When we start working for a cooperative, we learn about what matters to this business model: commitment to community, building and nourishing relationships in the community, cooperatives helping other cooperatives.
Katie Ryan-Anderson was thinking about all that when, fittingly, a light bulb lit up above her thoughts. Ryan-Anderson works for Northern Plains Electric Cooperative and Dakota Valley Electric Cooperative.
She had recently read the book One Red Paperclip, the story of a man who, starting with a paperclip, continued trading up for bigger and better items, until he ended up with a house in Saskatchewan.
Ryan-Anderson thought cooperative employees could do the same thing, and use whatever they end up with in the end as an entry in a silent auction.
After some conversations with Erin Huntimer, project coordinations representative at Basin Electric, The Cooperative Paper Clip Project began. The silent auction will happen at Basin Electric’s Annual Meeting in November.
Several electric cooperatives in North Dakota are on board. You can follow their trades on Facebook or Twitter using #CoopClipND. You can also watch the blog The Cooperative paper clip project. And get in there start a trade of your own, or help some of our local electric cooperatives make some trades!
North Central Electric Cooperative in Bottineau, ND: Pete Erickson: Why #CoopClipND matters to me
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