For the last 17 years, GreenStone Farm Credit Services has been celebrating their Patronage Day on the greenest day of the year. This year’s March 17 event will be the biggest in the company’s history.
“This year it’s going to be $115 million,” says Dave Armstrong, CEO of GreenStone FCS. “We’ve got about 27,000 customers and on average, each customer will get about 1.25 percent of their interest back through this patronage. We think that’s a pretty good value for the membership stock they own in the co-op as a membership fee.”
Armstrong calls this patronage the icing on the cake for all that GreenStone offers.
“This is a real tangible way we can demonstrate even higher levels of value to them,” he says. “The primary value is we provide a dependable, competitive, and responsible source of credit and other financial services along with a staff that understands farming and farm finance.”
When the first Patronage Day was held in 2005, GreenStone was a little cautious about its risk-bearing capacity for the future.
“We started out that first year with a net income of about $62 million, and we paid patronage of 12.5 million,” says Armstrong. “Since that time and with this year’s patronage, we’ve paid $720 million over the 17 years. We’ve continued to push the envelope because our financial performance has been strong as a result of the partnership we have with our customers because they own us.”
On March 17, you can visit your local branch to celebrate with food and to pick up your check.
“It should be a really great day to give some money back and reconnect on a personal basis,” says Armstrong.
Patronage Day will also serve as the beginning of voting for GreenStone’s Member-Grown Outreach Program. It will donate $20,000 to eight organizations throughout the state, and voting will conclude March 31.
