Hurricane Katrina struck in August 2005 and CDF gave out grants through July 2008
The Katrina Cooperative Recovery Fund was established by the Cooperative Development Foundation in September 2005 to help the long-term recovery of rural areas of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama.  The Fund took this opportunity to introduce cooperative development as a collective, alternative development strategy.  It received and gave out more than $120,000 to assist cooperatives and their members and groups interested in forming cooperatives.  All contributions went to this effort; nothing was taken in administrative or any other fee.  This Fund then became the Co-op Disaster Recovery Fund.

$113,000 went to the Federation of Southern Cooperatives (FSC), a cooperative development organization active in 10 Southern states and CDF’s on-the-ground partner.  This was used for:

• a feasibility study for a fishing cooperative in Plaquemines Parish
• computer and workforce development
• technical assistance and resource development to help with long-term and permanent recovery and rebuilding lives ad communities using the cooperative model
• cooperative development training for economic developers and people and communities interested in starting cooperatives to help rebuild; areas included worker, housing, food, fishing, dairy, marketing, and production cooperatives
• work with credit unions to help them raise resources to help families with loans for recovery from Katrina damage
• technical assistance to the Plaquemines Parish Fisherman’s Cooperative

$6,200 went to CooperationWorks, a national network of cooperative development organizations.  It was used for scholarships so economic developers from the Gulf region not affiliated with CooperationWorks and who were working on economic and community recovery initiatives could attend two of CooperationWorks’ week-long training sessions in cooperative development.  Topics included cooperative legal structures and taxation, finance, capitalization, and governance and visits were made to several co-ops in the vicinity of the training venue.