
- starting a food co-op
We understand both your cooperative organization and your business and work with you to integrate and strengthen both.
We are passionate about all cooperatives and are committed to cooperative development. CDS Consulting Co-op has provided services to hundreds of cooperatives of all sizes and is active in supporting the growing wave of new food co-ops. Our specialized databases allow us to identify best practices and make recommendations based on analysis of comprehensive data.
CDS Consulting Co-op is now organized as a shared services cooperative owned by our consultants in order to continue to increase our capacity for meeting the needs of the food co-op sector. We became a co-op in 2008 after a mutually beneficial 21 year affiliation with Cooperative Development Services, a nonprofit dedicated to helping support the creation and development of urban and rural co-ops across sectors in the upper Midwest.
Our services are offered on a fee-for-service basis to all food co-op groups along the continuums of co-op size and organizational development. CDS Consulting Co-op is the exclusive agent of its members whom clients contract for services.
CDS Consulting Co-ops’ member consultants elect 5 members to our board of directors. Mark Goehring is our board chair. Kevin Edberg, Executive Director of Cooperative Development Services has been appointed to serve on our Board of Directors. Marilyn Scholl serves as our co-op’s manager.
Take the next step in your co-op's future. Contact us.
Progress Report
In May 2011, we published a Progress Report to the Food Co-op Community (PDF, 1.3MB) with an overview of our activities and performance as the CDS Consulting Co-op in the food co-op sector. While we are owned by our member consultants, we see ourselves as also accountable to the food co-op community and as partners in the success of food co-ops. In this report we share what our work together has accomplished, and how our continued collaboration will benefit our sector. Click here to view the complete report.
More on CDS Consulting Co-op
Find out more about the CDS consultants through the years in this brief overview of our history.
Here is a short clip about CDS Consulting Co-op that was presented as part of "Co-op Connections," an online recorded workshop presented on September 29, 2010, as part of the Cooperative Board Leadership Development (CBLD) program.
To view the clip, click on the arrow and wait a few minutes for the video to load.
To view the entire presentation, go to Co-op Connections.
