By Estanislao Albano, Jr.
What kills cooperatives.
Without doubt, Tabuk Farmers’ Multi-purpose Cooperative (TAFAMULCO) CEO and City Cooperative Development Council Chairman Emilio Dulnuan is one of the most authoritative persons in the province when it comes to the topic of cooperatives. Having nurtured the TAFAMULCO from its birth in 1986 to the No. 17 in the region in terms of assets it is now through the bad times and the good certainly give weight to his discourse on cooperatives. Add to that his knack for slicing the issue right through the heart and he is a guru on the topic.
One of the questions I put to him during a recent conversation is what dooms cooperatives. His answers were as follows:
If the cooperative or any organization for that matter neglects to meet and thresh out matters regularly, it will die. The cooperative should meet whether there is something good to talk about or there is none. This need is even more compelling during the early stages because a newly born cooperative is just like a baby which catches colds very easily. But there are times when it is easier to attend to a human baby with colds than to a cooperative going through birth pains because just a small incident could cause members to sulk leading to the eventual disintegration of the young organization. Regularly bringing the cooperative to talk about problems definitely increases the chance of a cooperative to survive the difficult and delicate stage.
One sign of a doomed cooperative is fear of being audited. They do not understand the purpose of auditing. They do not know that audit recommendations are vital to the life of a cooperative specially if the auditors are exposed to a lot of other cooperatives from which they derived lessons. Small cooperatives usually ask what wrongdoing they are committing that they should be audited not knowing they could learn a lot from the activity.
They do not recognize the important role of continuous education and training. They fail to take advantage of trainings where they could not only learn from the facilitators but from their fellow trainees specially if these come from big cooperatives. Actually, there is also something to learn from dying cooperatives because one would know what to avoid doing.
They are not active in inter-cooperative organizations. They do not realize they could learn a lot from interacting and working with other cooperatives.
They are heavy borrowers. Excessive loan exposure cooperatives. The lenders will run away with the money of the cooperative specially if the cooperative does not know how to manage the loans. While it is true that the loan proceeds help the cooperative to serve the members, there will be no income because the profits will be given to another institution. It is not bad to borrow but it should only for augmentation and not as chief source of operational funds. There are many cooperatives who borrow more than they could handle. Cooperatives should learn to be self-reliant. Members could make this happen by contributing their resources, their skills and talents for the common good instead of relying on outsiders including the government. I saw one ooperative which died due to government dole outs.
The TAFAMULCO learned the value of self-reliance the hard way. For ten years, we borrowed and the stress it brought on the cooperative was tremendous. We weaned the cooperative from reliance on borrowed funds by campaigning for savings from the public.
On the question of whether or not there are people suited and not suited for the cooperative way of life, Dulnuan answered in the positive giving two unmistakable traits of a potential good cooperative member. First, he has a strong sense of volunteerism. He is willing to work without pay. People who require payment for each effort they exert do not survive in the cooperative movement. Second and most important of all, he is conscientious about paying his obligations. There are people who only know how to borrow but not to pay their loans. Even if they have money, they do not pay. These are the type of people who destroy cooperatives. The good thing about that is just like there was just one Judas among the disciples, they are fewer in number in cooperatives.**