The University of California-Berkeley Students Housing Coop started in Berkeley California

The goal was to provide affordable housing to all students attending the University

The villain in the story is ignorance and greed

The internal conflict was wanting to have control over the resources and still wanting to create value

The external problem was that a large amount of the organization’s money was being wasted necessarily

Philosophical conflict was how much to change and reduce waste and what to do with the profits

When we met them we had a great affinity for cooperative practices and had been involved in a number of cooperative organizations already and founded our own

We did a quick audit to see how many areas we could save and give them a proposal on how to actually implement them

We set up an agreement where we would provide the services to do so

We asked them to purchase our products and install them in several locations to begin with

They were able to save several thousands of dollars initially and then able to use that money to invest to create more wealth

They were able to avoid wasting resources and money

They were able to transform from being wasteful to being efficient