Crowdfunder is excited to share its new 2024 partnership with Co-operatives UK in order to provide exclusive benefits to any organisation looking to offer community shares.
Together, this will see Crowdfunder offer a substantial reduction in its platform fee for community share offers. To further their commitment to fair pricing, fee transparency, and support for community ownership programmes across the UK.
In addition, organisations that have achieved Co-operatives UK’s Community Shares Standard Mark will benefit from a special 0.5% platform fee discount*. The Standard Mark represents a commitment to nationally agreed-upon standards for best practices in community share offers.
Max Upton, Head of Campaigns & Special Projects at Crowdfunder, shared, “Community ownership is at the forefront of our strategy in 2024, and we believe this fee reduction and teaming up with Co-operatives UK will significantly support communities in gaining control of the assets that matter most to them. Over the last 8 years, Crowdfunder has successfully raised over £20m for community share offers, transforming pubs, sports clubs, music venues, community energy initiatives, and more, across the UK. By working together, we aim to help raise even more over the coming years.”
John Dawson, Head of Market Development and Investment at Co-operatives UK, said, “We are delighted that Crowdfunder has recognised the huge value of the Community Standard Mark by offering this discount. The mark is instrumental in the process of improving share offers, reassuring investors, and attracting other funding. Co-operatives UK has been at the forefront of the community shares revolution for over a decade, helping communities raise over £200m in investment. We know co-operatives and community benefit societies using community shares are incredibly resilient – with a 92% survival rate. We hope that rate will inch even higher as even more community share offers achieve the mark”.
In 2022, The Joiners Arms, a beloved LGBTQ+ venue in London, faced closure but was rescued by a community-driven effort. The Friends of the Joiners Arms came together and successfully raised £127,735 from 2,260 investors through community shares on Crowdfunder and support from Co-operatives UK.
Amy Roberts, Chair of Friends of the Joiners Arms, said, ‘We took the responsibility of asking the community to invest in us very seriously – accountability and transparency will always be important to us. We felt the strong reputation of Crowdfunder would be an excellent platform that would offer added security to people who were investing in us, particularly those who hadn’t heard of our work before. We also wanted to keep the minimum value of our shares low so that it was financially as inclusive as possible. The trade-off for this was having to reach a larger number of people. We thought Crowdfunder would also enable us to reach more people – and it worked: our minimum share price was £25, and we recruited over 2,000 members!”.
*For fees information, additional case studies and information about running a community share offer on Crowdfunder, please visit https://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/community-shares
