What this is

Two things in one place. On the left, a member services portal your team would actually open on a Tuesday. Under Public site, a rewrite of pioneer.coop built around one clear story instead of a sixteen-item catalog. Everything here is sample content, safe to click.

What we heard on the call

Aug. 5

Give me the download

A short, confident version of what Advisory does, so a conversation can happen tomorrow without fifty hours of prep first. That is the Advisory toolkit page: three services, the words to use, and where to hand off.

Let me borrow something

Assets your team can grab instead of building from scratch. That is the media library, where every item has one button: copy the share link.

Do not lead with price

No day rates or engagement figures appear anywhere in this build, including on the internal pages. The toolkit gives your team the framing to use instead.

Build the customer journey

Coffee chat, newsletter, small paid thing, membership, Advisory. Named steps with an owner at each one, on the member journey page.

Say what we do not do

The public site now has a section called "When to call someone else." Four honest exclusions. It reads as confidence, and it is the shortest route to the yes-to-everything problem.

Jump in

Status

Portal concept, clickable

Public site rewrite, two pages

Real media, waiting on your files

Share tracking, not built

Sign-in, not built

Media library

Everything your team reaches for when a member asks. One button on every item: copy the share link. The link works for anyone, no account, no download, and it never expires unless you retire the asset.

Demo reel

One link that explains Pioneer to somebody who has never heard of it. Send it before a call so the first ten minutes are not spent on the basics.

Pioneer in 90 seconds

Who we are, who owns us, and the three jobs we do. Updated Aug. 2026.

Cuts by audience

Same story, different opening

For electric co-ops1:24 · opens on a rate conversation

For broadband providers1:31 · opens on a fiber launch

For state associations1:18 · opens on statewide programs

Share the reel

Copy the link, or copy a note with the link already in it.

Sample data: 214 views in the last 30 days

House rules

Send the reel before a first call, not after.

Use the audience cut when you know the audience. Use the main reel when you do not.

No pricing in the reel, on purpose. Price is a conversation, not a link.

Session catalog

The one-hour topics your team already delivers, in one list, so anyone can answer "what could you talk about?" without checking with three people first. The last column is the part that is new: where an Advisory model gives the hour more depth than a slide deck would.

Topic	What the hour does	Advisory model to borrow
Communicating a rate increase	Gives a communicator language for bad news that members will still believe.	Trust as a working model, not a feeling
Handling negative comments	Turns a defensive reply reflex into a storytelling one.	Conflict sequence and what people do under pressure
AI for utility marketers	Separates the hype from the two or three things worth doing this quarter.	Work preference mapping across a team
Crisis communication	Builds the plan before the outage, not during it.	Decision rights and who speaks when
Broadband launch	What peers learned about staff questions, competitors and story order.	Change readiness across departments
Reaching Gen Z members	Panel format on billing, renewables, channels and recruiting.	Generational assumptions in hiring
Customer journey and brand	Maps every touch a member has, and finds the two that are broken.	Service recovery and internal handoffs
Digital advertising	Search, targeted social and content, sized for a co-op budget.	None. This one stands alone.
Customer service reinforcement	Six weeks of on-site training, tips and check-ins. Not a single session.	Motivation and why people do what they do
Energy efficiency for frontline staff	One day turning a call center into trusted energy advisors.	None. This one stands alone.

One hour is a door, not a deliverable. The rule of thumb worth keeping: an hour is worth doing when somebody leaves it and changes something. If the ask is to fill an agenda slot, say yes only if you want the relationship, and say so out loud.

Advisory toolkit

Three services your team can raise in any conversation, without knowing the whole catalog and without quoting a number. If the interest is real, the next step is an introduction, not a proposal.

01 Easiest opening

Statewide leadership programs

A multi-day leadership program run through a state association, which recruits its own members and bills them back. The association carries the budget, so nobody at a single co-op has to find the money.

Try saying"A few statewides run a leadership program for their members through us. The association organizes it and the co-ops send people. Would that fit yours?"

02 Highest ceiling

Board development

A board health assessment turns gut feel into a scorecard: where directors are aligned, where they are not, and what to do about it. It is also the cleanest way into a room with a CEO in it.

Try saying"There is a board assessment we can run that gives the board a real picture of itself. Most boards have never seen one. Want me to get you the overview?"

03 Most urgent

Succession planning

Half this industry is retiring. Succession work builds a bench before the announcement rather than after it, and it is the conversation a general manager is usually already having privately.

Try saying"Who is next after your GM? If that answer is fuzzy, that is a thing we work on, and it takes longer than people expect."

Decision tree

Someone asks for something. What is it really?

They ask forWhat is usually underneath itWhere it goes

"We need communication training." Two people who will not talk to each other, and a manager not holding either accountable. Ask two more questions first

"Our call center is inconsistent." No standard, no reinforcement, and nobody owns the script. Pioneer, six-week program

"We want a speaker for an hour." An agenda slot to fill, or a real problem someone is testing quietly. Ask what changes after

"Our board runs out of time." Meetings organized around reports instead of decisions. Advisory, board development

"Our GM retires in two years." No bench, and a board that has never run a search. Advisory, succession

"Everyone here is frustrated and we do not know why." Culture. Nobody has ever measured it, so every theory is equally loud. Advisory, culture audit

"Our members do not understand the rate case." A real communications problem, and a good one. Pioneer, keep it

No numbers on this page, anywhere. Advisory day rates and engagement figures are deliberately absent from this portal, including from internal pages. If someone asks what it costs, the answer is that it depends on the shape of the work, and the next step is a conversation with the Advisory team.

Member journey

Five steps from a stranger at a conference to an organization that has been with the co-op for a decade. Each one has an owner and one job. Nobody skips from step one to step five.

Step 1

Coffee chat

Thirty minutes, no agenda, no pitch. They bring the thing they are stuck on. We listen and name it.

Member Services

Step 2

Stay in the room

Podcast, newsletter and monthly webinars. They keep hearing from us without ever being sold to.

Marketing

Step 3

One small thing

A session, an audit, a single campaign. Finished, paid for, and something they can judge us on.

Member Services

Step 4

Join the co-op

One subscription makes them an owner. From here the rest of the department is available.

Member Services

Step 5

Advisory

Leadership, board and strategy work over months. Introduced, not pitched, and handed off warm.

Advisory

What makes a step happen

Coffee chat to newsletter: they say yes to a follow-up. That is all it takes, and it should be asked for in the chat itself.

Newsletter to small thing: they reply to something, or they show up to two webinars. Both are signals worth a call.

Small thing to membership: the small thing landed and somebody above the communicator noticed.

Membership to Advisory: a problem comes up that a magazine cannot fix, and they say it out loud.

Where it breaks today

Step 3 goes free too often. A free hour teaches people the work has no price. Free belongs at step one, where it buys visibility. At step three it costs the next step.

Step 5 has no trigger. The signal exists in a conversation and then nobody logs it. One field in the CRM fixes this.

Everyone owns steps 1 through 4. Which means, on a busy week, nobody does.

Slogan lab

Twenty versions of the same hero, each taking a different angle on why anyone should care. Click one to see it at full size. Star the ones worth arguing about, then copy the shortlist into an email.

Most utilities have one communicator. We give that person a department.

Pioneer is a communications cooperative owned by the utilities it serves.

Join the co-opSee how it works

Angle: capability

Public site

The same organization, told as one story instead of a services list. The change is not decoration. It is what a first-time reader is asked to understand before they are asked to buy.

Open in a new tab

pioneer.coop

Today

Let's Tell Stories Together.

A warm line, and true. It does not tell a stranger what problem gets solved, or who it gets solved for. Underneath it, sixteen services in a flat menu.

The reader has to build the story themselves.
Sixteen equal options means the smallest one gets picked.
Nothing on the page says what Pioneer will not do.
Advisory reads as a sixteenth item rather than a different altitude.

Rewrite

Most utilities have one communicator. We give that person a department.

Names the reader in the first sentence, then organizes everything under three jobs: Listen, Tell, Strengthen. Same sixteen services, one order.

The reader recognizes themselves before they see a price.
A four-rung ladder replaces the flat menu, so there is a next step from anywhere.
"When to call someone else" makes the yes mean something.
Advisory is step three of the story, not item sixteen of a list.

The earlier version is kept. The first pass, built to stay close to the current site's structure, is archived and can be restored. This is a second direction, not a replacement of the record.