The National Cooperative Services Corporation (NCSC) is a privately funded, member-owned cooperative affiliated with the National Rural Utilities Cooperative Finance Corporation (CFC) that began operation in 1981.
On January 26, 1981, G&Ts joined with CFC to form the National Cooperative Services Corporation, incorporating the new entity in the District of Columbia as a taxable cooperative.
- NCSC was charged with assisting G&Ts in evaluating leveraged lease proposals and in raising lower-cost debt capital for lease transactions.
- NCSC also helped cooperatives explore ways to cut the cost of planning and construct G&T facilities.
- Eleven members sat on the first board of NCSC directors in November 1981.
Over the years, NCSC has helped cooperatives finance infrastructure in transactions ranging from original power plant leases to loans for acquisitions. It has helped cooperatives expand their reach through loans for telecommunications, non-electric products and economic development services.
- In the early 1980s, NCSC provided leveraged and safe harbor lease financing for generation and related facilities, saving consumers more than $1 billion.
- In 1987, NCSC prepared the way for the Rural Telephone Finance Cooperative, another CFC affiliate, and private market lending by providing loans to rural telecoms until the new organization was in operation.
- The 1990s saw NCSC provide financing to PJM Interconnection, which supports the largest centrally dispatched electric grid in the world.
- In that same decade, NCSC developed the associate loan program to provide financing to for-profit subsidiaries of CFC members for economic and business development.
- In 2004, NCSC purchased Tennessee Valley Authority’s (TVA) loan portfolio of $58.3 million, which helped keep TVA loans in the cooperative family, reduced TVA’s annual interest expense by $275,000 and opened the door to future financing with the TVA community.
At the end of fiscal year 1982, NCSC’s first full year of operations, it had 24 members and assets of $134,283. By the end of fiscal year 2010, NCSC had 362 members and assets of $394.5 million, including outstanding loans to borrowers totaling $351.4 million.