Research on the Economic Impact of Cooperatives (REIC)

The U.S. Department of Agriculture is encouraging research on the issue of determining the economic impact of cooperative organizations. Approximately $300,000 will be made available in competitive cooperative agreement funds for fiscal year (FY) 2009 to be expended over a two year period to conduct research on the national economic impact of all types of cooperatives. Institutions of higher education interested in applying for a competitively awarded cooperative research agreement are encouraged to apply.

The primary objective of this cooperative research agreement program is to facilitate university research on the national economic impact of cooperatives. The research program will need to develop a methodology for collecting and assembling basic impact data on a periodic basis; apply the methodology to collect data and estimate economic impact of cooperatives; estimate cooperative specific community impact multipliers; and conduct other appropriate studies to examine the socio-economic impact of cooperatives on their local communities.

The first stage of this research, developing a census of cooperatives and estimation of their economic impacts, has been completed by the University of Wisconsin. A report on the results of this research is available at the web site of the University of Wisconsin Center for Cooperatives. http://www.uwcc.wisc.edu/impact.html