A conversation with... Howard Brodsky

Howard Brodsky is Co-founder and Chair of CCA Global Partners (USA)

Tell us about your organisation?
CCA Global Partners is one of the largest purchasing cooperatives in North America. I also started Principle Six Cooperative and Cooperatives for a Better World. My passion for co-ops comes from my father, who immigrated from Ukraine and built a small flooring business. When he passed away, I took it over and realised that small family businesses can’t survive without scale. Cooperatives became the way to give them that strength without taking away their independence.

The cooperative model is so powerful because it combines autonomy with collective strength. Family businesses want to stay independent, but they need to work together for buying power, technology, and training. A co-op gives them scale without losing ownership. And ownership really matters — people fight harder for something they own.

How does CCA create impact?
Think of a bike shop or a small sporting goods store. On their own, they’d struggle to get good financing or competitive prices. Through the co-op, they get credit, better insurance rates, and access to products at the same cost as billion-dollar companies. Generally, our members have done better than the large national companies in market share, which is quite remarkable. 

We now support over 700,000 family businesses. Beyond that, our CCA for Social Good division works with 39,000 childcare centres serving 1.5 million children. We help with food, teacher training, insurance, and financing. Many members tell me their business wouldn’t have survived without the co-op – and now their kids want to carry it on. That’s incredibly rewarding.

Impact through scaling!
Exactly – and that’s what principle six (cooperation among cooperatives) and our co-op, Principle Six, is about: co-ops helping co-ops. Even the largest ones need more scale with today’s rapid changes in AI and technology. It lets housing co-ops learn from housing co-ops, food co-ops from food co-ops, across borders. It’s also about making sure we, as co-ops, own our data and use it to get better together.

People don’t really understand the scale of co-ops. Small family businesses make up 96% of all businesses worldwide, yet politicians and professionals often have very little understanding of co-ops. Co-ops already account for 10% of the world’s economy, and we need a seat at the “big table” of decision-making to make sure our model is recognised as a real solution.

Is that why you got involved in the CM50?
Yes. CM50 is about bringing leaders together, learning from each other, and planting seeds for new co-ops to grow. Large co-ops have a responsibility to lift up smaller ones. CM50 can also help us influence global policy and show governments that co-ops can build more equitable economies.

The Sustainable Development Goals will be tough to meet under current conditions. Co-ops are essential for getting there — but we need faster growth and greater reach. That’s why Doha and CM50 matter. It’s not an endpoint; it’s a starting line. Together, we can go further, faster.

How do cooperatives build a better world?
By creating a more equitable, sustainable, and prosperous future where ownership is shared widely, not concentrated in a few hands.  I say there are two kinds of poverty: economic poverty and poverty of hope. A job alone doesn’t always give hope. But ownership does. When people have a stake in the game, they feel empowered. That’s what makes co-ops different.