Every fall, Co-op Market Owners have the opportunity to help shape the future of the co-op by voting in the Board of Directors election.

Co-op Market Grocery & Deli is a member-owned corporation. By electing members of the Board of Directors, you are participating in the democratic operation and oversight of your cooperative.

The Board of Directors we choose acts on behalf of all Owners. The board oversees our co-op’s financial condition, connects to our Owners, shapes our co-op’s vision and works closely with our General Manager to set long-term strategies. Directors must be current Owners in good standing.

There are three parts to the 2019 election.

1. Election of a board member.
2. Confirmation of two appointed board members to serve the remainder of their terms.
3. Approval of an amendment to the Bylaws. 

There are two ways to vote: electronic ballot or paper ballot.

• Electronic ballot: Instructions will be emailed after noon today to all Owners with a valid email address on record. Look for an email entitled, “Important: Login Info for Co-op Market Board Election.” It will be sent from “Kristin Summerlin, Co-op Market Election Coordinator,” with the email address noreply@directvote.net. Be sure to check your spam folder, too. If you didn’t receive the email and would like to vote online, please contact Kristin.
• Paper ballot: If you’d rather vote by paper ballot, they’re available in the store and are being mailed via USPS to Owners with no email address on file. If you receive a paper ballot in the mail, you can bring it to the store the next time you shop, or drop it in the mail.

Click here to view the 2019 ballot, including candidate bios and an explanation of the proposed Bylaws amendment.

IN GOOD STANDING

What does it mean for an Owner to be considered “in good standing”?

Our Bylaws state that Owners must be in good standing to receive Owner benefits. This is especially important for voting in our annual Board of Directors election.

To be considered “in good standing,” Owners must either have paid their full $200 investment or have made a payment of at least $5 toward their investment within the last quarter.

We have made a special effort to help our Owners get up to date in the months leading up to this election. We sent reminder postcards to those who had fallen behind on payments. Cashiers have also been reminding Owners about the requirement. We appreciate those who have responded positively.

Many of the postcards we sent were returned to us as not deliverable. It is critical that we have current contact information for every Owner, so if you haven’t updated your mailing address and email recently, please do. Cashiers may also ask you to review your contact info at the register.

We compiled our voter database from records pulled on September 6th. On that date, we had a total of 4030 Owners. Of those, 3064 were eligible to vote.

For our election to be valid, at least 10% of eligible voters must participate. This means that we will need at least 306 votes.

Remember: Each Owner number gets only one vote, so if you share a number with other members of your household, please consult with them before voting.

Our election ends and results are announced at our annual meeting on Saturday, October 19th, at JP Jones Community Center at 2400 Rickert Street. Doors open at 3 p.m.

Saturday, May 18 – 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.
Sunday, May 19 – 11 a.m. to 5 p.m.

UPDATE SUNDAY: Here’s the list of sale items updated to reflect out of stocks.

Stock your pantry and save up to 50% when you buy cases and bulk quantities at our 5th Annual Truckload Sale. We’ll set up under the tents in our parking lot.

You’ll find deep discounts on cases and bulk bags of your favorite products, including organic nuts and dried fruits, honey, coconut oil, snacks and protein bars, and more! The full list of sale items is available here.

We’ll also have some items not listed, as this sale gives us an opportunity to clear our shelves and freezers of some overstock.

This is our biggest sale of the year! Come early for the best selection!

Please note: We cannot stack discounts, so our Owner Appreciation Days 10% discount cannot be applied to Truckload Sale items.

We’ve just ended 2018 on a tremendous high note, and we wanted to share the good news.

• We experienced sales growth of 13.6%, bringing in $4.32 million in 2018. Our projection for the year had been just 6%. Thanks to our community, we’ve grown by leaps and bounds when the grocery business in general is contracting.
• We now have more than 3900 Owners who’ve invested in the store, more than double the number we had when we opened in March 2013. Co-op Owners are friends and neighbors in the community who believe in our mission and want to support the cooperative business model.
• Our Lend a Hand register round-up donations to local nonprofits grew by 38% last year to $31,027.81. Our shoppers and Owners have contributed more than $89,000 to community organizations since the program’s start in October 2013. (Almost all of these donations are less than a dollar each, so that’s 8.9 million pennies!)
• We now serve more than 325 customers every day – and many of them live and work downtown.

We also had a fabulous holiday season.

We won three categories of a Thanksgiving challenge sponsored by National Cooperative Grocers. (NCG is our cooperative of 146 retail food co-ops with more than 200 stores in 37 states and more than $2 billion in sales.)

We placed:

• 1st in highest percentage sales growth the day before Thanksgiving (30.9%)
• 1st among stores our size in the number of turkeys sold in November (740)
• 2nd in the highest growth of bone-in turkey breasts sold in November (+40)

Happy New Year, and thank you!

It’s time for our Owners to select our nonprofit recipients of next year’s Lend a Hand register round-ups.

For 2019, we have 36 applicants, and 18 of them have never received Lend a Hand donations. We invite our Owners to select 11 of these nonprofits for our monthly round-ups. (December is reserved for collecting necessities for the shelter residents at the Interior Alaska Center for Non-Violent Living.)

Please review the applications linked below before completing the Lend a Hand selection survey. You can also review our charitable donation policy. Asterisks indicate organizations that have not previously benefited from Lend a Hand. To view prior years’ totals, click here.

To give you time to review the applications, our survey will remain open through December 24th.

• Alaska Center for Children & Adults*
• Alaska Songbird Institute
• Big Brothers Big Sisters of Alaska
• Boreal Sun Charter School*
• Bread Line Inc. (Stone Soup Cafe/Stone’s Throw Culinary Training)
• Breast Cancer Detection Center
• Calypso Farm & Ecology Center
• Delta Junction Trails Association*
• Fairbanks Animal Shelter Fund
• Fairbanks Children’s Museum
• Fairbanks Community Food Bank
• Fairbanks Montessori School*
• Fairbanks Open Radio*
• Fairbanks Resource Agency*
• Fairbanks Senior Center/North Star Council on Aging Meals on Wheels
• Fairbanks Summer Arts Festival*
• Fairbanks Youth Advocates
• FOCUS Homeschool*
• Friends of Alaska CASA
• Friends of Creamer’s Field
• Friends of Fox Spring*
• Georgeson Botanical Garden Society
• Green Star of Interior Alaska
• Guys Gals Read Inc.*
• Healing Native Hearts Coalition*
• Inspiring Girls Expeditions*
• Interior AIDS Association*
• Interior Alaska Cancer Association*
• KUAC Friends Group*
• Literacy Council of Alaska
• NAMI Fairbanks*
• North Star Dance Foundation*
• North Star Imagination Library
• Northern Alaska Environmental Center
• Presbyterian Hospitality House*
• The Folk School Fairbanks