The latest ideas and information from CPA Co-op
What happens when we build alliances across regions and leverage the buying power of community institutions for the benefit of our communities? Cooperative group purchasing has the potential to offer savings, insights, and solidarity across state lines that furthers the ability of each member to serve their local community.
Read MoreAt CPA-Coop we bring decision makers together to tackle common challenges - finding solutions that are stronger and more resilient than if we’d try to go about the process alone. Our trust and camaraderie is especially evident in the wake of COVID 19 and the protests that gripped our nation.
Read MoreNow more than ever, CPA Co-op is focused on listening and responding to the needs of our community. We’ve been in communication with leaders in five regions of the country, and the vast majority of them have indicated a willingness and need to continue purchasing PPE and other COVID Response supplies in the anticipation of reopening by the end of the summer.
Read MoreIt all started with an avocado. I was a teacher in Detroit with a classroom that door didn’t lock and an unavoidable open door policy. Students sought refuge from the lunchtime fray in my quiet classroom, and thus our “Lunch Bunch” was born.
Read MoreLast week, 150 congregational leaders from across the country gathered to learn from one another and discuss a response to the recent economic crisis.They shared the challenges they were facing, administratively, financially, and ministerially. Across regions and denominations, we found common concerns around decreased giving, caring for church employees, the pros and cons of virtual worship, and the way COVID-19 was affecting their ability to serve the most vulnerable among us.
Read MoreOne of things that I wish my seminary would have offered when I was a student was a course on church facility management. I soon discovered, upon entering my first pastorate, that the maintenance cost of the church facility can severely hinder the congregation’s ability to fund the operating and programmatic side of ministry. Every dollar spent on the electric bill, trash pickup, cleaning, and building repairs was a dollar not spent on furthering the work and mission of the church. While these expenses are a necessary part of being a property-owning congregation, pastors and trustees are often confronted with decisions amidst complex industries, misleading sales tactics, and burdensome contracts. We do not always have the time or capacity to ensure that we get the best pricing by researching policies, vetting vendors, and getting multiple bids for all of our facility needs. As a result, we often end up paying more than we should for the basic services that ensure we can keep the building and our ministry up and running.
Read MoreWhen the Dupont Commons affordable housing development was approved 15 years ago in the Fort Dupont neighborhood of Southeast Washington DC, housing density required that a substantial parcel be left open to meet building codes. That land became something of a blight; it required basic maintenance, accrued stormwater management fees, and was littered with garbage and illegal dumping. Joe Naroditsky, Director of Solar Programs for CPA, spent two and a half years pitching the land to solar companies, but kept hearing that the terrain wasn’t ideal for solar panel placement and that the project seemed daunting because the costs of development were uncertain.
Read MoreIt’s not hard to see the great work that CPA is doing. The cooperative has brought hundreds of organizations together. And, together, these organizations have invested nearly $10 million in minority-owned businesses. Together, these organizations have redirected hundreds of thousands of dollars to renewable electricity and away from fossil fuels. Together, these organizations have contracted with facility cleaning companies that pay employees a living wage. But CPA does something else with all this togetherness—perhaps less intentionally—that gets me really excited as a Christian: CPA is radically healing the divisions in the church body.
Read MoreTeam members of CPA Co-op recently had the chance to meet with leaders of Randall Memorial to learn more about their deep roots in Northeast DC as well as their 108 year old roof that was (not surprisingly) leaking and in need of constant repair after a century of use.
Randall Memorial United Methodist Church was founded in June of 1912 in Northeast DC. Standing in their beautiful sanctuary, one cannot help but imagine the thousands of worship services, meals, acts of kindness, choral concerts, assemblies that have taken place under their roof.
Read MoreLast month CPA Co-op executive director Felipe Witchger hosted a strategy input session on how to breathe new life into a broken economy. Felipe set the stage for the call by sharing CPA Co-op’s success adding value on contract decisions for organizations who work together to tackle ambitious, mission-aligned economic actions. These actions position CPA to help community institutions writ large to think about all of their economic transactions, and integrate their values and mission and purpose into not just their purchasing, but also their real estate and their investing. Felipe brought together representatives from stakeholders across the country: co-op organizing and finance, credit unions and church mutuals, national co-op organizations and new start-ups, to explore this new economy. What follows is a series of highlights from this conversation.
Read MoreI’ve heard some nightmarish HVAC tales, stories of success, and mostly lots of frustration, confusion, and anxiety around dealing with a building’s costliest and most complex systems.
These stories stem from the people who run many of our CPA member organizations - church administrators, school-based facility managers, and synagogue Executive Directors. They’ve been telling me about how they approach preventative maintenance (quarterly checkups vs. wait til it breaks), the ups and downs of service tech quality (some are trustworthy while others needed to be babysat), and how a new $2 Million system never worked quite right (and still doesn’t).
What I’ve learned that impressed me the most is that many have done an incredible job keeping old systems operating for decades, through a combination of regular maintenance, emergency repairs, and a little bit of duct tape and prayer.
Read MoreWith the recent Amazon HQ2 bidding wars, it is clear cities need a more thoughtful approach to local economic development. As more nonprofits consider what a deliberate approach to re-making the economy might look like, we want to offer our community purchasing co-op model as a complement to the growing work of universities and hospitals trying to refocus on local, equitable economic development.
Last year over 100 small anchor institutions in Washington DC purchased $16.7 million of goods & services through the Community Purchasing Alliance Cooperative (CPA), with almost $10 million going to minority owned businesses.
Read MoreIs it your full time job to manage a facility? Perhaps you have years of experience behind you, and you feel confident in your property know-how. OR maybe you are like Rev. Martha Clark at St. Augustine’s Episcopal in DC. She told our ED Felipe last week that at her church “none of us are property savvy at all.”
Click the video below to hear Rev. Clark share her testimonial of working with on of our preferred vendors.
Read MoreWe invited leaders in our member network to share their experience and insights to ensure that your next Janitorial RFP will run as smoothly as possible. Click to watch our video and learn more.
Read MoreStrength in numbers is not just a tagline for CPA Co-op, it is the philosophy behind everything we do. The strength of our group was displayed in full force last month when a routine PEPCO bill review forced us to confront the realities of a shifting energy industry.
Read MoreCPA Co-op is growing! Building on our success in DC, we are launching a new co-op in Durham, North Carolina.
Read MoreI watched the clean energy movement fall short in 2009 as climate policy failed to pass in the US Senate by one vote. After over a decade of work in energy analysis and procurement, I believe this movement failed because it did not have a clear understanding of how the utility sector works.
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