Let the sun shine!
We supported St John’s Sunshine in Old Trafford, Manchester, to add solar panels to their community centre. These were intended to generate green electricity to benefit the people in the area.
In our series of interviews with friends from our first fifty years of financing co-ops and community ownership, today we talk to Tiziana O’Hara, founder member of Co-op Alternatives – the only cooperatives development agency in Northern Ireland.
“Co-operative Alternatives is a Co-operative Development body. It’s quite recent in that we’ve been operating for the past 10 years. We are the only CDB In Northern Ireland and of course, we have a lot in common with the rest of the UK as there is a lot of similar legislation, even though organisations like Power to Change and some of the National Lottery support that has been available to Wales and Scotland for Community Shares doesn’t stretch here. Our relationship with ICOF started when we had common clients. We would be helping them by providing the development part of it, while ICOF was supporting them with a loan. Usually our working relationship is this way – we do the development, we set up the cooperative, we do all business planning and the legal work, and then when the cooperative needs the start-up capital – which could be loans or maybe community shares – we suggest ICOF. ICOF is one of the few organisations that is tuned in to the community share market.
I’ve always found ICOF quite accessible although their capital might be considered to focus more on the other regions of the UK. I developed a good relationship with the team when they visited Northern Ireland to visit clients, we met each time, and we’ve worked together on a couple of projects.
These projects have included Jubilee Farm and Ballymacash Sports Academy. Some of these included collaboration with the Co-op Foundation, to underwrite the community shares.
Jubilee Farm in Larne is the first community-owned farm in Northern Ireland. It’s very much about creating community spaces where they can grow vegetables and care for animals.
The Ballymacash sports project is a great community sports facility. Initially they needed money to renovate their own pitch, and now they are going on on to bigger things, building a sports academy.
These two projects were quite early stages, but ICOF came in and helped us with the Co-op Foundation to open up a bit of financial support. Recently, I’ve also got to know Kevin Lloyd-Evans, ICOF new Lending and Relationship Manager. He has given great support to Boundary Brewing, a very long established cooperative in Northern Ireland. I always find that the relationship with ICOF is very personal, very close and personal. And I like that because I would not really thrive in a very formal environment! That kind of accessibility and approach has suited my organisation very well.
In the future, I am looking forward to continuing our good relationship with ICOF. In terms of the future for social finance, I would like to see some new kinds of hybrid funding from financial organisations – I’m not a financial person but maybe this could be not only loans, maybe underwriting some shares, a bit of seed funding and a bit of maybe share or equity capital. There’s a lot of opportunity but today it’s good to celebrate the good things and this good relationship. I think in our sector we survive only if we have a good, open kind of conversation with each other and I think the team in ICOF has always had that with us.
Here’s a bilingual birthday greeting! Congratulazioni per il vostro cinquantesimo anniversario e tanti auguri per altri cinquant’anni! Congratulations for your 50th anniversary and best wishes to another 50!
From Tiziana in Northern Ireland with my double identity, Italian by heart, but Northern Irish in work.
As part of our ICOF 50th birthday celebrations, we’ve been looking back at some of our memories from over the years.
Thank you to our friend David Still for sending us these fantastic photos! Do you recognise anyone here?
Somerset Wood Recycling is a social enterprise, making things from recycled or sustainably sourced timber, as a way to train and employ disadvantaged people from the local area.
Selling reclaimed wood in it’s raw form, or with the addition of tender loving care as shelves, cheeseboards or even the Somerset Eco Coffin , it’s been serving the people of Somerset who want quality bespoke furniture, built just how they want it, for years.
They take orders from business too, and can outfit shops and cafes, build office furniture and make display stands. They’ve even supplied timber to the Eden Project in Cornwall.
We worked with them to support the purchase of new premises and a biomass heater. They do incredible work – do explore their website.
Today in our series of interviews with friends we’ve made over the last fifty years, we speak to Clare Diaper, Strategic Team Lead at October Books. We supported October Books to buy an old bank building in 2018. They moved a few hundred yards down the road from their old rented premises, and the story of the community helping them hit the headlines, globally!•
“October Books first got involved with ICOF in 2017 when we were looking to buy the old NatWest Bank building on Portswood Road in Southampton.
We came, we moved, we settled in for a year, and then the pandemic hit. It’s amazing how responsive and reactive and helpful ICOF have been. A big part of the new shop was the community space, where we wanted to put on events and bring people together. Activities in the space had been thriving and then the pandemic put us back to square one. I remember that feeling of being a few days into the pandemic and just thinking ‘what can we do?’. Everything felt so uncertain and we didn’t know how the organisation was going to survive. ICOF got in touch asking, ‘How can we help? Do you want a capital holiday?’ It was an incredible feeling of being supported and looked after at a time of turmoil, which was just wonderful.
Having that capital holiday meant an awful lot to us because, as the pandemic progressed, different aspects of the business were hit in different ways. We were able to offer online grocery shopping and delivery by bike during the lock downs but the community space was closed for much of the pandemic and income and usage has taken a long time to recover. The funding, the communication and the sensitivity around what our needs might be really helped us come through it, as did links and connections that we’ve made through ICOF. Through ICOF we were put in touch with the Co-op Foundation who lent us money to help return the community space to pre-pandemic use and we were also signposted us to some grant funding to pay for staff time. We really felt connected to, and part of, a wider network. That support helped us get back on track a lot more quickly, and – it’s all interlinked – because of the ICOF loan, we own our building, so we’re not having to pay rent or worry about rent increases anymore.
Another thing ICOF did more recently – because of the cost of living and interest rate rises – was to maintain our monthly repayments, rather than increasing them. We know this pushes our loan repayment date further into the future, but it means we know where we are, and we’re not facing increasing charges at a time when we’re seeing slightly decreasing sales, because of the cost of living crisis.
We have had so many great activities happening in the Community space in the last year. We’ve had refugee women learning about health and wellbeing through CLEAR (City Life Education and Action for Refugees) who ran a series of eight workshops. We had some lovely feedback, saying how much the women appreciated and felt special coming to a space outside of their immediate community, and being looked after. Last winter, we had a meeting place, providing space for people to come together for teas and coffees, board games and biscuits, in a warm space, a project we ran in collaboration with Mary’s Church and Communicare. The Veg-Out café that runs every Monday is hugely popular – there’s music and a pay as you feel café using food waste from a local veg box scheme – that was probably the most asked after activity in the space when we were able to re-open, it’s great that that’s back and thriving.
Our regular events programme is definitely growing again. We have a weekly yoga class and the Quakers have been meeting here on a weekly basis. There’s a board games drop in session, regular mediation and we’ve just started an open mic night, which has gone amazingly well. There’s a writing group, a reading group – it’s brilliant so see so much happening, and to see this space that we had such high hopes for being used.
We wouldn’t be in this building without ICOF. Our community wouldn’t have a space in Portswood in Southampton to come together and share in these uncertain times. So a huge – huge – thank you to ICOF and a very Happy Birthday.
*See the story of October Books Human Chain here in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the UK Guardian
In our series of interviews with friends from the last fifty years, today we meet Richard Snow, CEO of Oxford Wood Recycling. We last spoke to Richard in 2020, to find out how the business had managed through Covid at that point.
“I’ve been aware of ICOF since before my time here at Oxford Wood Recycling. I first knew of them during my time in employment with Co-operative Futures, going back to 2005, and then following that we had a more close relationship when I joined the Plunkett Foundation in 2008. I was with Plunkett until 2014 and we were partners on various programmes. So a varied history!
The relationship with ICOF as a borrower with Oxford Wood Recycling would have started in around 2013, 2014. We borrowed a small amount and then later we borrowed something like £80,000 in 2015, when we moved, which we paid off over a number of years, interrupted for a short time by COVID.
That loan was to cashflow growth and development, in order to meet the new increased costs of a new premises. We knew the move would unlock more business but the costs of running the organisation in the new premises were a real step up – the rent and rates costs were six times what they had been and we had to grow into that space. That £80,000 allowed us some breathing space to develop the trading part of the organisation to the extent that was required to to inhabit that larger space.
We wouldn’t have got a loan for something like that from a high street lender. There was no way – in fact, we may even have tried from our bank. But they are a very conservative lender. We were running the organisation on a shoestring and this would have been a gamble for ICOF. I got the impression that that’s what they were in the business to do, they were willing to accept the risks involved in supporting social enterprises and co-ops to start up and I think that was probably decisive in our ability to work with them.
I’ve always found the relationship with ICOF to be very understanding, sensitive and businesslike. It’s been really good. There was always someone on the end of the phone, one felt one had an advisor. The fact that there was always a small cohort of people there, it was not a large office, meant you got to know people and there was always a sympathetic ear. They are a a proper social lender.
Happy birthday ICOF on your 50 years of lending. You thoroughly deserve to light a very big cake!
Founded in 2006, The Renewable Energy Co-operative now has over 15 years of experience blending enthusiasm for technological innovation and practicality with cooperative values and a long-term, purpose-driven perspective towards effective energy solutions.
We worked with R-Eco in 2011 to support growth. They Converted to a Worker Co-op Society in 2014 and then relocated to Oxford.
If you are looking for a renewable energy solution for your home, do explore their services.
Today in our series of interviews with friends from the last fifty years, we speak to David Still CBE, who has been both a borrower and a Trustee.
“I first heard about ICOF when I was part of a workers cooperative called Northumbrian Energy Workshop, in around 1984. We were looking for finance and borrowed from ICOF. And I then became a Trustee in 1987 and stayed for ten years, until 1997.
As a borrower ICOF was one of the only sources of funding and finance for a workers’ co-op at that time. Funding wasn’t easy, interest rates were high, so it was very, very important to have a robust but sympathetic lender, who we could approach and develop our business plan with and go from there.
Getting involved as a Trustee became quite an interesting process. ICOF was going through quite a lot of change from being a very small organisation with very few people to a much more expansive organisation, with more funding, as well. And so we changed, and change is never fun! But we went through it and survived.
Previously, I had been involved overseas with Voluntary Services Overseas in Papua New Guinea working in business development – producing projections, seeking finance, etc. Going into ICOF I then effectively had two jobs, one being the stewardship of ICOF and its funds and how it went on and the other being loan oversight. Probably the major thing for me was being involved in assessing business plans that were coming forward, and working very closely with the monitoring officers there which was mainly Ian Taylor and Martin Hockley and latterly with Nigel Mason and Leon Boris as well. So, very much a learning process for me, in that I learned things from every review I did, and increasingly felt able to give them appropriate feedback, from my experience.
There was a shift in focus through the time I was with ICOF, probably from more pure cooperative to slightly more social enterprise type opportunities. Not massive changes and all still member owned. We also went through a more robust change in how we were assessing and reviewing projects, we increased our ability to understand what borrowers were wanting, while also developing a bit more flexibility because of our changed funding. Our initial funding was very tight on who and what we could fund. When we had the PLC funding, then we had a bit more flexibility on the type of organisation we could lend. That gave us a bit of internal discussion on how we were to do that. But that was our task and our and it was quite good. We were very active as trustees, we didn’t turn up just once a quarter for the jolly, it was very much about being involved. I was quite heavily involved with Ian Taylor, reviewing projects. He would come up and do a series of monitoring visits or grant reviews. That was very helpful, to be active in between the quarterly meetings, getting involved in the financial side of the business and understanding it, and making sure we were doing the right things.
Today, and in the future, I think ICOF has the opportunity again, to be a nimble investor as trying to raise money from a bank or other organisation is very difficult. There are more opportunities like crowdfunding now which could come in and could also be a kind of like a product that ICOF could deliver and support, so that it’s happening there in one place, giving a potential business more options to to than a conventional bank. I don’t think conventional banks are acting very sensibly at this moment in time. They’ve been very cautious and my experience of mainstream banks is not very positive at this stage. I think they have limited vision. What ICOF can offer, relatively to a small number of people, is a very much one to one relationship. The opportunity in our sector, where ICOF acts, is that ability to develop those relationships and get businesses to grow despite the rest of the world.
A particular fond memory I have of ICOF – probably the most interesting thing that I did – is of a meeting in the House of Commons with the late John Smith MP, we were talking about future co-op funding. It was not long before he died. It was great to have such interest in what we were doing from somebody who had a lot of clout in the political arena.
ICOF, happy birthday. Your 50 years have really tracked by very quickly. Here’s to more years and more support for the sector, involving more communities and more groups of people working together, which is so very important to us as a country.”
Point Europa in Cornwall is a training and education project supporting and improving the lives of individuals and communities through integration, education and training.
We worked with them to help them provide a floating pontoon for the local fishing fleet, and to purchase an old bank and convert in to community resource.
In our interview series chatting to people who’ve worked with us over the last fifty years, today we speak to Rhona Howarth. Rhona joined the ICOF Board in 1983 and became our first female Chair.
“I joined the ICOF Board in 1983 and remained a trustee for ten years, until November 1993. I was, at the time I joined, a member of a cooperative Durham Wholefoods Co-operative, and we were ICOF borrowers. I was also very active with ICOM as it was called in those days (now Co-operatives UK) and after leaving the wholefoods co-op in about 1983, I went to work for a regional grouping of ICOM called ICOM North. This was a small regional group in Newcastle, a co-op development agency, and we supported co-op members in the region – there were quite a lot of members in the region at the time. We were one of the early regions to build a thriving worker cooperative sector I was also involved with setting up what we called ICOM Women’s Link Up, which was the first women’s section of ICOM in those days. For a number of years, in the 80s and early 90s, we had women’s programmes running, focussed around setting up and running cooperatives by women across the country, supported by a fairly large European Social Fund grant.
I became Chair of ICOF in 1987, at the point at which we had just launched the PLC and raised the funds for additional lending, so I was Chair of PLC as well as ICOF Limited. I was chair for four years, the first woman chair. The things I remember fondly are that there were really great people involved. I really enjoyed working with the trustees and the staff and learning from them. That’s not to say that it didn’t have its challenges at times.
I also felt I learned a huge amount being Chair, particularly about governance, and how Boards should work and shouldn’t work, and I’ve carried that on right into my work to this minute. I became a consultant fairly early on still when I was with ICOF, and I’ve worked in the field of governance ever since very often with a focus on women. Clearly the cooperative sector itself is big on governance because of the legal and operating structures that we use and so I learned a lot about that and the legal frameworks within which we operated. Lending money into that sector and monitoring those loans, brought with it another layer of complexity and learning. In latter years I have worked mostly in the charitable sector, supporting boards – the learning stays with you.
ICOF was still very young when I joined the Board, only 10 years old, and there were conversations going on about our own internal governance and structures, we spent time putting together written policies to support our governance. There was also quite a strong cooperative sector building up at that time with some very strong values and views about how things should and should not be done. ICOF was lending into that new, emerging cooperative sector. The trustees were drawn from a range of co-operatives including the more traditional co-op sector. I recall there being debates about the differences and needs of newer co-op’s who practiced collective working governance and management.
We had a real range of people, skills and experiences on the Board – including a representative from the Coop Bank and one from the Co-op Union and several others who were members of workers cooperatives, some of them quite traditional in business style. The lead member of staff throughout my time was David Ralley who had come from Scott-Bader. Interestingly we always called the Directors ‘Trustees” and the lead member of staff ‘the Secretary’ even though we were not a charity. I think this reflected the early funding which was gifted to us by Scott Bader and then publicly funded through the government ICO Act (1976). We did have quite a detailed discussion when I was Chairing about whether we should pay trustees for their role as legally this was permitted but we chose not to do so, as we felt that might change the relationship between the Board, staff and the membership. There was still a very strong commitment to ICOF being run by representatives of the co-op sector for the benefit of the wider sector, paying board members could have changed this.
Overall being a trustee was a very positive experience for me and I think of the people I worked with very fondly.
“Happy birthday, ICOF who would have thought it, 50 years!”