Cover Page

Outreach for Emerging Cooperative Business Based Solutions to

Food Deserts
Casey Thomas
Renaissance Community Cooperative
Greensboro, NC
Christina Yongue

Part I
The Overall Problem: Outreach for The Renaissance Community Cooperative and other Grocery
Cooperatives in Black Communities in the United States
A Brief Introduction
This internship will address both the health problem of food-insecurity and the non-health problem
of appropriate outreach for developing cooperatives in Black communities in the United States through the
creation of contextually appropriate and customizable outreach materials for cooperatives starting in Black
communities. The prototype for these materials will be the based on the Renaissance Community
Cooperative (RCC). The RCC is a full-service cooperative grocery store that will open in the spring of 2016
in a North East Greensboro neighborhood that is currently a food-desert (an area that faces food hardship
due to one third or more of the residents living below the poverty line and over a mile from a grocery store).
(Seligman, 2010)

Relevance of the Problems to the Renaissance Community Cooperative

The Renaissance Community Cooperatives mission is to create a democratically owned and
controlled grocery store in Northeast Greensboro that provides all of Greensboro with healthy foods at
affordable prices and has a commitment to locally sourced foods, community education and dignified jobs.
A cooperative business is one that is owned by one or more sectors of its stakeholders, for example workers,
consumers, or distributors. The RCC is a consumer cooperative that has members from all over the country,
but is largely owned by residents of the neighborhoods that surround the stores site in Northeast
Greensboro. Because the area became a food desert after a Winn Dixie grocery store (a publicly traded
business) left to open a shop in an area that would be more profitable, and allow it to yield higher returns for
its investors. By contrast the RCC as a cooperative business will be accountable to its owners, who

predominantly live in the community surrounding the store or are in solidarity with it, and would be able to
be accountable to its owners through staying in the community, keeping prices affordable, and paying
employees higher wages than other grocery stores in the region.
Moreover, as a cooperative business the RCC has both a duty towards and deep interest in promoting
the success of other cooperatives. (ICA, 2015) The RCC is in community with other efforts to start grocery
cooperatives in predominantly Black communities in the U.S., such as Fertile Ground in Raleigh and the
Detroit Black Community Food Security Network. A common thread in discussions between the
organization is the difficulty of reaching out to potential owners in the communities in which they are
opening because cooperatives are often such a foreign idea. Often when cooperatives are not considered
foreign, they are assumed mainly to be the territory of expensive, organic specialty foods stores that
primarily cater to white consumers. This is in no small part due to the fact that while cooperatives thrive
largely due to their first principle, Voluntary and Open Membership, the cooperative movement, especially
in the grocery sector tends to be predominantly white and affluent. (ICA, 2015) The RCC seeks to
challenge that exclusivity through making cooperative economics more accessible to communities of color
and using the accountability inherent in the cooperative business model to counter the economic forces that
contribute to areas becoming food deserts.

Health Problem: Food Insecurity Nationally and in Greensboro

The prevalence of food insecurity is not only a growing concern in Northeast Greensboro, but
nationally. According to the United States Department of Agricultures Economic Research Service, in 2014
86% of households in America were food secure. (USDA, 2014) That leaves 14% or 1 out of every 7
households in the U.S. that did did not have access, at all times, to enough food for an active, healthy life
for all household members. (USDA, 2014) In households with children, this was 19% or one out of every 5

households. In households with incomes below 185% of the poverty threshold, (a characteristic attributable
to much of North East Greensboro), over 1 in 3 households were food insecure. (USDA, 2014). Food
insecurity is a growing problem in cities specifically due to growing populations, income and wealth
disparities, and urban poverty. (Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 2015). In the
United States, food hardship is not due to an inability to produce enough food, but due to uneven
distribution in the market distribution of retail outlets as well as to growing rates of poverty. (Reid & Ross,
2012) In the state of North Carolina, one in four children has difficulty regularly accessing the food they
need to live healthy, active lives. (NC Food Banks, 2015) In addition, 14 percent of households in North
Carolina are eligible to participate in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, and of the roughly 1.9
million who are eligible to participate in the program, 1.7 million do. (Governing, 2015) In addition to
federally subsidized assistance, over 160,000 people in the state receive emergency food assistance per
week. (NC Food Banks, 2015) In a survey, 81% of North Carolinian households receiving food assistance
did not know where their next meal was coming from. (NC Food Banks, 2015) It would not be inappropriate
to say that food insecurity is a problem in North Carolina.
Greensboro-High Point specifically has been ranked as the metropolitan area with the most food
hardship in the nation for 2014, with a rate of 27.9%. (FRAC, 2015). The RCC is addressing food insecurity
in North East Greensboros households, but also a problem known as community food security, the ability
of a community to ensure that all its members have adequate access to healthful and acceptable food
through environmentally sustainable, economically viable, and socially desirable production, processing and
distribution systems. (Brants, 2012) The prevalence of food insecurity nationally and locally highlights the
importance of the RCCs work. A food desert is classified as an area in which over 1/3 of the population
lives under the poverty line and the area is over a mile away from the nearest full-service grocery store. The
neighborhood surrounding the site for the Renaissance Community Cooperative fits this description. The

health problem that this organization is most directly targeting is food insecurity, which is defined by Hilary
Seligman as the inability to afford enough food for an active, healthy life. (Seligman, 2010) According to
the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, food insecurity is associated with increased risks for
hypertension, diabetes, and cardiovascular risk factors. (Seligman, 2010) This was also observed when
researchers controlled for BMI, which suggests that the association between food insecurity and disease
cannot be attributed completely to a greater likelihood of obesity among food insecure people. (Seligman,
2010) For this reason, the health problem is being defined as food insecurity, and among the reasons this
report labels it as a health problem are its association with increased risk for hypertension, diabetes, and
cardiovascular risk factors.

Non Health Problem: Contextually Appropriate Outreach

The RCC will open in the summer of 2016 and anticipates a strong ramp-up period in its first year,
however in order to address the health problem of food insecurity, the RCC will need to steadily increase its
membership as it grows. In addition to increasing community support, owners purchase a share for $100 a
piece and are most likely to be the most consistent source of non-sale driven equity after the store opens. At
the present time, the RCC does not have much health marketing-like material in print form that serves to
inform the community about the potential impact community ownership can have on food access and
economic development, and that explains what a cooperative is. Outreach materials that develop buy-in are
necessary not only to encourage community-ownership, personal investment, and democratic participation
in a store that needs all three in order to thrive, but to raise funds through building memberships. Addressing
the non-health problem, outreach will help the RCC and will produce models for other start-up cooperatives
in similar neighborhoods fighting food insecurity. In order to solve the problem of food insecurity in an
economically sustainable way, the cooperative will need outreach materials that speak to the people who it
will serve and who will hopefully own it.

As a cooperative, the RCC wishes to engage in Cooperative Principle 6 (P6), Cooperation Among
Cooperatives which states that cooperatives serve their members most effectively and strengthen the
cooperative movement by working together. (ICA, 2015) Additionally, the Renaissance Community
Cooperative is somewhat of a flagship effort, in that it will be the only conventional, consumer-owned
grocery cooperative in a low-income, predominantly Black community in the country. Other efforts in
similar neighborhoods across the country are running into the same problem the RCC encountered during
our development: reaching out to people in low-income, Black communities with a new business concept
and requesting community engagement is challenging. Because cooperative education and outreach in areas
where people are not familiar with cooperative grocery stores (or are not familiar with them as accessible to
their communities) are often overlapping tasks, it is important to develop outreach materials that explain
what a cooperative is, how it operates, and how to build one in a community that looks like the one you are
in. Dr. Jessica Gordon Nembhard, researcher of Black cooperatives in the United States and author of
Collective Courage: A History of African American Cooperative Economic Thought and Practice stated at
a conference on New Economies that one problem black co-ops around the country face is that there are
No outreach materials with people who look like us. (Gordon Nembhard, 2015) She also mentioned that
most printed materials that introduce people to cooperatives are dated and not always relevant to
cooperative efforts in African American communities. (Gordon Nembhard, 2015) Other cooperators at the
conference attempting to build grocery stores in Black communities around the country said that this echoed
their needs, and that outreach is a significant barrier to building their cooperatives.

SWOT Worksheet

Strengths
Allows RCC to tell its story for local publicity
Allows RCC to tell its story for national publicity
Provides story for similar neighborhoods
interested in cooperative solutions to food deserts with
useful information
Provides institutional memory
Highlights community-members voices in the
development of the RCC
Provides RCC with outlet to voice its story to
local govt, funders, and other entities

Opportunities
To recruit more owners to the RCC
To have printable, shareable, material ready for
grants, awards, and other opportunities that may arise.
To engage with membership and build stronger
connection to cooperative because their voices are being
amplified.
To help a variety of audiences understand the
economic implications of the RCC as well as the health
implications, and their relationship to one another.

Weaknesses
It will be difficult to capture every
relevant perspective.
Even if every relevant perspective is
captured, it will be difficult to synthesize
them.

Threats
Stepping on toes of people whose
support we need if story is not told in a
sensitive manner.
Being open about vulnerabilities in the
organization might weaken organizations
public stance at a time when it needs to be
perceived as unbreakable.

Ethical Dilemmas
In all efforts, it is important to address potential ethical dilemmas. In this internship, the primary ethical
dilemma that comes to mind is that of producing materials that will be customizable and shareable, but only
to people who have the software to utilize it. Otherwise, a situation in which subsequent cooperatives who
wish to customize these materials will be in the position of depending on me or the RCC to assist it with the
technical work involved in adjusting the materials for their use. This may be overcome through distributing
the electronic files to multiple people, so that there are a variety of people who both have access to the
necessary software and are available to help edit it.

There is also the potential ethical dilemma of wanting to be authentic in discussing potential political
dynamics and the ways the RCC addressed some of them in its nascency, but to not lose support from key
stakeholders who may be offended if conflict is mentioned in the brochure.

Part II

This internship will use the Socio Ecological Model for Health Promotion (SEMHP) to
understand food insecurity as a health problem. (McLeroy, 1988) In this internship, I analyze the
health-problem of food-insecurity through identifying its root causes, with special attention to the
interplay between the larger policy, social, and economic forces, as well as the community-based
and individual-level dynamics that impact food insecurity. The non-health problem will be
analyzed through searching for and examining the contributing factors to difficulties burgeoning
grocery cooperatives in Black communities face in outreach. I will make use of the Social
Marketing Assessment and Response Tool (SMART) and its 4Ps, (product, price, place, and
promotion) to delineate the issues in outreach faced by the RCC. (McKenzie, Neiger & Thackeray,
2012)

Exploration of Contributing Factors

Food insecurity is a multifaceted problem, that analyzed through the SEMHP has
contributors that are experienced at the individual level, community level, institutional level, and
policy/economic level. For example, poverty a contributor to food insecurity (Reid & Ross, 2012)
is experienced at all levels, especially at the individual level and community level, but is an issue
that can be explained best on a larger, social and economic scale. Second Generation theory, which
was birthed in the field of international development focuses on the relationship between poverty
and food insecurity. (Simmons, 2013) Second Generation Theory asserts that in developed
countries, and many developing countries, food insecurity cannot be explained by a countrys
inability to produce enough food. (Simmons, 2013) Instead it can be explained through the

inability of the free market to create access to the food that is produced for all, specifically for
those facing poverty. (Simmons, 2103). Caitlin Aylward even asserts that the commodification of
food is a driving force towards food insecurity. When the primary method for obtaining food is
purchasing it, and food distribution is reliant on the free market, people who do not have the
capital to purchase food face food insecurity. (Alyward, 2013) The free market consistently
permits the exclusion of those who lack the funds to purchase food, and allows them to go without.
(Alyward, 2013) This occurs in two ways that we will explore here: in people not being able to
amass the funds to purchase food through full participation in the free market, and through large,
chain retail outlets being publicly traded and having a fiduciary responsibility to open only where
they will make the most profit. (Thompson, 2014) When neighborhoods are deemed less
profitable, either because their residents are too poor, or are people of color food access suffers.
(Badger, 2013) Food insecurity in neighborhoods of color decreases when people deciding where
to open food retail outlets see a neighborhood of color as unsavory, even when their buying power
is similar to that of white neighborhoods. (Badger, 2013)

Conceptual Model of Factors Impacting Food Insecurity in North East Greensboro

There are also a number of factors that contribute to the RCCs challenge of reaching out to
people who are largely Black, low-income, and have not heard of cooperative businesses. One of
those challenges is that there is a lack of printed and online outreach materials that picture Black
people in cooperatives. (Gordon Nembhard, 2015) There is also a lack of material that speaks to
the reasons and challenges that low income and Black communities face when opening a grocery
cooperative. (Gordon Nembhard, 2015) For example, while the RCC uses owner loans and
requests them from our members, most of our members cannot afford to part with $1,000 or more
for five years to help the cooperative get started. In majority communities, this type of funding
plays a larger role in cooperative development and outreach. Additionally, the cooperative grocery
sector tends to focus primarily on natural, organic, and specialty foods. While many cooperatives
in Black communities have members who are interested in these foods and are at the forefront of
finding ways to combine those needs with the needs for healthy, affordable food, many of our
cooperatives are focused on fighting food insecurity. There is also an interest in economic
development that is owned by the residents in the North East Greensboro community, and that
interest is echoed in developing Black cooperatives across the country, including Fertile Ground in
Durham, Cooperation Jackson, and the Detroit Black Food Security Network. Owning the means
to build community wealth, invest in our communities, and combat the poverty that leads to food
insecurity is also integral to the motivations for starting these cooperatives. This is somewhat
reflected in cooperative outreach literature, but not in ways that speak to the lack of communityowned investment in Black Communities.
The reasons for this lack of outreach materials are many, but specifically because the
cooperative grocery movement since the 1960s developed out of a need that people in
predominantly white and affluent communities had for natural and organic foods, that is who the

outreach materials cater to. (Whitfield, 2014) There are large cooperative institutions in the U.S.,
including particular cooperative funders who discourage people from attempting to open grocery
cooperatives in neighborhoods that have bad demographics. This is said to be the case if they are
seeking to open in neighborhoods that are considered too black or if they have too many people
making over $150,000 or under $50,000 per year. (Whitfield, 2014) This wasnt presented as a
moral judgment on the communities, but just as business advice.
In terms of the difficulties with reaching out to the specific community surrounding the
Renaissance Community Cooperative in North East Greensboro, one of the difficulties is that
many people are unfamiliar with what a cooperative is. Another is that when people have heard of
cooperatives, they have heard of them in the context of natural, organic, and high-priced food. In
addition to unfamiliarity, asking many residents to become owners is asking people who are lowincome to make a significant investment ($100) in a business that is a start up. As a start up, it may
or may not succeed. That means that because a cooperatives members are its lifes blood, in a
community that does not have a lot of financial resources, outreach means asking people with lowrisk tolerance to take a significant investment risk. Also, we are operating in a context where the
idea of starting a business with other people in the context of a democratic, community-based
setting is foreign. Asking for $100 to do so can sound like a scam. Additionally, the RCC is a
multi-racial group of people, and full of people who are not from the neighborhood. There have
been previous attempts to open grocery stores that have led to disappointment, and other economic
development in the neighborhood is often extractive. Initially, there was not a lot of trust for
outsiders, especially outsiders who were seen as rookies who might not be able to pull off a wellintentioned, but large plan. The contributors to the difficulties in outreach are outlined in appendix
B in the chart titled Analyzing the Problem of Outreach Through the 4 Ps.

Relationship Between Analysis and Internship Activities

The activities in my internship will be focused on creating outreach materials that speak to the
context in which the RCC is created, and will be customizable to speak to the contexts in which
other cooperatives in Black communities are created. This will address the issue of neighborhood
residents familiarity with cooperative businesses. These will be distributed in the store, via
canvassing, and in community meetings so that they are coupled with an opportunity for people
who are auditory learners. This will also help increase the chances that people are learning about
this from the outreach materials, but in conjunction with messages from people in their
communities who they care about. This will impact the disconnect between residents and the idea
of cooperative business, and further the community ownership of the store. Growing the stores
membership contributes to the stores financial viability and increases its ability to serve the
community by providing access to fresh healthy foods. Additionally, increased community
ownership will further root the cooperative in the residents interests and counter the mobility that
grocery stores owned by people who live outside the communities they are placed in have, and the
vulnerability they create in communities.
This issue has been previously addressed through a pamphlet that briefly explained the RCC, and
was also a membership form. It was affordably produced, and attractive but not comprehensive.
Also, its not as customizable for other cooperatives because it does not tell the story of how we
started our cooperative. The RCC also has a lot of highly attractive, well-produced videos and
online promotion materials, but these are primarily available onine and not accessible to people
who are not already connected to our social media presence, to people in their network who are, or
to media outlets that share our videos. This will be both an outreach tool and an education tool that

will serve as an attractive manual for new owners and potential new owners to learn the basics of
cooperative development and cooperative business as it relates to their neighborhood.

Objectives and Goals

The expected goals of this internship are multifold. This internship aims to achieve and share a
deeper and more comprehensive understanding of how cooperatives in minority and low-income
communities can conduct meaningful and effective outreach. A second goal is to create outreach
materials that reflect the needs and contexts of the community and explain cooperative business.
All of this is ultimately to contribute to a community-owned model of food retail that keeps and
develops wealth in low income communities and communities of color, which will make these
communities less vulnerable to the market forces that drive the existence of food deserts.

Part III
This part of the Internship Plan highlights the activities that will take place over the course of the
internship and explains their relevance to the problem, and what is hoped to be accomplished
through their undertaking. This section includes a logic model, which is a chart illustrating the
relationships between the resources that will be used, the internships activities, direct outputs, and
outcomes over time. These relationships will be expounded upon in a brief analysis. This is
followed by a Gantt chart which shows the timeframe for the various activities in the internship.

Internship Logic Model

INPUTS

ACTIVITIES

OUTPUTS

Time:
Roughly 10
hours per
week

Plan Data
Collection
Instruments

Interview &
Survey
Instruments

Materials:
Laptop,
Pens,
Paper,
Recording
Program,
Phone
Personnel:
Casey
Thomas
Interviewe
es & their
time

Software:
Adobe
InDesign,
InDesign
Templates
Printing

Connect with
community
stakeholders for
interviews

Qualitative
data from
stakeholders,
and nonmembers in
Connect with non- community
members for
surrounding
interviews
around
outreach
Conduct
Interviews &
Collection of
Survey
Strategies
from
Research
cooperatives
published
in similar
outreach
communities
strategies for
cooperatives
Collection of
cooperatives
Research
in a variety of
outreach
communities
strategies from
that have
developing
been in the
cooperatives in
start-up phase
low-income and
POC areas
Curated and
culled
Data analysis
collection of
data to share
Develop
appropriate print
Attractive,
outreach
accessible,
publications
customizable
based on the
outreach
input from
materials for a
stakeholders and
variety of
other informants
budgets

SHORT
TERM
OUTCOME
S
Increased
internal
understand
ing of
stakeholder
s view of
outreach
efforts &
what is
effective

INTERMEDI
ATE
OUTCOMES
Increased
capacity to
develop
responsive,
effective,
and contextappropriate
outreach
materials
and
strategies

Increased
connection
s with
stakeholder
s & nonmembers
of RCC
Increased
connection
s with coops across
country
Increased
access to
strategies
tried in a
variety of
communiti
es across
country
Above
information
is
digestible
and
accessible
to RCC

More
cooperative
members in
RCC and
similar
communities

Increased
capacity for
cooperatives
across the
country to
do effective
outreach

LONG
TERM
OUTCO
S
Coopera
e garne
investm
financia
and
persona
from
residen
of area
surroun
g RCC

Coopera
es in
similar
commu
es are a
to garne
membe
and use
outreac
materia
and
strategi
to start
and to
continu
growing
once th
coopera
e is ope

Residen
of
Northea
Greensb
and sim
commu
es have
increase
access
the food

Assistance
with
formatting

Develop
formatted booklet
sharing strategies
from other places
with RCC

Booklet for
RCC
stakeholders
and other
similar coops
to show
stories shared

Above
information
is
digestible
and
accessible
to other
cooperativ
es in lowincome and
Black
communiti
es

Internship Activity Plan

The above Internship Activity Plan highlights the resources, activities, and desired outcomes of
this internship. The long-term outcomes I hope for include the Renaissance Community
Cooperative garnering the type of equity and personal investment from residents of the area
surrounding the RCC and other allies and developing co-ops in similar communities being able to
garner the same kind of support and growth so that they can open and remain sustainable. All of
this will contribute to the residents of North East Greensboro and similar communities having
increased access to the food they need for healthy, active lives. Additionally, in order to combat
some of the root causes that lead to food deserts, the final long-term outcome is that there will be
grocery stores in low-income communities and communities of color that are hubs of
democratically-controlled economic activity and local economic power, that is sustainably owned
by the communities that the stores are in.

they ne
for a
healthy
active li

Grocery
stores t
are hub
econom
activity
and loca
econom
power i
sustaina
owned b
the
commu
es they
in

In order to accomplish these long-term outcomes, the RCC and other cooperatives in low-income
communities and communities of color will need to build capacity to develop effective and
context-appropriate outreach materials and strategies and increase their capacity for outreach
overall in order to attract more members. This internship will contribute to those more intermediate
outcomes through collecting qualitative data through interviews and surveys about how
stakeholders in the RCCs community view outreach efforts, their motivations for joining, where
they see opportunities, and where efforts have been successful and unsuccessful. The internship
will also involve speaking with people who have not joined to find out what barriers exist for
them, and what might make or might have made them more likely to purchase an ownership.
Additionally, it will require speaking with cooperative developers and stakeholders in developing
and established cooperatives across the country to find out which outreach strategies worked for
them, and to learn about their successes and failures in engaging their communities. It will also
involve interviewing members of cooperatives in low income and majority-minority areas, and
cooperatives in white and affluent areas. The internship will require researching published and
established outreach strategies for cooperatives. The first final product will be print-based outreach
publications that are focused on the RCC, but customizable to a variety of cooperatives with a
range of budgetary needs. The second will be a booklet that shares outreach strategies from other
places with the RCC and other cooperatives like it, and tells the story of the RCCs development.
This process will help the RCC and other developing cooperatives like it increase their
understanding of stakeholders viewpoints as they relate to outreach and efficacy. It will also
increase and improve the RCCs connections to its stakeholders and provide avenues to connect
with community members who have not become members of the co-op. Conducting interviews
and sharing the results of the research will also increase connections with co-operatives across the

country, and increase the access to outreach strategies that cooperatives starting in communities
that are demographically similar to the RCC have.

Tasks
January
Design Instruments
Identify & Make Appointments to
Interview Key-Informants
Conduct Interviews of RCC Stakeholders
who are involved and not involved
Conduct Interviews of Cooperative
Developers in Predominantly African
American &/Or Low-Income Areas
Conduct Interviews of Cooperative
Developers in Predominantly Affluent
areas
Research Published Outreach Strategies
for cooperatives
Analyzing Data
Developing print-outreach publications
Developing booklet of strategies for
outreach from various co-ops around the
country
Timeline

Months
February March

April

Data Collection Plan

To answer the question of How can the RCC best connect to its stakeholders in the community?
surveys will be developed for the RCC members and other stakeholders in the community who
have not joined the cooperative to find out about their interactions with and reactions to our
outreach, and to discern what types of outreach would be most likely to result in them joining the
RCC. Interviews will also be conducted with key-stakeholders and people who have not joined to
get a more in-depth, qualitative look at their motivations for joining or not joining. A questionnaire
will also be developed for the survey and the interview questions through taking into account the
needs of the cooperative, and the viewpoints of the board members and technical support team
through observations and conversations from the Board Retreat on January 9th, 2016.
To address the question of how have other cooperatives approached outreach, both established
cooperatives and developing cooperatives in a variety of demographic contexts will be interviewed
to find out what their outreach strategies have been and what their evaluation of these strategies is.
This will be done through phone and in-person interviews.

Data Analysis Plan

The data from the surveys and interviews will be analyzed by recording the interviews, taking
notes, and reviewing the collected qualitative data for themes. The analyst will listen for what
stakeholders and non-co-op members have preferences for and for what they dislike. The analyst
will also listen for specific ideas for outreach, or specific efforts that connected with them or that
did not engage with them as well. The data from the various representatives from other co-ops will
also be analyzed by identifying specific strategies and tactics that they used for outreach,
recruitment and engagement, and reporting their assessment of how these strategies worked in the

various contexts in which they were implemented. Themes will be identified and connected to the
strategies or highlight their distinctiveness. While a survey will be used that will ask questions that
can be analyzed quantitatively in addition to qualitatively, the internship will not assume that the
data is generalizable to the entire community (because it will be collected through snowball and
convenience sampling, not randomly), or that the data collected in Northeast Greensboro is
generalizable to other parts of the country. The purpose of the end product that shares the
information on outreach strategies with cooperatives in other communities is for it to be a mirror in
which others might reflect on their own contexts and processes, not a map for them to follow.

Appendix A.
Changeability Matrix

High Changeability, Low Importance

Connecting people with media

outlets that cover the RCC,
lending credibility from multiple
sources

Low Changeability, Low Importance

Commodification of food

Second generation theory

High Changeability, High Importance

Lack of public transportation
Retail redlining in N.E.

Greensboro
Understanding of what a
cooperative is, specifically what
the RCC is
Grocery Store wanting More
profitable neighborhoods

Low Changeability, High Importance

Grocery stores want more profitable
neighborhoods

Joblessness
Lack of Personal Transportation
Small, convenience stores, high prices,
foods with long shelf-life

Appendix B. Analyzing the Problem of Outreach Through the 4 Ps

Product
A grocery store where there wasnt
one previously
Control over a business that impacts
the economic and physical wellbeing of your neighborhood
Access to fresh, healthy groceries
A vote in how to spend what will
eventually be a surplus of thousands
of dollars in your community

Place
In a shopping center in North-East
Greensboro (physical location of store)
Meetings- Presbyterian Church of the
Cross & other churches in North East
Greensboro

Price
Promotion
$100, even over installment
Promoting through social networks of
payments of $10, that is a large
members, many of whom live in North
percentage of many peoples income
East Greensboro
Risking funds on something
Through neighborhood organizations that
unfamiliar
partner with the RCC in North East
Greensboro such as Citizens for
Reframing an understanding of
Economic & Environmental Justice,
something you are familiar with, but
Concerned Citizens of North East
only as something that is largely
Greensboro, neighborhood associations,
inaccessible to low income people
public housing residents association
and people of color
Promotion online through social media,
Risking funds on something that you
email news alerts
cannot see or conceptualize (if it is
Phone banking: calling members to
in the early start-up phase)
remind them of meetings and having
Risking funds on something that
members call their friends a concerted
may not succeed (if it is in the early
effort to get new members
start-up phase)
Mass Mailings
Time- to participate democratically
City council members who support the
in elections and meetings
RCC championing us among their
Energy, emotional strength, empathy
constituents
and negotiating if working on
Canvassing efforts with pamphlets, signcommittees or serving on the board
up sheets
Risk for many people who are
Local and national media outlets
transient in investing in a community
they may soon leave
including newspapers, radio
Time learning about a new business
Videos for online circulation and for
model
Movie Night event where videos were
formatted into a movie showing the story
Working with people you do not
of the RCC
know
Website
Trusting people who are working on
Visits to a variety of churches in and
a project that has been attempted in
different ways before and failed
outside of North East Greensboro
multiple times after giving the
Tabling at events and presenting at
neighborhood hope
organization meetings

Works
Cited
Aylward,
C. (2013)

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