Thank you to everyone who came to our AGM and Networking Lunch!

The dust has settled after a few busy weeks of events, and we want to say a big thank you to everyone who came to our well received AGM and networking lunch on the 13^th of June in Bristol.

Financially it was all good news on all companies and we are delighted to share news of the first payment of interest to ICOF Community Capital Investors (ICC) in ten years. Other exciting news covered the ICOF Community Capital (ICC) share offer, open on our website now, and our call for further investment later in the year

In terms of Governance and roles, our congratulations go to our Chair Jon Nott on his successful first year in role, and to Brian Titley and Bruce Wood on their re-election. We also thank Andy Love for successfully standing again as PLC shareholders representative.

We were proud that so many great exhibitors and speakers wanted to be part of the event with us. Co-operatives UK’s Zena King talked about ‘Building Co-operative Places’ and also commented that, ‘It all seemed to go well and everyone seemed positive and engaged in what Co-operative and Community Finance is doing!’

With Community Business weekend not too far behind us, Power to Change talked about their work with Community Businesses, the importance of social investors to support the growth of Community Business and the successful More than a Pub partnership. They also might have won the tweet of the day competition – representative Kate Stewart said, ‘And a genuine thank you to Alain for proving that annual accounts can be presented in an interesting and plain English way!’

The room was excited to hear about The Bristol Cable’s innovative and investigative community journalism, locally rooted but not inward looking, and we were thrilled that The Cable enjoyed attending. Cait said,’Thanks so much for inviting me. It was great! Really nice opportunity to meet like-minded people’

As well as hearing from our speakers, it was great to hear a busy buzz in the breaks and to see lots of networking taking place  – that was very much the plan! Tastebuds were tantalised as Essential Trading provided various lovely samples: dates with their own chocolate spread, their own label yeast extract and organic muesli. And the terrific lunch was thanks to Baba Ganoush. To name but a few, we’re grateful to Stir to Action for exhibiting, the Bristol Credit Union and Bristol Pound for attending and it was good to see Co-operative Futures and Plunkett Foundation among the faces in the room

We’d worked hard to make it more than just an AGM and into something that was truly interesting. We’re grateful to our speakers, exhibitors and caterers who definitely made it so. Watch this space for next year – we want to build on this and create a bigger, better event in 2020