Lori Capouch has championed rural and frontier co-op development in North Dakota for over three decades. In the 1990s, Capouch was part of efforts which led to the formation of large-scale agricultural cooperatives in North Dakota – one in durum wheat processing and the other in bison slaughter and processing. In 1998, she took her first official co-op job at the North Dakota Association of Rural Electric Cooperatives (NDAREC), where she worked for 26 years. NDAREC is the only statewide electric cooperative association in the nation to operate a cooperative development center. There, Capouch directed the Rural Electric and Telecommunications (RE&T) Cooperative Development Center and the Rural Development Finance Corporation (RDFC), which are supported by NDAREC, the Broadband Association of North Dakota, 17 electric distribution cooperatives and 12 telecommunications cooperatives.
Capouch was instrumental in establishing RDFC’s $9 million revolving loan fund, as well as the North Dakota Rural Electric Cooperative Foundation, which continues to fund co-op development across the state. As of 2024, RDFC has awarded 148 community development loans totaling approximately $13.7 million, created nearly 300 jobs and leveraged more than $145 million in North Dakotan towns.
She played a significant role in supporting North Dakota ranchers and livestock producers to expand local meat processing capacity. In 2023, she wrote and won a $10 million grant through the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Meat and Poultry Intermediary Lending Program (MPILP) to create a revolving loan fund to support meat processing capacity in North Dakota.
Dedicated to rural community wellbeing and development, Capouch has extended her expertise and energies to child care co-ops. She helped establish the first employer-assisted child care cooperative in the state and authored handbooks, templates and toolkits on the application of the co-op model for child care.
Thanks to her research on issues of rural food access, in 2023, the state Legislature appropriated $1 million for a rural food access pilot grant program. The establishment of the Rural Access Distribution (RAD) Cooperative – which is the first-known rural food access and distribution co-op in the United States – is her proudest achievement. The model she created is now being studied and replicated elsewhere – including in the urban community of the Bronx, N.Y.
Capouch’s work has proven that in frontier and rural places, where the free market has trouble serving, the cooperative model can be a viable solution. Her own measure of success is saying goodbye to the cooperatives she helped. For all her work supporting cooperatives and families in rural America, we welcome Capouch as a national co-op hero.