The BCCM's ten years of cooperation

In 2023 we celebrated ten years of the BCCM. This was not only a coming of age for Australia’s first cross-sector advocacy body for co-ops and mutuals, the last decade also represents an epoch-making time for the movement in Australia.

The BCCM was formed in 2013 after the United Nations International Year of Cooperatives. This year marks the tenth anniversary of the BCCM’s formation and provides an opportunity to reflect on how far we have come as a peak body and as a movement built on the principles of co-operation – the original social businesses.

We have come a long way in the last decade by bringing together member-owned businesses from different industries to advocate for our unique business structures and work to improve the business environment for co-operative and mutuals.

We have succeeded in number of important areas across our objectives of advocacy, networking, education and key projects. These achievements include securing enabling legislation to access vital capital, developing education and co-operative development programs to meet the needs of the sector and facilitating the development of sector-wide governance principles, a climate policy and the Mutual Value Measurement Framework© to measure and express mutual value. The benefits our model offers have been noticed by the government, which has tasked the BCCM with significant co-operative development projects in agriculture and social care.