Co-op advocates. Co-op innovators. Co-op leaders.

The annual Cooperative IMPACT Conference, organized and hosted by US Co-ops, brought them all together in Washington, DC this month across all sectors of business cooperation. There is no other cooperative conference where credit unions, ag co-ops, worker co-ops, electric co-ops, services co-ops, food co-ops and more are all in the same room to share their most insightful stories and big ideas for our collective, cooperative future.

From left: Richard Dines, Gabby Davis and JQ Hannah at the 2026 IMPACT Conference for cooperatives

It was my honor to represent the brilliance of the startup food co-op movement from the main stage of the 10th annual IMPACT gathering. While I was the one speaking into the mic, the story I shared that illustrated this brilliance was not mine, it was a story of half a dozen Black-led startup co-op leaders from across the US.

JQ Hannah, Executive Director, speaking at IMPACT 2026

While participating in a Food Co-op Initiative Peer Learning Group, these startups identified one critical misunderstanding, and one critical mistake. The misunderstanding was conflating “accessible” with “cheapest”; while the mistake was “experts” like FCI, with the best of intentions, often slipping into providing unquestionable “facts” instead of the information that leads to those facts, allowing startup cooperators to draw their own conclusions.

Food cooperatives, by economic size, represent less than 1% of the economic power of all U.S. cooperative business sectors combined. But, despite our sector’s size, this one 7-minute story I was able to share on IMPACT’s national stage illustrated again the outsized innovative power of food cooperation.

In Cooperation,

JQ Hannah

Watch the recording of JQ’s talk at the IMPACT Conference. Video provided by Gabby Davis.