The Light is Getting Longer

Celebrating Year Two + Gather to Launch Year 3 with us on January 31 at Noon

Dear Community,

Today the light begins to grow longer. Blink and you will miss it. We get the sun one whole second longer today than we did yesterday. Sometimes the margins of hope we have to cling to are like that.

Tomorrow daylight tarries in Boston three seconds longer than today. By the end of the first week of January, we will enjoy a whole minute more of light every day than the day before it. Momentum is growing. By March the expansion that began unnoticeably this morning will have snowballed. The pace of new light pouring into our lives will have doubled more than seven times until it peaks in an eighteen day stretch of gratuitousness offering an additional two minutes and fifty-two seconds for every planetary whirl.

Even in the midst of winter, we are reminded by the gathering light that spring is on its way.

Starting a cooperative in the middle of pandemics, economic crises, inflation, geopolitical instability, market weirdness and a reckoning for racial justice will make you grateful for every second. Building something with a community, a diverse group of leaders rooted in common needs and common vision, will take your breath away on the days when things seem to take on a life and energy all their own. 

It doesn’t feel too long ago when we were counting progress by the millisecond. Today it feels like we can count in minutes.

As we head into the winter holidays and the close of our second year here at the Community Purchasing Alliance of Massachusetts, with storms on the forecast, organizationally it feels like we’re headed into spring. Blooms are everywhere and the light is longer every day.

Over 60 organizations participated in CPA MA group purchasing processes this year. Our reach and impact is growing all the time, as is our collective power to negotiate the rates and services you need. We increasingly support a range of institution sizes and types: our most common participant continues to be congregations with budgets under $1 million, even as we began working with multi-campus school systems like Excel Academy (in janitorial) and helped Wellesley College navigate their most complex energy questions in a decade. There is synergy and power in working together with all our diversity!

We took a leap from offering three program services in 2021 to six services in 2023. We are looking to bring additional participants into these six services (electricity, natural gas, waste, commercial insurance, PPE, and janitorial) while pursuing new opportunities like copier leasing, HVAC, solar, snow removal, and other trades—always with a focus on services that can create value for your institution and create business opportunities for local BIPOC companies.

Our team is expanding! I can’t wait to introduce you to our phenomenal new Director of Business Development who starts the first week of January. We are also finding new ways to leverage our network with cooperatives in other states, to bring our collective expertise and capacity to bear for your organizations with an expanding range of challenges and services.

We raised almost $400,000 in new sources of start-up funding this year. With some very exciting partnerships to announce in early 2023!

Perhaps most exciting, we are poised to found CPA Massachusetts as a member-owned cooperative! We are reviewing a first draft of bylaws prepared by Suffolk Law School’s Transactional Clinic and prepping the soil to organize all of your institutions to take ownership of this co-op over the next year.

There were also challenges to tackle and not everything was a win. Strong as we are becoming, we were no match for overcoming the impact Russia’s war on Ukraine had on energy costs. Gas prices that looked exorbitant in the high .80s back in January are now the envy of fixed-rate seekers across New England. And even our favorite vendors make mistakes that require mediation. We know the inflating costs and complexities of this time are a burden for many of you. The trust many of you have put in us is an honor I take serious. We are determined to build an organization capable of sharing the load through our collective abilities.

Together we are resilient. We will keep learning and growing and getting better at solving problems by choosing to cooperate in a spirit of mutuality, solidarity, transparency, and plain old hustle. And as we grow, we are keeping our focus squarely on building up purchasing power that is a true force for racial equity and ecological restoration to repair the historical harm present in our cities, state, and nation.

I want to thank my Steering Team—our founding board—for all the work they put in this year to make everything described above possible. Barbara Berke, Eric Grey, Maria Fernandez, Ted Greenwood, and Trecia Reavis (and our newest member, Rev. Nathan Ives) have been indispensable partners and guides, rooting us deep in the aspirations and needs of our community as we aim for the stars. You are amazing!

And, finally, I want to thank all of you: everyone who joined a call, submitted a bill, looked at pricing and vendors with me, exchanged an email or text, made a referral or joined a contract. A co-op is not possible without cooperators. I am proud and grateful to call you mine.

As we launch toward bigger joy-filled things next year, I hope you will join us to celebrate the work so far, build relationships with one another, and catch a vision for the future of the Community Purchasing Alliance of Massachusetts.

Please join us on Zoom to kick off 2023 at our All Co-op Meeting:
Tuesday, January 31, 12:00 - 1:15pm.

More details on this event, group purchasing campaign schedules for next year, and much more to come in the new year.

Until then—shalom, as-salamu alaykum, peace, Happy Holidays and Happy New Year,

Nathan Davis Hunt
Director, CPA Massachusetts Cooperative

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CPA MA’s Steering Team gathers over dinner and wine at Barbara’s home in May to build relationship, cultivate the groundwork for racial equity, and plan for the second half of 2022.

Nathan and Alex (CPA Energy Program Director) take in the alley-way scenery behind Old South Church.

CPA Staff and Board members in discussion with Jessica Gordon Nembhard on the history, present, and future of purchasing cooperatives in Black communities and racial equity.

A sticky-note strategic plan for founding our cooperative emerges behind Nathan’s sunburned nose.

Leaders from four states deliberate together over indicative energy pricing with CPA.

What a year!