Over the last year, team members with the CFAES Center for Cooperatives have collected, reviewed, and verified information from industry trade organizations, the Ohio Secretary of State, and other public sources to develop a census of almost 1,100 cooperative locations across the Buckeye state. From credit unions to food co-ops, Ohio is covered in new and established cooperatives that contribute to the state’s economy.
In partnership with the CFAES Knowledge Exchange team at Ohio State, the data was built into an interactive map that will be available to the public. The Center is releasing a self-guided exploration of the cooperative economy that highlights the interactive map and the diversity of Ohio’s co-ops. The map will allow co-op leaders, community ownership advocates, policymakers, cooperative developers, and entrepreneurs to find cooperatives in their area and locate cooperative models to learn from as they develop new co-ops. The data will also create opportunities for the team at the Center for Cooperatives to conduct comparative historical analyses and other applied research on Ohio’s cooperative economy.
Explore the map of Ohio’s Cooperatives here.
To build the cooperative database, Center staff gathered data from numerous public sources, including industry trade associations such as the National Council of Farmer Cooperatives, the Ohio Credit Union League, and the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association, as well as federal and state sources including the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the U.S. Farm Credit Administration, and the Ohio Secretary of State, among others. Center staff verified each cooperative in the database by assessing whether the entity was mutually owned by multiple members, operated on a non-profit cooperative basis, or provided bulk purchasing on a cooperative basis. Center staff also verified whether each cooperative was still active, using public sources like websites, social media, and news articles.
The project revealed the true diversity of cooperatives in Ohio. From breweries and laundries to financial services, agriculture, and housing, each cooperative plays an important role in the state’s cooperative community and economy.
Out of the 452 cooperatives headquartered in Ohio, 228 are credit unions. The figure below shows a breakdown of cooperatives headquartered in Ohio by sector. The 1,088 physical co-op locations included in the map of Ohio’s cooperatives include cooperatives headquartered in Ohio, branches of co-ops that are headquartered in Ohio, and branch locations in Ohio of co-ops not headquartered in Ohio.
According to the National Cooperative Bank, of the largest 100 cooperatives in the U.S. in 2019, three were headquartered in Ohio, including United Producers, Inc. (#80) headquartered in Columbus, Heritage Cooperative (#83) headquartered in Delaware, and Buckeye Power, Inc. (#84) headquartered in Columbus.