Mike Couick
New technologies. New regulations. New opportunities to serve our communities. New happens every day in the business of electricity.
Delivering safe, reliable and affordable power to more than 1.5 million South Carolinians in rural areas of our state means it is vitally important that board members (sometimes called trustees) at your local, not-for-profit electric cooperative are informed and able to meet the evolving expectations of our consumer-members.
That obligation began more than 75 years ago with neighbors teaching neighbors how to create and run a cooperative so as to bring electricity to their farms and homes. Today, the constant changes in how we distribute and consume electricity mean that our homegrown co-op leaders need to continually update their knowledge of increasingly complex issues.
One of the best things about cooperatives is that they are run by elected boards pulled directly from the membership. In fact, in a cooperative, the most valuable qualification a board member or trustee can bring to the table is a genuine care and concern for his or her neighbors. Trustees are most often drawn from those service-oriented community leaders who are always watching out for other folks. The greatest asset they can have is the trust of their fellow cooperative members. Frankly, everything else necessary to serve as a board member can be taught.
Most of our board members have jobs and backgrounds in fields that do not involve the generation and transmission of electricity. One of the primary challenges of a cooperative, then, is educating newly elected board members about a field in which they likely have no prior experience.
New board members must be brought up to speed quickly and efficiently on the multimillion-dollar business challenges facing cooperatives in an energy landscape where power supply decisions are more complex, involve higher-level risks and have greater cost consequences for members than ever before. In terms of the amount of information he or she must process, a new trustee coming on to the board may very well feel like the proverbial dog drinking from a fire hose.
Happily, co-ops are well-equipped to address trustee education. We continually educate our board members to look out for their neighbors and serve as member advocates in overseeing the management of the cooperative. Our national organization, the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association (NRECA), has an education and credentialing program that offers real benchmarks for trustees on their paths forward, and a number of our local cooperatives require trustees to achieve certain levels of education within a given time frame.
NRECA courses shepherd new board members through an array of complex topics including power supply, utility technology, finance and risk management, communications and corporate governance, and prepare them to serve as advocates for our members at large.
Our board members and trustees are working hard, studying and learning these issues to better serve their neighbors in local communities. They are committed to training because there is something new to learn every day.