California business cooperatives generate billions of dollars in annual revenue and provide an economic structure that affects hundreds of thousands of California employees.In fact, one in three Californians is a member of a cooperative, according to the UC Davis Center for Cooperatives. The center is sponsoring a two-day conference Nov. 15-16 on how cooperatives work, how to finance development and expansion, and how co-ops create jobs and improve community life.Called Cooperatives and Communities -- Growing Strong Together," the conference will be held at the Red Lion Hotel in Rohnert Park in the San Francisco Bay Area, where approximately 273,000 co-op members own and control their organizations, according to Mahlon Lang, director of the UC Davis center."Cooperatives return their earnings or other benefits to their members, not to investors in other states," says Lang. "Because they are geographically close to their members, cooperatives help stabilize local employment and are vested in the local economy."