Kootenay Co-op exterior in the summer time.

April Board Update

in
  • written by Maggie Jones, Board Member

Thank you for reading our Board Update, a synopsis of our most recent board meeting and other board-related information.

Your board is responsible for overseeing our General Manager (GM), ensuring financial viability, providing governance that is in line with the BC Coops Act and making strategic decisions that benefit our Co-op. We have five board committees that meet monthly and then share reports and recommendations to the board as a whole. These committees are: HR/Hiring, Governance, Finance, Member Engagement, and Nominations. We also hear reports monthly from our GM and one department manager.

April 2023

Your board met April 21, 2023.

Business Arising

  • The board would like to welcome Mikale Leymann as our employee elected board member. Mikale has been with the co-op for almost 18 years and has worked in a number of departments. If you know Mikale and you see him in the store, be sure to congratulate him!
  • We also welcomed Dirk Gibbs, our new store manager. Dirk brings a great knowledge of natural grocery and co-op experience and we are happy to have him on the team.
  • Your board approved the updated policy which provides for members to attend board meetings by prior arrangement.
  • Our IGMs spoke about continued clarification regarding the IGM job description and the importance of consistency in these duties and responsibilities.

We heard and discussed reports from board committees:

  • Our Member Engagement Committee received approval of their March board blog post. We also agreed that we will post this for our staff on our internal communication site.  Our new Employee Director will be joining this committee. We received one request from a member to attend a board meeting in the past month.
  • The Nominations Committee reported that the call for nominations is now open and will run until June 12th. Watch for your board members tabling in front of the store once the weather warms up. They will be discussing and informing members regarding running for the board and board responsibilities. The board application package is available online, on our website. If you are interested in running for the board, one of our current board members will be more than happy to chat to you about this.
  • Our Finance Committee informed us that the preliminary budget will be ready for review next month. The Finance Committee has considered another auditing firm and has decided to continue to recommend our current auditor to the members. Finance also shared some highlights which included a good start to case lot, an upwards trend in wellness sales, new tools to help quickly track margins, and consistent income and cash flow over the past few months. We also approved the Finance Committees Terms of Reference and Work Plan.

Our IGMs made their report to the board:

  • Sean reported that bi-annual case lot sale is underway, it will run for 12 days. The length of the sale was discussed. The remainder of the IGM report was in camera.

We did not have a department update this month.

See you next time!

Maggie Jones
Vice President