Randolph Electric Membership Corporation

Randolph Electric Membership Corporation belongs to you and the other members who receive electric service from us. Every month you pay your electric bill and Randolph EMC pays the expenses incurred in providing that service to you. Any left-over money, called margins, provides equity for Randolph EMC and for you. Your share of these capital credits is based on how much you have paid Randolph EMC for electric service.

Investor-owned utilities return their margin (profit) to the stockholders through dividends. Electric co-ops return their margin (left-over funds) to the members through capital credits. Electric co-ops are not in business to earn a "profit"; we are here to provide a service to the rural countryside the investor-owned utilities do not want to serve.

The capital credits structure allows us to return excess funds after all operational expenses have been covered. Each year, your Board of Directors carefully considers the financial condition of the cooperative and makes the decision to authorize a capital credit retirement. Randolph EMC does not pay all of the capital credit balances at one time for two reasons:

We need working capital to keep the cooperative financially sound and to allow for emergencies such as storm damage.
We need to retire debt and build equity in the coop.