Cooperatives are Sensible Businesses
By Michael S. Beasley
You might wonder whether the neighbors who formed their own electric distribution utility 60 years ago would be surprised that the same utility is in business today.
Back then, if you wanted electricity at your farm or house in rural North Carolina, the only choice many people had was to start their own utility. The existing utilities couldn’t make a profit setting poles and running lines for miles and miles only to reach a few households, so you can understand why they wouldn’t take electric power to rural areas. To help in those Depression years, the Franklin Roosevelt administration and Congress in 1936 passed the Rural Electrification Act that offered loans to locally-formed rural cooperatives prepared to set poles and run power to their members.
Here in Surry County and Yadkin County and the surrounding piedmont hills, farmers formed one of those cooperatives in 1940 and visited neighbors to get the $5 you needed to join. One of those was 29-year-old Joe Pendry, whose family farmed in the Boonville area of Yadkin County. Joe actually paid the $5 for some of his neighbors to join the cooperative, because even a dollar was hard to part with at that time, no matter how much you needed electricity.
At 91, Joe Pendry is still a member of that cooperative – Surry-Yadkin EMC – and has served on the board of directions since it was chartered. He is one of many members in this part of the state who is not surprised that the cooperative is still in business.
A cooperative runs its business for the benefit of its members, rather than to make a profit. A cooperative returns to its members any profits that remain after all business is taken care of, including operation, construction and maintenance. And cooperative members– who in fact own the business – have a voice in running the business, including electing the people who direct it and who hire the employees. Every electric cooperative among the 27 in this state listens to any members who have something to say about their service, no matter who the members are or what they say.
Because of this business structure, cooperatives
are by nature responsive to their customers and communities, and that
includes remaining innovative in the business of delivering electricity
safely, reliably and at the lowest possible cost.
If you compare this way of doing business with just about any other way,
you won’t be surprised that electric cooperatives remain as strong
and relevant today as they were 60 years ago, or even 100 years ago. You
don’t typically see electric cooperatives rise and fall according
to their stock prices, or fads in the marketplace, or abrupt shifts in
ownership. That’s because business decisions are made by and for
their owners – the consumers.
Mike Beasley is executive vice president and general manager of Surry-Yadkin Electric Membership Corporation. Surry-Yadkin EMC serves more than 25,000 households and businesses in Surry, Yadkin, Wilkes, Stokes and Forsyth counties.