Co-operatives UK also delivers the Community Shares Booster Programme, which supports groups in England looking at community share offers with development grants and matched funding. Community shares is a form of equity only available to co-operative and community benefit societies. It enables the co-op to raise flexible finance and gives members a stake in the business, on the basis of one member, one vote, regardless of how much they put in.
“Community shares is very patient, flexible finance,” says Isla McCulloch, community shares standards manager at Co-operatives UK. “You’ve got access to capital that’s not on strict repayment terms and you can spend it how you like, within the parameters of your business. Access to that kind of money is really difficult to find in the third sector and the social sector. You’ve either got grants with lots of conditions or you’ve got loans which are often quite expensive. So the nature of the money is appealing.”
Read the rest at Co-operative News
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