Co-op Brum stratergy for 2026

Discussion
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Starting the ball rolling for discussions on strategy for the next year.

With the launch of Stirchley Co-operative Develop (AKA Jessie Eden house) I think we should consider what our big project is for 2026. It’s estimated to be finished around February 2026 but may drag on a bit longer due to the nature of large building projects.

We’ve been doing a bit of research that might inform our strategy:

And we’ve passed lots of proposals to gather community assets:

There’s also been a lot of activity on our OpenCollective:

2

To start the ball rolling…

Stirchley Food Co-operative

My preference is we focus on one major public facing project this year which is to setup a food co-operative in Stirchley.

A rough idea of how it would work:

  • Research
  • Preparing the organisation structurally for a public project (organisational model and decision making processes)
  • Preparing the organisation administratively for a public project (registering a legal entity, bank account, policies etc)
  • Tech reforms (syncing OpenCollective with Single Sign On for automated tech access)
  • Public information campaign
  • OpenCollective Sub Project for collecting dues
  • Operational questions (purchasing, transport, distribution, decision making, business model)
  • Floating the new Food Co-op with a bit of money form the main pot
  • Political education
  • Doing the thing!

Goals

The strategy being that this will be a public organising project aimed at increasing Co-operation Birmingham membership to around 50-100 people by the end of 2026 with a functioning food co-op split into 10 household groups (with a bigger groups for SCD). Perhaps SCD can be used as a distribution hub for these groups and the first households group.

This will help build a co-operative democratic culture that will give the community a tangible benefit and alleviate poverty. We can then investigate spreading our activities beyond Stirchley into neighbouring areas, starting by inviting groups from other areas to visit us and see the project in operation.

Risks

We should consider and address the following:

  • Operational issues
  • Lack of sustainable supply chain
  • Lack of community engagement
  • Lack of political education of the membership
  • Becomes a service/charity rather than organising
  • Becomes too centralised and smaller household groups don’t function
  • Doesn’t function democratically
  • Is too too difficult to organise
  • Doesn’t have a business model that also benefits the wider Co-operation Birmingham organisation
  • Isn’t interconnected with other Co-op Brum projects
  • Doesn’t contribute to the wider organising infrastructure

Further reading

3

Thanks for this, will consider more and reply in detail soon.

Something that’s been discussed previously is branding, as in something like a logo we can put on different projects to make clear the links between different projects and coop brum, good way of increasing visibility for the org when people interact with punch up/solid joy etc