Propose a Workshop for the 2026 New York Cooperative Summit

The 2026 New York Cooperative Summit will be held Saturday, October 17, 2026, at the Armory in Schenectady, NY.

This year’s Summit will bring together cooperative members, leaders, organizers, technical assistance providers, funders, community institutions, and allies from across New York State to share practical tools, build relationships, and strengthen the cooperative ecosystem.

We are now accepting workshop proposals.

What we are looking for

We are looking for sessions that help people start, sustain, grow, connect, and strengthen cooperatives across New York.

Workshop proposals may focus on practical skills, shared challenges, organizing lessons, governance, financing, member engagement, cooperative development, cross-sector collaboration, or broader movement-building.

We are especially interested in workshops connected to one or more of the following themes:

• Trainings and skill development for co-op members
• Cross-sector relationship-building and collaboration
• Statewide relationship-building, collaboration, and movement-building

Sessions can focus on any part of New York’s cooperative economy, including worker cooperatives, housing cooperatives, credit unions and financial cooperatives, food co-ops, agricultural cooperatives, utility cooperatives, and other cooperative or solidarity economy projects.

Workshops will be roughly one hour long and may take the form of participatory workshops, presentations with Q&A, panel discussions, or other formats.

Who should submit?

We encourage proposals from cooperative members, organizers, developers, educators, technical assistance providers, funders, community partners, and anyone doing work that can help strengthen New York’s cooperative ecosystem.

You do not need to be a professional presenter. We want sessions grounded in real experience, practical knowledge, useful tools, honest lessons, and work that other cooperatives can learn from.

If you have helped build, run, finance, organize, govern, support, study, or troubleshoot cooperative work, we invite you to submit a proposal.

Presenter support

Each accepted workshop will be allocated up to $500 in travel and housing stipends, shared among presenters.

Additional funding requests will be considered individually based on need and available budget.

Deadline

Workshop proposals are due by July 15, 2026.

The planning committee will review proposals after the deadline and follow up with applicants. If your session is selected, there will be opportunities to refine your title, description, and agenda before the final program is published.

Submit a proposal

Submit your workshop proposal here:

https://bit.ly/2026-nycs-workshop

For questions, contact newyorkcooperative@gmail.com.