Editorial Standards
How Cooperatives.com is researched, written, reviewed, and corrected — so you can judge whether to trust what you read here.
Who writes our content
Cooperatives.com is written and edited by our in-house editorial team — researchers and writers focused on cooperative economics, governance, law, and sector analysis. Articles are published under the Cooperatives.com Editorial Team byline rather than individual names: every guide is researched, drafted, and reviewed against the same shared standard, and reflects the editorial position of Cooperatives.com as a whole. We do not invent author personas or fabricate credentials. Where a guide draws on a named authority — the International Cooperative Alliance, the USDA, a national registrar — we name that source in the text and in the article's references, so you can check it yourself.
How we research
Our articles are researched against primary sources: the International Cooperative Alliance (ICA), USDA cooperative data, the National Credit Union Administration (NCUA), national cooperative legislation, and peer-reviewed academic research. We prefer official statistics and founding legislation over secondary commentary. Where a figure changes over time — membership counts, asset totals, the number of cooperatives in a country — we state the reference year alongside the number rather than presenting it as a timeless fact, so a 2021 figure is never mistaken for today's.
How we verify before we publish
Research is not verification, so we treat them as separate steps. Before a page goes live, every load-bearing claim in it — a figure, a legal requirement, a registration status, a date — is checked against the primary source itself rather than against a document that quotes it. Secondary sources tell us what to go and look at; they are not what we cite. Where a claim concerns whether a named organisation is or is not a cooperative, we check the relevant public register directly and say which register we checked and when. Where we cannot verify something, we either leave it out or mark plainly that it is unverified — we do not publish a plausible figure because it is the one everybody repeats.
How we cite
Each article carries its own Sources & further reading section, and key claims link inline to the body that published them. We cite named institutions and their publications in prose — not bare reference codes — so a claim can be traced without leaving the page. We add an external link only when we have confirmed it resolves to the source it claims to be.
How we keep articles current
Cooperative law, registration requirements, and sector figures change, so guides are living documents. When we revise an article, the “Updated” date shown beneath the title reflects the most recent substantive review — not a cosmetic edit. Articles that depend on fast-moving data are revisited more often than evergreen explainers of, say, the seven cooperative principles.
Corrections
We would rather be corrected than be wrong. If you spot an error — an out-of-date statistic, a mis-stated legal requirement, a broken citation — please tell us. We check every report against the primary source, fix what is wrong, and update the article's review date. A correction that changes the facts is never quietly overwritten: it is recorded, with its date and what it changed, in the correction log at the foot of this page, and the article itself carries a dated amendment note. That log is append-only — we do not remove entries once made, because a corrections record you can edit is not a corrections record.
Where our directory data comes from
Cooperative listings are compiled from official public registries: the National Credit Union Administration (NCUA) in the United States, the Cooperative Development Authority (CDA) in the Philippines, and the Central Registrar of Cooperative Societies (CRCS) in India. Every cooperative profile names the registry it was sourced from. We do not invent cooperatives, ratings, or member testimonials, and we are independent of — not affiliated with — the organisations listed.
Independence
Cooperatives.com is an independently built and maintained resource. We have no federation memberships, institutional backers, or government funding, and we are not affiliated with the International Cooperative Alliance, any national cooperative body, or any individual cooperative. That independence lets us write candidly about the cooperative model — its advantages, its trade-offs, and how it compares with other business structures.
We are not advocates
Being independent of the cooperative movement is not the same as being for it, and we want to be explicit about the difference. Cooperatives.com does not exist to promote cooperatives. It exists to describe them accurately, including when the accurate description is unflattering — a cooperative that failed, a demutualisation its own coverage never named, a structure widely called a cooperative that is not one. We take no position on whether you should join, form, or avoid a cooperative; that depends on facts about you that we do not have. Where the evidence is genuinely mixed, we say so rather than resolving it in the movement's favour. If you find us reading as a sales pitch for the model, that is a defect and we would like to hear about it.
Correction log
Every substantive correction we have issued, newest first. This list is append-only.
No substantive corrections have been issued yet. This log was opened on 31 July 2026. An empty log this early means the site is young, not that it is faultless — if you have found something wrong, we would genuinely rather publish the correction than keep the list empty. Report an error.
Found something to fix?
Corrections, data updates, and cooperative submissions are all welcome. The fastest way to reach the editorial team is the contact page.
Contact the editorial team →