Membership Fee Refund: What is the $5 credit on my bill?
Cullman Electric Cooperative members may see a $5 credit on their next bill, with the line item stating, “Membership Fee Refund.”
Last year, co-op members approved updated bylaws that included a provision eliminating the $5 membership fee previously required when joining Cullman Electric. Beginning in November 2025, new co-op members were no longer charged the fee. For everyone else, the $5 credit on this month’s bill is a refund of the membership fee collected when they first became members of Cullman Electric.
“Cullman Electric always has and always will be a member-owned cooperative, and that will never change,” said CEO Tim Culpepper. “The co-op was created to serve its members, and that’s the question we ask when making decisions — what is in the best interest of the membership? That will continue to be our guiding principle.”
To understand where the $5 membership fee came from and what it represented, you must look back to the co-op’s earliest days 90 years ago.
In 1936, a group of 14 local businessmen and farmers, working through federal programs establish as part of President Franklin Roosevelt’s “New Deal,” began the process of creating a locally owned electric cooperative to bring electricity to rural homes and farms in Cullman County. The 14 original founding co-op members spent months traveling the county on nights and weekends, asking their friends and neighbors to join the cooperative and pay a $5 membership fee to help raise the initial funds needed to get started.
Keep in mind that in 1936, the average annual income for a family in rural Alabama was less than $500. Asking people for $5 when their monthly income was only around $40 was a really big deal. But thousands of families knew electricity could dramatically improve their quality of life, so they scrapped together the funds. Cullman Electric Cooperative’s incorporation papers were signed on May 25, 1936, and the first homes were energized on August 4, 1936.
Over the past 90 years, Cullman Electric has grown alongside the communities it serves, and the $5 membership fee remained in place. In recent years, the money was no longer essential to the co-op’s operations, but was a tangible reminder that each member of the co-op is more than just a customer. The co-op’s members are also the co-op’s owners.
“The co-op’s purpose is to improve the quality of life for our members and the communities we serve,” Culpepper said. “We do that primarily by providing safe, reliable electricity. It’s also the reason we started Sprout Fiber Internet, and why we invest in our schools, work closely with civic leaders on economic development and support agencies and organizations that serve our community.
“Membership is what makes a cooperative business different from other businesses. It allows people to work together to accomplish things that would be impossible to do on their own. Cullman Electric has been doing it for the past 90 years, and we look forward to continuing to having a positive impact on our members into the future.”