Frequently Asked Questions

Built on 20+ years of insights and continuous enhancement, the Cooperative Difference Survey is the premier annual member survey exploring member opinion and understanding of the “cooperative difference,” satisfaction across core performance attributes and emerging energy trends.

This comprehensive survey covers the issues most critical to cooperative success, from industry topics to performance evaluation. It offers customization options for distribution cooperatives, and Statewides or G&Ts, including support for adding custom questions for your co-op. It includes national benchmarks and key metrics such as an American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI®) score and a Net Promoter Score℠ and insights to make it easy to take action. The methodology ensures accuracy through quotas that minimize the margin of error, schedules for outreach and reminders that reduce bias, and age stratification to ensure that all age groups throughout your membership are represented. Plus, it’s turnkey: Cooperative Insights handles all member outreach with emails and reminders inviting members to participate, and we use your cooperative’s branding and contact information in all member-facing materials.

Age stratification ensures that the results are representative of your cooperative’s age demographics. This gives you clearer insight into younger members, who tend to be least responsive to surveys and most important in raising overall satisfaction.

Yes! Participants can add up to five complementary closed-ended custom questions. Cooperative Insights has a bank of questions that you can pull from, and we’re also happy to work with you to create questions to meet your needs.

Discounts and additional customization options apply for Statewides and G&Ts. Cooperative Insights is a business unit within NCEMC, and we understand the unique needs and challenges of cooperatives and aggregate groups. We will work with your team to develop a solution to achieve your goals.

All electric cooperatives, Statewides and G&Ts are welcome to join the survey.

To sign up for the Cooperative Difference Survey, please click here. If you have questions or would like further clarification about the survey, please send us an email using this form.

The deadline to sign up for the Cooperative Difference Survey is at the end of April.

A random sample of your members will receive a survey invitation by email. The email will include a link to join the survey, along with your cooperative’s logo and contact information. A unique link is sent with each survey invitation to support data integrity.

The end of April is the deadline to sign up for the 2026 Cooperative Difference Survey. Surveying will take place across May and June, and a final report will be delivered in August.

All we need from you is a member data file, co-op logo, optional custom questions and contact information for a project liaison. We do the “heavy lifting” of reaching out to your members and collecting data. You have the option to promote awareness of the survey via email or social media using templates created by Cooperative Insights.

We offer standard sample sizes of 250 and 400 members, a best practice to achieve accuracy and minimize margin of error.

Participants will receive a cooperative-specific, comprehensive report with national benchmarks and key metrics such as an American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI®) score and a Net Promoter Score℠. Verbatim responses and a list of members who requested contact are also provided. Upon request, we can provide raw data and files that are compatible with visualization tools like Power BI.

Once data collection is complete, your cooperative will be provided with a list of the members who would like to be contacted.

Yes! After the survey is complete, you can request a raw data file that is compatible with data visualization tools like Power BI.