My MTEMC

Membership Awareness

You may be seeing or hearing information in local media about MTEMC’s membership awareness campaign, My MTEMC. It’s an effort to communicate the benefits of membership to our members. With the dramatic population increases in our area, many incoming residents are not familiar with what a cooperative is. Also, surveys say today’s younger generation is not as informed regarding the benefits of cooperative membership as older generations. This campaign is an attempt to dialogue with our members and remind them what Middle Tennessee Electric is…what a cooperative stands for…and what being a member means.

 

 

To start with…

MTEMC was born in the minds and will of ordinary people – homeowners and farmers in rural Middle Tennessee who were told providing electricity to them was impractical by power companies in the larger cities. These people wanted the conveniences of electricity, so they built an electric company themselves. They formed a cooperative…Middle Tennessee Electric Membership Corporation in 1936.

 

More than a customer

By being part of the cooperative, you are more than a customer; you are a member. MTEMC is not merely an organization you receive a service from and send payments to…you are part of the organization. By virtue of your membership, you automatically receive all the benefits other members receive, such as low rates, good service reliability and a number of helpful services the cooperative offers. But beyond that, members who choose to can become more involved in how the cooperative works. For example, the cooperative has a number of boards and committees members can seek to become part of. There is an Annual Meeting of members, where members vote for the cooperative’s Board of Directors and on proposed changes to the cooperative’s bylaws. And members are always welcome to provide their input through a phone call, a visit or an e-mail.

 

The profit of a not-for-profit

By forming a cooperative, members agreed to pool their resources and share costs in bringing electricity to the area and in running the system they would build. And that’s just how it works today. The purpose of this cooperation is not in making a profit, but in keeping electric rates as low as possible and in keeping reliability as high as possible. As a not-for-profit, the employees who work for the cooperative understand its resources and investments are to be managed with the good of the members in mind…not with a goal of generating profits for stockholders.

 

 

Begin the dialogue

Got questions? Have comments? Talk to us at  MyMTEMC@mtemc.com or call us today at 1-877-777-9020. Also, check us out on Facebook and Twitter. We look forward to hearing from you.