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 actively educates counties throughout the state about how cooperatives operate, how to finance co-op development and expansion and how co-ops create jobs and improve community life. In the Bay Area, 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."