Saint Paul, MN – National Co+op Grocers and its member co-ops have helped raise more than $107,361 for Ukraine’s cooperative businesses and its members.
In an act of cooperation with and concern for Ukrainian co-ops, National Co+op Grocers (NCG) partnered with the Cooperative Development Foundation (CDF) and NCBA CLUSA to launch a fundraising drive to support the Ukrainian cooperative community’s immediate and ongoing needs.
As part of the drive and to speed action, NCG pledged a 100% match for donations made by the retail food co-op system by March 10. Through that date, the cooperative community donated $53,680, which NCG matched to reach the $107,361 total.
COOP Ukraine, which includes 15,000 enterprises, 3,000 restaurants, seven hotels, 300 manufacturing businesses and shops, and 300 markets throughout Ukraine, is working to maintain operations so member-owners can continue to rely on co-op goods and services.
“Ukraine's consumer cooperatives [are] suffering enormous losses,” said Illia Gorokhovskyi, chair of COOP Ukraine's board of directors. “But we are determined to overcome everything and build a peaceful, happy Ukraine.”
“Our sixth co-op principle is ‘cooperation among cooperatives,’ and we hope this drive can help some of the Ukrainian community’s co-ops maintain essential services to the people of Ukraine,” said C.E. Pugh, CEO of NCG. “We greatly appreciate members of the U.S. cooperative community coming together so quickly to make these contributions, and we are honored and humbled to match them.”
CDF’s Disaster Recovery Fund is continuing its fundraising drive for COOP Ukraine and Frontier Natural Products Cooperative has pledged to match up to $25,000 in additional donations made through March 31. Donations can be made online or by sending a check to CDF at 1775 I St. NW, 8th floor, Washington, DC 20006 indicating Disaster Recovery Fund in the memo line.
About CDF’s Disaster Recovery Fund
The Disaster Recovery Fund helps cooperatives and cooperators get back on their feet after disasters or other emergency hardship situations. 100% of money donated to the Disaster Recovery Fund will go to support cooperatives. CDF does not charge an administrative fee for management of the Fund. In the last four years, the Disaster Recovery Fund has provided nearly $500,000 in grants to cooperatives, families and communities affected by disasters in the United States, Puerto Rico, the Bahamas and Uganda.
About NCG
National Co+op Grocers (NCG), founded in 1999, is a business services cooperative for retail food co-ops located throughout the United States. NCG helps unify food co-ops in order to optimize operational and marketing resources, strengthen purchasing power and, ultimately, offer more value to food co-op owners and shoppers everywhere. Our 148 member and associate co-ops operate more than 200 stores in 38 states with combined annual sales of $2.4 billion. NCG is a winner of the dotCoop Global Awards for Cooperative Excellence and a Certified B Corporation. See a map of NCG member co-ops. To learn more about co-ops, visit grocery.coop.
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Media inquiries may be directed to Eric Davis, edavis@curiousplot.agency, 612-202-9407.