Membership
Streams of income
Every quarter the cooperative opens one new project and members subscribe to it. Each project a member has subscribed to is one of that member's streams of income. This page explains what activating a stream actually means, what you enter in your back office once a month, how the generations are counted, and exactly what somebody above you can see.
A stream of income is a project you own a share of
In this union the phrase has one meaning and no other. A stream of income is a business the cooperative has opened — a farm, a mill, a packing line, a distribution round — in which you hold ordinary shares. You are a part-owner of that business. The income is whatever the business earns and distributes.
The cooperative opens a new project once a quarter, which is four a year. It takes 20% of the equity itself and offers the remaining 80% to members. A member activates that stream by subscribing shares in it. Shares are ₦1,000 each and the minimum subscription on any project is 100 shares, which is ₦100,000.
Nobody is obliged to take every quarter's project. A member may hold one stream, or five, or none beyond their weekly savings. What you hold is your own decision, taken with the project papers in front of you.
Streams are not the same thing as your savings. Savings sit with the cluster, are captured online every week, and earn 30% annual interest paid at the end of your financial year once you have saved for twelve uninterrupted months. A stream is equity: it earns when the business earns, and its dividend falls due at the end of the union's financial year on 31 December — if the businesses declared one that year, and if your own savings have run unbroken for twelve months.
| Put in by the cooperative | 20% |
|---|---|
| Subscribed by members | 80% |
| Total equity in the project | 100% |
| One ordinary share | ₦1,000 |
|---|---|
| Minimum shares on one project | 100 |
| Least you can subscribe | ₦100,000 |
These are the union's published terms, restated. They are not a forecast of what any project will earn, and no project's return is printed on this page because none has been published.
Activation
How a stream is activated
Activation is not a click and it is not a code. A stream is activated when your subscription is paid and entered in the union's share register against your membership number. Until that entry exists, the field in your back office stays red.
The union opens the project
At the start of the quarter the office publishes what the project is, where it sits on the food chain, what the equity is, and what the cooperative itself is putting in.
You read it before you decide
Take the papers to your cluster meeting on Saturday and to the business school. Ask what the project sells, who buys it, and what happens if it makes a loss.
You subscribe shares
At least 100 shares at ₦1,000 each. Your financial secretary records the subscription and you keep the receipt. Your money buys equity, not a place in a queue.
The field turns green
The stream shows as activated in your back office and stays there. Your name is on that project's share register for as long as you hold the shares.
What activating a stream means, plainly
Activating a stream means subscribing to a real project with real shares in it. You are buying equity in a business that has to trade, sell and account for itself. It is not a membership level, not a package, and not a position in anybody's structure. Like all equity, it can lose value if the business does badly, and the union will not tell you otherwise.
Introducing other people is not itself a source of income in this union. Nobody is paid for a recruit, for a downline, or for the size of a generation. Every naira a member receives comes from one of three places: interest on their own savings, dividends on shares they subscribed themselves, or a return on an investment they made themselves.
Your streams, field by field
The back office keeps one field for each stream: Stream of income 1 activated, then 2, then 3, and on as the union opens more. The union's own convention is used throughout — green when a thing is complete, red when it is not.
A red field is not a rebuke. It means the union has no share entry against your name for that project yet, which is either because you decided not to subscribe or because your subscription has not been recorded. If you have paid and the field is still red, tell your financial secretary at the next Saturday meeting; that is a bookkeeping matter and it gets fixed in the book.
The same three membership fields sit above them — registration completed, an Android phone, and a commitment to save without interrupting — because a member who is not saving is not an active member, whatever their streams say.
Streams of income
Example only- Stream of income 1 activated Shares subscribed and entered in the register. Done
- Stream of income 2 activated Shares subscribed and entered in the register. Done
- Stream of income 3 activated Shares subscribed and entered in the register. Done
- Stream of income 4 activated No subscription recorded for this project. Not yet
- Stream of income 5 activated This quarter's project. Papers are with the office. Not yet
An illustration of the panel, not a real member's record. Your own panel is filled in from the union's share register and from nothing else.
One update a month, and what it is for
Once a month a member opens the back office and enters the referral link for the next stream they are working towards, so the union can confirm it. That is the whole obligation. It takes a minute and it is the only thing the union asks a member to do online between Saturdays.
The confirmation matters because it tells the office which project each member is actually moving on, rather than which project the office assumed. Once the union knows that, it can do the work it exists to do: run a campaign for the members who are all approaching the same project, set challenges and tasks for a cluster that has stalled, and send the business school where the questions are coming from.
A member who does not update simply keeps the streams they already hold. Nothing is taken away, no field turns red because of a missed update, and no penalty is charged. You are only invisible to that quarter's campaign, which is a loss to you rather than a punishment from us.
- Confirmation. The office matches your link to the project and confirms it against your record.
- Campaigns. Members working towards the same project are grouped, so one briefing reaches all of them.
- Challenges and tasks. Clusters are set targets they can actually meet, based on where their members are.
- Follow-up. Your upline knows what to help with instead of guessing, and so does your financial secretary.
Monthly update
DemonstrationThis copy of the field is here so you know what to expect. It is not connected to the union's records and nothing you type on this page is stored or sent.
Generations
Who is under you, and what they can see of you
The union records who introduced whom, and it does so in generations. This is the part of any cooperative that people are right to look at closely, so it is written out here in full rather than left to be discovered in the back office.
How the generations are counted
If you introduce someone to the union and they register, that member is in your first generation. When that member introduces someone, the new member is in your second generation. It continues in the same way for as long as the line continues. There is no cleverness in it: a generation is just a count of how many introductions stand between you and another member.
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You
Your own membershipYour savings, your shares and your streams. Everything you are owed is calculated from this row and from nothing below it.
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First generation
A member you introduced Another member you introducedPeople you brought in yourself. You are their upline, which means you are the member the union expects to answer their questions and get them to a Saturday meeting.
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Second generation
A member your first generation introducedYou did not introduce them; a member of your first generation did. They appear in your list so that you can see how far a line has carried, and so the office can find the nearest active member when somebody needs help.
Exactly what an upline is shown
The list below is complete. It is what the back office puts in front of the member above you, and there is nothing else behind it.
| What is shown | Covering | What it is for |
|---|---|---|
| Your name in their downline list | Each generation, listed separately | So they know who is in their line and where you sit in it. |
| The streams of income you have activated | Each generation, listed separately | So they can see who has subscribed to what, and where a member has stalled. |
| Your phone number | Every downline, all generations | Follow-up: a call before Saturday, or a reminder about the monthly update. |
| Your email address | Every downline, all generations | Follow-up in writing, and passing on project papers from the office. |
What is not on that list
Your savings balance, your share position, your loan status and your cluster ledger are not shown to your upline. They belong to your own record, to your cluster's financial secretary and to the union office. If somebody in your line quotes your savings figure back at you, they did not get it from the back office.
A downline is not an income
Having people under you pays nothing. The union does not pay a commission, a bonus or a percentage for introducing a member, and no field in the back office turns into money because a generation grew. If anyone tells you that recruiting is how you earn here, they are describing a different organisation.
Before you subscribe
Questions members ask about streams
If your question is not here, ask it at the Saturday meeting or write to the office. An answer you had to chase is not an answer.
No, and it is worth keeping them apart in your head. Savings are money you put in every week and can draw after twelve uninterrupted months, with 30% annual interest paid at the end of your financial year. A stream is share capital in a project: it is not on deposit, it earns what the project earns, and it is paid through dividends at the financial year end on 31 December. No dividend rate is fixed in advance, and a dividend reaches a member only if their savings have run unbroken for twelve months.
Most members start with savings and only subscribe to a project once the weekly habit is steady. There is no rule requiring that order, but it is the order the business school teaches.
No. There is no referral commission, no joining bonus and no payment of any kind for bringing a member in. The referral link exists so the union can record who introduced whom and confirm which stream you are working towards — it is a record, not a wallet.
What you get from a strong line is practical rather than financial: members who come to the meeting, a cluster that meets its targets, and projects that fill their equity so they can start trading.
Yes. A project is a business and shares in a business can fall in value or pay no dividend in a bad year. Members subscribe 80% of the equity in each project and the cooperative puts in the other 20%, so members hold the larger part of the result in a good year and in a bad one. Exactly how a loss is shared between the cooperative and the members is one of the things the union has not published yet. Ask the office for it in writing before you subscribe.
Before you subscribe, ask what the project sells, who has agreed to buy it, what the cost of the crop or the plant is, and what happens if a season fails. If nobody can answer those four questions with figures, do not subscribe that quarter. Never subscribe money you will need before 31 December.
Then you do not subscribe this quarter, and nothing bad happens. Your savings continue, your existing streams are untouched, your loan eligibility after three months of consistent saving is unaffected, and the next project opens in three months.
The minimum is 100 shares on one project. It is not a monthly bill and it is not a subscription that lapses. Members who want to build towards it usually save weekly at a level they can hold through a hard month, rather than a level that looks good in January.
Your phone number and email address are shown to the members above you in your line, so that they can follow up with you, and to the union office. They are given for union business — meetings, project papers, the monthly update — and for nothing else.
If contact from your line becomes a nuisance, or if your details are used to sell you something that is not a union matter, tell your cluster's financial secretary and write to requizacooperative@gmail.com. That is a discipline matter for the union, not a private disagreement between two members.
Because a confirmed link is how the office knows which project you are moving on. With that, the union can group the members who are approaching the same stream, brief them together, and set challenges and tasks that a cluster can actually complete. Without it, the office is guessing, and campaigns end up aimed at everybody and useful to nobody.
It is one entry a month. Nothing about your money changes when you make it, and nothing about your money changes when you miss it.
Learn a project before you fund one
The business school exists so that no member subscribes to a project they cannot read. It is the union's own school, and it teaches the same books the union keeps.