The initiative to establish a museum which would document the history of Polish cooperativism was put forward by Franciszek Stefczyk, in February 1918, during the First Conference of Polish Cooperative Guides. It was then that the most eminent representatives of the Polish cooperative movement came to Lublin to deliberate on the shape of cooperativism, and more broadly of the entire economy in free Poland, in which revival was believed. It was then that collections began to be gathered, initially in Kraków, later in Warsaw. The Museum was to open its doors on 1 September 1939... As a result of the invasion of Poland by Nazi Germany, which was soon joined by Soviet Russia, the opening did not take place. It was not until 50 years after the Conference, i.e. in 1968, that it succeeded. The first home of our Museum was the former State Agricultural Cooperative School in Nałęczów, from where it was moved to the headquarters of the National Cooperative Council in 2001.

The assets of our Museum include documents, photographs, banners, medals, manuscripts, coins, posters, leaflets, books, sculptures, portraits, films... in short, things you can find in any museum in the world. What sets us apart is the story these objects tell. They speak of more than two centuries of glorious history, full of pride and glory. It is the story of work for social liberation, the fight for the rebirth of the Polish state and an important element of the Polish Underground State, it is the story of a powerful, self-governing, deeply democratic economic and social movement, and finally it is the people, including the most important people in Polish history (we are probably the only country in the world whose head was an active cooperative activist - Stanisław Wojciechowski, the second president of the Republic of Poland). The background to the great history are the cooperative values, in whose timelessness we believe, and which we indirectly document and promote.