Inducted: 1996
Allie Felder has been a true missionary of cooperation. Throughout his 30 years with the Cooperative League of the USA, now the National Cooperative Business Association, he contributed to both the human and economic development of countless numbers of people around the world.
As director of CLUSA's India office, Felder assisted the Indian co-ops in programs involving supervised credit, hybrid seed production and distribution, co-op education, training and research, consumer cooperatives, rural health centers, rural electrification, milk marketing, and oil-seed processing, to name a few. In particular, he played a critical role in establishing the Indian Farmers Fertiliser Cooperative, one of the largest producers of fertilizer in Asia.
He served as a catalyst for a relationship between the United States and India that remains strong. Through him, cooperation became a living and vital link between the peoples of two nations.
In addition, many of the programs Felder developed became the blueprint for economic development for co-ops in other countries. He returned to the United States in 1968 and led CLUSA's Outreach Division, where his significant contributions continued to enhance the cooperative idea and demonstrate that co-ops are a proven method to improve the quality of peoples' lives.