All members of Sumner-Cowley Electric receive a complimentary copy of the Kansas Country Living magazine. Sumner-Cowley Electric employees and directors often receive questions from members about why they receive the Kansas Country Living magazine. The answer is––the magazine is a benefit to both the cooperative and the entire membership.
The word “membership” helps supply part of the answer. As a member of Sumner-Cowley Electric, you are entitled to certain privileges – those not available to paying customers of investor-owned utilities.
As a member and owner of Sumner-Cowley Electric–not just a paying customer–you are entitled to know how your business operates. Sumner-Cowley Electric considers it an obligation to share information on a timely and regular basis. The best way to do this is through the Kansas Country Living magazine. Sumner-Cowley Electric’s newsletter, News from the Wheat Capital, is located in the middle part of the magazine, and can be distinguished by the colored border. This newsletter is written and created by employees in your local office and is designed to keep you updated on the latest news of the local cooperative, such as annual meeting information, area meetings, youth tour information, outage and construction activities, people who work for you, safety tips, ways to use electricity wisely and announcements, and more.
The main pages of the magazine contain news and interesting features from around Kansas. One of the highlights for many of our members are the delicious recipes that are included in every issue.
Sumner-Cowley Electric is one of 23 electric cooperatives in Kansas, providing this magazine to their members, each cooperative with its own customized newsletter inserted into the magazine. By combining forces with these other electric cooperatives, the cost to produce the inserts and the magazines becomes quite reasonable. In fact, the cost per member is about 65 cents. This includes printing and mailing the magazine to more than 4,200 members just for Sumner-Cowley Electric. Each month, more than 128,000 magazines were mailed to cooperative members in Kansas. If we were to provide this information in the form of a one-page letter, the postage alone would be 50 cents. Timely and useful information has far more value than what it costs for publishing the magazine.
You can view the past issues of the newsletter in the menu on the right!
If you are interested in advertising, submitting an event to be published, or being a freelance writer, visit kec.org/kcl. If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to contact Casha Short via email at cashas@sucocoop.com or by phone 888-326-3356.