A new approach to membership at COCo
At the COCo (Centre for Community Organizations) Annual General Meeting in March 2014, our members adopted new bylaws with significant revisions in our membership definition.
Our old membership definition accorded membership automatically to anyone using our services. Many groups thus became members without any particular awareness and without providing explicit consent.
The objective in re-examining our definition is to forge a new membership structure that is more conducive to membership engagement. We hope to build a network that engages with organizations in the community sector in a way that is participative, mutually beneficial, and visible, while remaining accessible.
To this end, our first step is to ask groups to sign-up as COCo members. Explicitly consenting to becoming a member is about expressing solidarity with COCo’s mission and role. If you are a community-based not-for-profit group that believes in and supports COCo, and that values developing a meaningful relationship with us, we strongly encourage you to sign-up using our new bilingual online form.
Membership lasts for 3 years and is absolutely free of cost. In addition, new member sign-ups will help contribute to the compilation of a COCo Member’s Directory that will be unveiled shortly on our website. If your group agrees to be publicly listed, basic information about your organization will be listed in a Member’s Directory that will be tagged by sector and location, creating a valuable resource promoting collaboration and contact between groups, and between COCo and member groups. Note that it is not mandatory to be listed in the Directory in order to become a member.
For more information about the changes to our membership definition and how to sign-up, please refer to the following document in English or in French, or contact us at 514-849-5599 or at info@coco-net.org. If you know of an organization that would want to be a member, please let us know and we will reach out to them.
Click here to become a member of the Centre for Community Organizations: https://coco-net.org/join/
