Wisconsin Co-op Directory

Wisconsin is fortunate to be home to 683 cooperatives, which can be sorted by membership, sector, county, and legislative districts in the directory below. The three maps that follow offer different views of cooperatives in Wisconsin, enabling the user to see cooperatives by county, sector, or type. The directory only includes cooperatives that are legally incorporated in Wisconsin, so cooperatives with branches in Wisconsin that are not headquartered here may not appear.

For further information about how co-ops were selected, see the Sources and Notes section below.

Do you see an update? Let us know here!

Last updated: Summer 2025

Click on the column headers to sort by cooperative sector, type, county, etc. Best viewed on desktop. Limited viewing options depending on mobile device.

There is at least one cooperative in 70 of Wisconsin’s 72 counties, with the highest concentrations in Dane and Milwaukee counties.

About this Directory

Identifying an organization as a cooperative requires both a working definition of a cooperative and reliable data sources for organizations that meet the definition.

For the purposes of this directory, we define cooperatives:

• Entities incorporated as cooperatives under Wisconsin Statutes Chapters 185 or 193 and registered with the Wisconsin Department of Finance. In the state of Wisconsin, only organizations incorporated under Chapters 185 and 193 can use “cooperative” or “co-op” in the organizational name.
• Entities specifically incorporated as credit unions under Wisconsin Statutes Chapter 186 and registered with the Wisconsin Department of Finance.
• Entities that have met the registration and reporting requirements of the Wisconsin Commissioner of Insurance and reported a mutual ownership structure.
• Entities chartered by the National Credit Union Administration and registered with NCUA.
• Entities chartered by the Farm Credit Administration and part of the Farm Credit System.

The data used to create this directory has been obtained from these governmental agencies. Using official sources provides a level of data consistency over time and a means to update data on an ongoing basis.

Data from these sources was further refined to include only organizations that have:

• their principle office in Wisconsin, thus excluding
  • non-Wisconsin co-ops incorporated under Wisconsin statutes and
  • co-ops with a Wisconsin presence but not headquartered in the state;
• a Wisconsin DFI status, if the firm is listed in DFI records, of
  • “in good standing”, or
  • “in bad standing” dated 2022 to the present. The status of “in bad standing” reflects a failure to meet various statutory filing requirements, though the co-op itself may still be in operation. For this reason, some co-ops that are inactive but have not legally dissolved may be included.

Cooperative entities that fall outside the scope of this definition and are therefore not included in this directory include:

• Entities that are incorporated as LLCs, nonprofits, or other organizational types but use a cooperative governance structure based on membership voting rights. Examples may be especially common in the housing and childcare sectors.
• Cooperative entities that have branches or subsidiaries in Wisconsin but are incorporated in another state.

Sources & Methodology

1. Wisconsin Department of Financial Institutions, Corporate Records. Firms that have their principle office in Wisconsin and are organized under Wisconsin Statutes Chapters 185 and 193 (cooperatives) and 186 (state-chartered credit unions).
2. Wisconsin Office of the Commissioner of Insurance. Firms that have their principle office in Wisconsin and an ownership type of “Mutual”.
3. S. Farm Credit Administration. Firms in the farm credit sector headquartered in Wisconsin.
4. National Credit Union Administration. Federally chartered credit unions headquartered in Wisconsin.
5. UWCC staff and a GIS consultant populated the following variables: Type, Sector, County, and the district numbers for the Wisconsin legislature and the U.S. Congress. District numbers for the Wisconsin legislature and the U.S. Congress were obtained using GIS Shapefiles from the State of Wisconsin Legislative Technology Services Bureau Geographic Information Services to reflect changes from redistricting in 2024.

6. UWCC staff conducted additional data cleaning using professional knowledge to remove known inactive co-ops.

If you have any questions or comments about the Wisconsin Co-op Directory, please email info@uwcc.wisc.edu.