Faith to Financial Empowerment
The Inspiring Story of Koop Naton Multipurpose Cooperative
KOOPERATIBA Naton Multi-Purpose Cooperative is a living testimony of what community empowerment and collective spirit can do. Born from humble beginnings and guided by unwavering faith, the organization blossomed from a capital of P7,000 into a co-op valued at P189 million.
Koop Naton is one of the few cooperatives in the country emerging from a church group since the organization was originally founded in June 2004 to serve the needs of the members of the Buyuan Christian Center in Tigbauan, Iloilo.
Its founder, Georgina A. Basco, now the general manager of Koop Naton, recalls being at the crossroads of her life back then. She had just returned after a few months working as a domestic help from Hong Kong, her dreams of going to Canada or the US crushed by reality.
To mask her grief, she immediately buried herself in church activities, shadowing their pastor to organize bible-reading studies with mothers in the community.
While she doesn’t describe her experience back then as unmeaningful since she was doing God’s work, her life was admittedly rudderless.
However, her exposure to the mothers struggling to afford the daily necessities from their husbands’ meager incomes gave her life a newfound purpose.
“Before becoming an OFW, I used to work with children in our church for years, so you know with kids you are always happy. But when I heard the stories of mothers, it broke my heart and I realized we needed to do something,” she recounts.
So, she gathered 25 of her church members and convinced them to form a co-op so they could do their share other than simply spreading God’s words. From the P7,000 they initially raised, they bought three sacks of rice and grocery items, which they dumped into the makeshift sari-sari (sundry) store, becoming the cooperative’s first venture.
The consumer store was essentially a one-room bare space tucked in the church-owned building. The co-op exclusively sold goods and rice to fellow Christians and church members on minimal returns.
“We bought directly from the suppliers to get good prices, allowing us to sell our products cheaper than the other stores in the neighborhood,” Ms. Basco explains.
After the first month, the store turned in P800 in profit.
As word-of-mouth spread, so did the resentment from envious store owners who couldn’t keep up with the co-op’s prices. Fortunately, she managed to convince them that the store was not the competition since they only served co-op members.
The business grew so fast that by the fifth month of operation, the organization was already raking P40,000 in gross monthly income.
The early years of KNMPC were marked by perseverance and an unwavering dedication to its mission. Through collective effort and a steadfast belief in the power of cooperation, the cooperative steadily expanded its reach, attracting new members who resonated with its values and vision.
On December 14, 2004, the co-op finally registered with the Cooperative Development Authority.
In February 2005, the consumer store finally moved to a bigger space to accommodate more goods and its growing clientele. However, it never entirely divorced from its religious roots as the new place was the old Interfaith Christian Center of the church.
The sustained exposure to its members made the co-op realize the need to expand its services. For example, Ms. Basco saw that their members still rely on loan sharks to support their daily needs. As a result, they were buried in debt with no way to dig themselves out of the proverbial hole.
Koop Naton expanded its services to include Micro-Lending and Savings & Deposits.
As a result, the co-op’s membership swelled which, Ms. Basco realized, was not always a blessing.
Quality Over Quantity
One of the quirks of Koop Naton is it remained small in terms of membership despite its multi-millionaire status. Ms. Basco expects to breach the P200 million mark in assets this year, but she’s still not keen on growing their numbers.
For instance, Koop Nation has only 1,800 active members.
“I focus more on quality over quantity. What’s the use of having more members when most of them only sit back and wait for the dividends and shares? The ideal member for me is someone active, whether to volunteer or work in any of our business ventures,” she says.
One of the simplest changes she introduced was limiting their micro-lending activities to the ratio of the member’s paid-up capital. “I noticed that people only wanted to become members to borrow money. So, we put a stop to that practice immediately,” she says.
Right now she can say that each member is an asset, fully understanding their critical roles in the cooperative’s growth.
Diversify and Multiply
As the needs of its members grew, so did the co-op’s services. Ms. Basco was always thinking of ways to improve the lives of its members. She knew they couldn’t depend on one revenue stream alone even if the consumer store business presently earns P400,000 each month.
The organization just about dipped its fingers into every possible venture–from natural juice production, purchase order cards for Gaisano Mall, videoke machine rental, tables and chairs rental, catering, and meat processing.
They bought a piece of land in the middle of the subdivision for an egg-laying business by buying 1,000 heads of poultry with a grant from the government. However, it could not really expand and the cooperative is even mulling closing it down because of the problems in the location. For example, the smell and noise are bothering the other residents in the neighborhood.
As a result, the cooperative has already slaughtered most of the poultry population since the chickens were already old and could no longer lay as many eggs as before.
The cooperative also tried organic vegetable production after she learned how the products sold in the market heavily rely on pesticides. “The spray and pesticides cause cancer and I didn’t want to feed our kids with chemicals,” she explains.
By 2004, the cooperative earned its first million through trial and error and plenty of prayers. The milestone only boosted Ms. Basco’s confidence that Koop Naton is destined for greater heights.
To illustrate, Koop Naton was able to purchase a building and land worth P16 million in cold cash. It’s now renting out the commercial space for six units, adding to the monthly revenues.
In 2022, the organization took out a P78-million loan from the Land Bank of the Philippines to invest in a fleet of 40 modern jeepneys. While the business is not a failure, Ms. Basco says the income wasn’t what they expected.
“Our target for our transportation business was earning P6,000 a day, but only P3,500 is coming in right now. There are also so many expenses involved like maintenance, gas, franchise fees, and even costs from accidents,” she complained.
“Nevertheless, we still believe, we can turn it around. We are just hitting a roadblock,” Ms. Basco added.
Just recently, the cooperative went into shrimp farming and bangus fingerling business. She says the harvest wasn’t what they anticipated. For instance, they only produced 80 kilos of shrimp fry when they expected 200 kilos. She admitted they weren’t as prepared in terms of technical knowledge in running an aquaculture farm successfully.
Not one to admit defeat, she partnered with established aquaculture farms around the area where the co-op shoulders the finances and the farmers focus on raising the fry and fingerlings.
In the meantime, Koop Naton’s workers continue to enhance their skills and knowledge because her ultimate goal is for the organization to operate and grow its own aquaculture farm.
One of the ventures she is excited about is the rice milling and processing plant that will open in September this year. It’s part of her plan to steer Koop Nation into aquaculture and agriculture as the core of their business operations.
The organization received a grant amounting to P90 million for two dryers and one milling plant sitting on the 1.5-hectare land the co-op purchased in Barangay Cordova. Eventually, they will also transfer their poultry business and close down the old location inside a subdivision.
Who Runs the World?
During the early years, the co-op’s members were mostly women. The dynamics only changed when Koop Naton ventured into modern jeepneys and the men started trickling in.
Even so, females make up 80% of the members today.
But she is quick to assert that they don’t have a policy on prioritizing women although it worked out that way. Nevertheless, she is happy with the outcome.
“I think women are more meticulous, persevering, and more engaged when it comes to our activities,” she says.
More importantly, Koop Nation never wavered from its roots. Ms. Basco claims they screen their members more rigorously than most because they place a person’s values and principles over everything else.
Case in point, their women members are very active in the co-op’s feeding program as part of its community development program. Each month, the organization feeds 50 handpicked elementary kids from the poorest families to augment their nutritional needs.
She asserts they based their vision and mission after Christ, a life devoted to service for others. The Holy Bible itself is brimming with verses on the strength of cooperativism.
For instance, Romans 12:4-5 talks about the church as an organization but it might also be referring to cooperatives:
“For just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function; so in Christ we, though many, form one body, and each member belongs to all the others.”
In the end, Koop Naton remains and will forever be a Christian-based organization that empowers its members to earn for themselves and improve their lives rather than depend on charity.
