The Benefits of Being Co-operative

(The ClimateCare head office team and companies at a quarterly General Meeting, May 2025, Kingston ON)

When I was first asked by Audrey and Michelle about writing a blog about the benefits of an organization being a co-operative, my instinct was of course to say yes and help our friends and partners at the OCA. My next thought was … what am I going to write? Surely, everyone understands the benefits of being cooperative, given that the alternative would be … uncooperative. Cheeky joke aside, let’s look at how ClimateCare benefits from being structured as a co-operative – and how your business might too!

1)    We’re Better (and Safer) Together. An assembly of some 30 or so independently owned and operated businesses, ClimateCare member companies are in business for themselves – but never by themselves. Membership comes with a lot of perks. Of the four pillars as we define them (purchasing, training, marketing, and peer support), it’s that last one that really shines when talking to our members. They talk about how the pandemic years ago was challenging to navigate as a small business, and how much the support of the co-op’s central office and each other helped them survive those uncertain times.

And now they’re facing new challenges as private equity and asset management firms have been creeping north of the border. In the US, they’ve been rolling up home services companies to eradicate the mid-market and create super-regional and national players with dozens or hundreds of branches, and thousands of trucks. Our very identities as small, local businesses are being put in the crosshairs. It sounds like a David versus Goliath scenario, and in many ways, it is. Except that in this case, because of our structure as a co-operative, it’s really Goliath versus David times thirty – and that changes the game.

On top of that, the rapid acceleration of AI threatens to leave behind anyone who can’t adopt or implement fast enough. That’s a tall order for a small business owner and operator to tackle – especially on top of running their business every day. I might argue that it’s even worse in the skilled trades where so many got into it to work their hands and tools and not sit in front of a computer all day. So, how’s a career gas-fitter going to beat agentic artificial intelligence platforms? They same way we take on big finance companies trying to buy us out; we stick together, and act as one. Together, we’ve got enough resources and time to figure this out and share the answers with the group. That’s very much ClimateCare’s guiding vision and nice; members first!

2)    We’re Faster as a Group. This might strike you as unlikely. If you’ve ever done a three-legged race, you know it’s not intuitive, nor built for speed. It’s clunky. The notion also competes with the traditional wisdom that if you want to go fast, go alone, but if you want to go far, go together. The co-operative model kind of cheats here. While you do get the benefits of going farther by going together (as described above), you also cash in on going faster. Not because you’re alone, but because in a co-op model, everybody acts as one; the collective interest is primary. In this way, the co-operative structure of ClimateCare enables our speed as an organisation – not slows us down. Because we’re aligned, getting buy-in is easier and faster. We trust each other, and that’s enabled in how we’re structured.  In his book “The Speed of Trust,” Stephen M. R. Covey argues that trust is not some esoteric concept that we can only feel emotionally, but also a critical ingredient to business success. He articulates the thirteen behaviours of high trust, and cites many examples of real businesses where having high trust enabled tangible results – greater speed, reduced friction, higher profit.

3)    We Can Do More as a Group. The idea of strength in numbers isn’t new. A co-operative business model leverages this. At ClimateCare, we see many examples of this. We have a seat of the board of large residential contractors in our industry, something that we couldn’t achieve individually. It gives us a voice at a level that matters more, and insight into trends before most get to see behind the curtain. It also allows us to give back in deeper and more meaningful ways, like the work we do with Skills Canada, Women in HVAC, and HRAI’s Heat Pump Champions program. Truly, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

4)    We Can Protect Each Other. For something that’s so predictable, it’s amazing how often small business owners never think about succession until retirement is nearly imminent. At ClimateCare, we know this to be true, and as we always do, we’re here to help our members companies – even at the end. We’ve developed a program called Navigator to help our members build their businesses stronger to be more profitable and valuable upon sale, and identify sales opportunities for them that enable their exit from the business and ability to retire. It could be selling to another co-op member, or to the co-operative corporation itself. In either case, it also means that their legacy can be preserved. They’re not selling to a large corporation that will rebrand and plunder what they’ve build over a lifetime. They’re selling to a friend who has shown them for years working alongside each other that they’ve got the same values and can be trusted to do the right thing.

In 2025, ClimateCare acquired the first ever member company by way of the Navigator program; Canco ClimateCare. The founders and former owners, Bob and Nancy McKeraghan, expressed that they probably would have closed the business, but for this opportunity to have the co-op take it over. They didn’t want what they worked so hard to be picked apart for profit by someone else, and they didn’t trust they’d ever find someone outside the group who truly understood them, their team, and their collective values. You can read more about it here.

The plain truth is that being co-operative is a core strength for us at ClimateCare. It’s how we’re structured because it’s how we act, and what we believe. The world has always benefitted from inclusivity and collaboration – why shouldn’t your business?

Submitted by Tom Rand, Member Marketing & Implementation Manager, ClimateCare