PRODUCER ORGANIZATIONS

Diagnose the effectiveness and viability of a producer organization or enterprise with state-of-the-art assessments and metrics

Producer organizations play a critical role in rural economies, providing training, technical assistance, and lending. The ability to understand key factors that make any such organization viable and sustainable must be simple, pragmatic, and science-based.

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Producer Organization Tools

The complete suite of COSA’s tools for understanding the sustainability of organized groups of farmers includes:

1. Indicators and surveys
A comprehensive set of Social, Environmental and Economic indicators and surveys for sustainability projects of any size

  View Producer Organization Indicators

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2. Online self-assessment
The Producer Organization Diagnostic (POD) – with immediate scoring, benchmarking, tips and insights to empower organized groups of farmers

     This Producer Organization Diagnostic tool (POD) is a short, performance-based survey      provided free to the public thanks to a generous grant from the Ford Foundation.

     The survey:

  • Is quick and simple to use (takes less than 20 minutes)
  • Is free and anonymous
  • Gives immediate scoring and shows how it ranks with others
  • Offers useful tips from our experts about producer organizations

     The POD asks questions on the social, environmental and economic aspects of producer      organizations:

  • What kinds of records does it keep?
  • What financial services are offered to members?
  • Does it engage in water conservation or environmental conservation practices and which?
  • What community empowerment activities does it support?

Who needs these tools?

  • Any organized group of farmers such as cooperatives, water users associations and women’s microfinance groups that wants to track its performance
  • Anyone who uses, works with or in support of producer organizations and other organized groups of farmers and wants to:
    – Rate social, environmental and economic performance
    – Identify areas of improvement
    – Monitor progress over time

Advisory Panel on the Sustainability Assessment of Producer Organizations

Led by COSA and The European Research Institute on Cooperative and Social Enterprises (EURICSE), more than 30 experts and institutions contributed to developing effective metrics to understand the key characteristics of what makes an effective Producer Organization or enterprise, and these form the basis for COSA’s tools.

View Producer Organization Advisory Panel

For more information about COSA’s Producer Organization assessments contact:
[email protected]