Ready, Steady, Coop! – a practical guide for cooperative startups released

Cooperatives Europe, together with the partners of the CoopStarter consortium, are releasing today “Ready, Steady, Coop – a practical guide for cooperative startups“. This publication is intended to support cooperative development agencies that accompany young people who want to start their cooperative business. 

The guide helps organisations run a successful cooperative mentoring programme that is open to all entrepreneurs who intend to start a cooperative. The guide describes the steps to follow to make sure that a potential entrepreneur receives strong support in the start-upstage of his/her business.

“Ready, Steady, Coop!” is also complemented by a whole range of practical tools which can be used during the mentoring process: best practice cases, country profiles and a series of questions that might arise during the process.

This document is one of the outcomes of the CoopStarter project, an initiative co-funded by the European Union aiming to make the cooperative business model known to younger generations and to accompany people willing to set up a cooperative through the start-up phase.

Mirko Nodari, Communications Manager at Cooperatives Europe, commented: “We are proud of this document. Far too often young entrepreneurs fail because they lack of a professional support. By joining the experience and intelligence of our members we have created this tool to strengthen the support provided to young entrepreneurs and increase their success rate. More cooperatives means more jobs, more wealth, more community.”