Running a Cooperative
Planning, control, monitoring and evaluation — the work that decides whether an investment produces jobs or losses.
For: managers, management committee members, trainers.
The cycle that decides jobs or losses
Planning is not the end of the work but the start of a loop. Investments fail where members cannot see what is happening and cannot correct it in time.
The four topics below cover the pathway to creating jobs, the steps in sequence, the controls that keep a project on plan, and the monitoring that tells you in time when it is not.
24. Pathway to Creating Jobs
This section explains the role of Local Institutions in job creation and how they should be supported: Infrastructure-Led Job Creation; Climate-Smart and Precision Agriculture Financing; Training and Technical Support; Youth and School-Based Employment Pathways; Digital Monitoring and Governance Systems; and Global Lessons on the scale at which cooperatives can flourish through the Integrated Value Chain Investment Model. It also cites the Mondragon Cooperative Corporation.
25. Steps Towards Creating Jobs
This section uses the livestock development and marketing cooperatives to explain the steps towards creating jobs in an Arid and Semi-Arid Lands (ASALs) setting: Investment Opportunity Assessment; Developing Value Chain-Based Curriculum and Operational Tools; ensuring Policy and By-Law Alignment; Recruiting and Training of Local Trainers and Opinion Leaders; Creating awareness in the target community or cooperative; Forming Common Interest Groups and registering a Cooperative; designing and implementing a Community Environment and Rangeland Management Programme; Strengthening Veterinary and Animal Health Services; Continuous Capacity Building and Institutional Development; Engaging Public–Private Investment Partnerships (PPPs); Strengthening Research and Data Systems; and Continuous Improvement of Job Creation Opportunities.
26. Controlling Cooperative Activities
Before implementing project activities, detailed plans covering procedures, timelines, responsibilities, organisational structures, machinery and equipment, partnerships, rules and regulations, and budgets are reviewed and approved by members of the cooperative society. This section equips the reader with the following necessary indicators for ensuring project implementation is progressing as planned: Types of Control; Operating Expense Control; Quality Control; Requirements for Effective Control; The Process of Control; Key Principles of Control; Practical Tools for Cooperative Control; and Advantages of Effective Control.
27. Monitoring and Evaluating Cooperative Business
Investments by cooperatives perform dismally when members lack knowledge about inspecting and correcting emerging challenges, what to do, and how to do it. This section provides readers with key performance monitoring and evaluation indicators and tools. These are: Project cycle of a cooperative; Monitoring Questions; Possible Positive Results; Guidelines for Effective Monitoring and Evaluation; Qualities of a Good Monitoring and Evaluation Report; Participatory Monitoring and Evaluation; Methods of Participatory Monitoring and Evaluation; How To Analyse Information obtained; Steps in Conducting Participatory Monitoring and Evaluation; Key Indicators for Monitoring Change; Tools Used in Monitoring and Evaluation; Monitoring Cooperative Effectiveness; and Why Participatory Monitoring and Evaluation Is Important.
Source: Job Creation Opportunities (Shirikiana handbook, in preparation), contents of August 2026. Summaries are published as chapters are finalised.
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Each topic here is a summary of a chapter from our handbooks. The full text is in the books.
Shirikiana —> to work with one another. The founding values of the cooperative movement, self-help, self-responsibility and solidarity, remain the most practical basis for collective enterprise. We join knowledge, applied action and ethical responsibility in member-owned, member-governed enterprise, guided by the International Cooperative Alliance’s principle of concern for community. We proceed incrementally, attribute every partner by name, and distinguish demonstrated capacity from stated intent.