Sticking to Our Principles: Concern for Community Means Giving Back

Cooperatives around the world are guided by seven Cooperative Principles. These principles work for all co-ops: a grocery co-op, a credit union, a farmer’s co-op such as a community grain elevator, or an electric cooperative like HomeWorks Tri-County.

We bring Principle #2  Democratic Member Control to your neighborhood through the annual district membership meetings in mid-May, where you can vote for the member who will represent you on the board of directors.

This year, and in most recent years, we’ve demonstrated #3  Members’ Economic Participation when we retired capital credits from 1984 and 2009 on your May energy bills. These represent a portion of your share of the members’ equity in HomeWorks; by retiring some capital credits.

In April, we used #5  Education, Training and Information to search for top high school students, sending three young women to Michigan Rural Electric Teen Days, and awarding $2,500 in Touchstone Energy scholarships to four more students.

And when you turn to page 5, you’ll read about #7 - Concern for Community in action. This one has a lot of meanings, from being good stewards of our environment to supporting local schools.

It also means creating the Tri-County Electric People Fund, for which many of you round up your energy bill to the next dollar. The donated funds are given as grants to families and organizations in need right here in mid-Michigan.

Your support of the People Fund  over $1.5 million given back since 1993 - has been a real inspiration to us.

Our employees show their concern for community through paying a small fee to wear jeans on Fridays, donating time and energy to organizations in their hometowns, and rallying to raise funds for special causes.

Over the past several years, through jean day funds and holiday collections, they’ve given thousands of dollars to food banks and community funds in the Portland and Blanchard areas.

Employees from both offices also helped  made a HomeWorks-supported Relay for Life team the highest fundraiser in Portland last year.

Each of the seven cooperative principles is important to us, but I think we all get a few goosebumps when we look at what we can accomplish together by caring for our communities.