The National Cooperative Business Association, or NCBA, is a United States membership organization for cooperatives, businesses that are jointly-owned and democratically-controlled. Founded in 1916, it is an international development organization as well as an association for cooperative businesses.

NCBA has worked in over 100 countries to enforce food security, agricultural development, community-based health, natural resources management and empowerment of smallholder farmers, women and youth. Currently, the organization is working in 15 different countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

Services

Association services are divided into three subcategories: raise the profile of cooperatives, promote and protect the cooperative business enterprise model and drive cross-sector collaboration.

In terms of international development, NCBA strives to transform rural communities, build democratic institutions and provide technical assistance to group businesses, civil society organizations, non-governmental organizations, local governments and farmer associations and cooperatives.

NCBA hopes to build a stronger educational environment around the world by hosting conferences, webinars and supplying educational toolkits.

Successes

In 2000 the group successfully lobbied the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers to establish a new top-level domain exclusively for business cooperatives. The domain became active in 2002.

Since 1953, CLUSA has managed over 200 projects in 53 countries and has performed over 1,000 short-term consultancies in 79 countries.

– Alaina Grote

Sources: NCBA CLUSA, Community-Wealth, Idealist
Photo: Gallery Hip