2022 was a milestone year for Centra Sota Cooperative. We have been celebrating 100 years serving farmers, families, and communities in central Minnesota. While our roots stretch back to 1877 when farmers joined together to market milk and butter, it wasn’t until 1922 that Producers Coop Creamery was officially formed. We are proud and tremendously grateful to have been trusted by generations of farmers and families, and we are excited to continue to build a path forward for many more years to come.
In recognition of this milestone, we decided to invest in a new Vision, Mission, and Values. It was a wonderful opportunity to reflect on all we’ve accomplished, who we are, and how we want to grow in the next hundred years. Our new vision is “to improve lives and create a more vibrant future for farmers, families, and communities in central Minnesota.” Our values help explain more about what we mean by that. One of them is being people-focused. It reads:
People are at the heart of everything we do. We strive to build life-long, genuine relationships with our customers, our vendors, our team members, their families, and our communities. We look for opportunities to give back and positively impact each community we’re in.
Creating these statements was a valuable experience but words are meaningless without action behind them. While we typically support a number of local organizations and events in each of our communities, we wanted to do something beyond that. We allocated $1,000 for each location to donate to organizations that they felt would improve their community. In addition, some of our charitable donations are eligible for matching funds from the Land O Lakes Foundation Member Cooperative Match Program which matched $1.5M in donations during 2022. Nearly all the donations we made were matched dollar for dollar, doubling the impact.
Over the next weeks, we’ll share which organizations our location team members selected and why. During this season of giving, we hope you’ll enjoy reading these as much as we have.