Electric Cooperative Organizing Toolkit

Introduction

For reasons connected to political leadership at the federal level, 2025 has been rough in terms of making progress on programs connected to energy affordability and the rollout of renewables. There are also emergent energy-related issues that could negatively impact quality of life, such as the rapid buildout of data centers, rate cases that could increase electricity rates, and subsidies for fossil fuel companies.

But not all hope is lost, and there are still powerful mechanisms that regular people can utilize to move us toward a better energy future. Rural electric cooperatives—for those who pay their energy bills to them—hold significant potential for those who want to exercise bottom-up, grassroots leverage to improve energy affordability and move toward a just, sustainable energy system.

Connected to all of this, we are excited to announce our latest resource: the Electric Cooperative Organizing Toolkit! 

This new 98-page toolkit focuses on an often-overlooked part of the United States’ energy ecosystem: rural electric cooperatives. Also known as RECs, electric cooperatives, electric membership corporations, or just “co-ops”, these utilities offer a powerful and largely untapped mechanism in which regular people can influence their community’s energy infrastructure.

The toolkit will help readers become familiar with the basics of rural electric cooperatives, how they operate, and how people can get involved. While this toolkit is primarily meant for rural residents and people with electric co-ops in their area, it includes sections that are informative and useful for folks generally interested in energy infrastructure and democratic control over it.

Roughly 900 electric co-operatives across the United States serve 42 million people in 47 states and Puerto Rico! 

Many of these electric co-ops have been around since the 1930s and were formed to ensure that rural America could access affordable electric service and the benefits it provides. Today, much of the infrastructure operated by electric co-ops is outdated, expensive to maintain, and harmful to health. 

Additionally, electric co-ops serve communities with some of the highest levels of persistent poverty. So, there is much work to be done, and significant potential for folks to get involved in transforming our energy systems and policies for the better.

There are many ways people can shape their energy systems at the local, state, and national levels. From advocating for specific policies to mobilizing residents in a given locality to direct engagement with lawmakers, the menu is sizable. 

The first two sections of this toolkit focus on a potent mechanism for advancing energy democracy: rural electric cooperatives. But even for those not connected to an electric co-op, many of the takeaways in these sections can provide useful information and context for getting more involved in your own energy-related efforts.

This resource was created as a collaborative effort by the member organizations of the Rural Power Coalition (RPC). RPC organizations around the country advance the vision and understanding that rural residents and ratepayers, generally—and electric cooperatives and their member-owners, specifically—have the power to transform our systems of electricity generation and transmission for the better. RPC also works on behalf of and with rural residents to impact the local, state, and federal policies that address rural needs and interests. 

• In Section 1: The Past, Present, and Future of Rural Electric Cooperatives, you will find an overview of all the important components of rural electric cooperatives, how they fit into our national energy systems, and why they hold so much potential. This section is not technical at all, and it provides the foundation for the sections that follow.
• Section 2: How to Engage With Your Electric Co-op provides information that is most important if you are a member-owner of a co-op. In a way, it’s like a civics class that gets you ready for meaningful participation in your local energy democracy: your local electric co-op. If you’re not a member-owner, you may be able to skip or skim this section and go to the next section.
• Section 3: Shaping Projects & Programs sheds some light on how to engage with policymakers and advocate for specific types of programs that can benefit your business, place of worship, farm, nonprofit, and entire community. Section 3 will also explore some types of renewable energy technologies and infrastructure, as well as inclusive utility investments that can be deployed by any utility regardless of whether they are a co-ops, private, or municipal.
• Section 4: Resources is the part of this toolkit that features articles, videos, interactive tools, and other materials that you can use to learn more about anything you started learning about in this toolkit. Section 4 also contains tools for helping you organize and mobilize member-owners at your local electric co-op, and points of contact in the event that you need to reach out to organizations to help you with your efforts.

This toolkit was developed to help residents mobilize and make meaningful improvements in their communities, especially rural ones. Take a look, and see if anything moves you to action. And if so, this toolkit can serve as a place to begin.

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