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More funding news – The Social Enterprise Support Fund will provide essential financial support between £10,000 and £300,000 to help social enterprises during COVID-19.

The School for Social Entrepreneurs (SSE) and four other social enterprise support agencies have come together to deliver a new fund, and applications opened at 1pm today (Monday 13^th July).

Big Issue Invest, The Key Fund, Resonance, UnLtd and SSE will jointly deliver £18.7m in grants, with support from CAF Venturesome, the Young Foundation and Ashoka.

This has been made possible thanks to The National Lottery Community Fund, the largest funder of community activity in the UK.

The Social Enterprise Support Fund is aimed at social enterprises supporting people at high health risk from COVID-19, and those supporting people facing increased social and economic challenges as a result of COVID-19.

The fund responds to an urgent need in the sector to:

• help social enterprises change the way they work
• make their spaces COVID-secure
• manage liquidity during the next six months

SSE CEO Alastair Wilson says: “Many social entrepreneurs are on the frontline of this crisis, supporting people who are most at-risk. Others are working with groups who have been disproportionately hard hit by COVID-19. At the same time, they have seen their income from trading plummet. This funding comes at a critical time.

“Working with our partners, we will do everything we can to ensure this funding reaches social entrepreneurs as quickly as possible, so they can recover lost income and help their communities to recover and rebuild.”

Find out more and apply now

We’re happy to see a £9.5 million Covid-19 Community-Led Organisations Recovery Scheme announced. There will be three short application periods – 10am to 1pm on the 28th July, 4th and 11th August – so we urge you to look into this one early if you plan to apply. There’s also a webinar to help you prepare.

This fund Scheme will be delivered by Power to Change, Locality, The Ubele Initiative and Social Investment Business on behalf of the National Lottery Community Fund. Find out about the Lottery’s other schemes here

What is the Covid-19 Community-Led Organisations Recovery Scheme?
Covid-19 Community-Led Organisations Recovery Scheme offers grants up to £100,000 to community organisations in England who are facing financial difficulties caused by Covid-19. The scheme is aimed at organisations delivering services in their local community to support people who are at high risk from Covid-19, with an emphasis on Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME)-led or BAME-supporting businesses.

Is it open for applications?
The recovery scheme will open on Tuesday 28 July for applications from 10am till 1pm. And then for a further two rounds on Tuesday 4 August from 10am till 1pm and Tuesday 11 August from 10am till 1pm.

Who can apply?
Community organisations in England who are facing financial difficulties caused by Covid-19. For more information about whether your community organisation will be eligible, please read the guidance notes.

What can you apply for?
Up to £100,000 grant and business support to:

Where can I find out more?
You can find out more by reading the guidance notes and our Frequently Asked Questions.

Join us for a free webinar on Thursday 23 July from 3.30-5pm where you will be able to find out more about the fund and application process and take part in a live Q&A.

Do you have questions about your application?
If you have any questions about your application you can get in touch with our delivery partner Social Investment Business: cclors@sibgroup.org.uk

With lockdown starting to loosen, and businesses tiptoeing towards trading more, Business Development Manager Tim Coomer has taken a w wide-ranging view and looked back over a whirlwind three months – what have we done through lockdown, and what do we plan to do next?

Firstly, I think we need to say we have been lucky compared with many others! As an organisation we are small and agile so have been able to cope quite well – two members of the co-op already worked from home so the only real change was the lack of getting out and about, as we do cover the whole of the UK including Northern Ireland (occasionally!). There have been some extra work/life/home balance challenges – kids at home for Tim, occasional cat on Zoom calls for Ian, and some initial glitches setting up computer software for the Bristol Office based duo, Anne and Alain but we have adapted pretty well to the lockdown and working totally from home.

The first few months of lockdown saw us protecting and supporting our existing borrowers, working closely with them to help them through those early, frightening days. It was all so unknown then. We approved Capital payment holidays for over 50% of our portfolio including the Co-op Loan Fund portfolio we manage. At that time we felt it important to be in close contact with all our borrowers  and we continue to do so.

Through our website, social media and newsletter, we also provided updates on the range of schemes and opportunities that have come along throughout the crisis from a range of government sources, grant providers and partners.  The Co-op & Community Finance Group of companies and Co-op Loan fund lend to around 80 Co-ops of all shapes and sizes and we have in the region of £3 million out on loan at any one time, so there was a lot of communicating to do!

Sadly, one company has gone into voluntary administration but the silver lining of that news, if we can find one, is that it’s just been that one business – we know how scared many of our clients were at the beginning and we’re really glad that so many have been able to keep going, in one way or another.

Our recent positive lending and other stories are here and the Co-op Loan fund here. The Plunkett Foundation have also published some feel good stories about the range of community initiatives that have come out of the crisis and we’ve been happy to share these – the surge of community feeling has been wonderful to observe.

Overall, we haven’t seen that much additional demand for loan finance through lockdown. It’s felt like people and organisations have hit pause on big decision making, and who can blame them? Government interventions have so far been quite successful for those that have needed emergency finance and for many co-ops taking on extra debt with such uncertainty has been a worry. The British Business Bank is the access route for loan/ debt finance which is supported by the government, underwriting/guaranteeing loans for the lenders, and paying interest for the first 12 months in most cases.

We looked at being a lender on the Coronavirus Business Interruption Loan Scheme or CBILS but the market was moving very quickly. It would have taken time to get approved and we were concerned about the number of ineligible enquiries we might have seen – as a specialist lender to the co-op and community business sectors only, this could have been overwhelming for our small team.

Bounce Back Loans were and are the game changer for many co-ops and SME’s in general with good terms of up-to £50k up to six years to repay and no payments in the first 12 months. We were unable to be a lender on this programme as lenders are required to have £10m to lend, which excludes us and most other social and community lenders. Co-op Bank is an approved provider. Its not been a panacea for all though, there have been issues accessing loan finance for some co-ops and community businesses, especially among co-ops who don’t have bank accounts with the mainstream banks. Typically you have to open a new bank account before you can access the finance.

The Resilience and Recovery Loan Fund created in development with the social investment/ responsible finance sector has supported a few larger Social Enterprises but the minimum £100,000 limit on loan finance hasn’t met what most of our borrowers are looking for.

We are really keen to know if co-ops have struggled to access the finance they need from these schemes and understand how we can help.

About a third of our current portfolio are Community Pubs and are obviously at high risk. As we write, Pubs are beginning to get advice on reopening from July, but with social distancing measures still in place, how it will all work out in practice is unknown.  We continue as a partner in the More than a Pub programme along with the Plunkett Foundation who have been able to provide a host of support to the still burgeoning Community Pub sector. Many of these pubs have also received  C-19 Emergency Trading Income Support Scheme  from Power to Change along with a range of other community businesses. These grants are to help pay ongoing costs but also to restock supplies, purchase PPE equipment, screens, layout changes, deep cleaning, etc…

We also manage the Community Shares ICOF Ltd which is a small fund that invests discreetly into community share issues. The fund is only small and we have recently prepared a proposal ‘Fresh Start’ which has been sent to a range of potential funders asking for money to enable CSI to provide small injections of equity investment to help co-op societies rebuild. If you represent a larger co-op society foundation or trust that is interested in providing patient funds for us to invest please do get in touch.

As we call in the Summer we are now very much looking forward to the recovery and rebuild of the sector and see the Autumn months as critical for many of the co-ops and community businesses we support. As staff come off furlough and enterprises try to get back to some kind of business as usual, our borrowers will experience further testing times. However, despite the turbulent few months, CCF and Co-op Loan Fund continue to be here to support our borrowers get back to business, helping rework loan terms as required and ready to lend more to help our borrowers rebuild and grow. Unlike other lenders, we are lucky to have our own funds available to lend that have been recycled many times in our history and we plan to relaunch our ICC Fund later in the year, raising new money to on lend. Please get in touch If you would like to invest either as an individual or society.

We feel confident in the future for co-ops and well placed to provide finance to a new swathe of co-ops and community businesses that will emerge from this crisis and join us in a better way of doing business and building back better. We will also be looking at new blended funds (debt and grant) opportunities likely to be available in the Autumn for our co-op customers, though these schemes are still in the design phase, so we need to be patient but watch this space and as always, do get in touch if we can help in the meantime.

This article is adapted from an interview with Coop News

Amidst the maelstrom of tough news that seems to be our current normal, we were happy to read Co-operatives UK Annual Co-operative Economy Report recently.

The Report illustrates the amazing resilience of co-operative businesses – a whopping 76% survive after the tough early five years compared to 42% of traditional company structures. We know that businesses that are owned and run by and for their communities have the loyalty and love of those communities – it’s not hard to see why people would want to support them.

This love and loyalty has been so visible throughout the COVID-19 crisis, and we’ve seen story after story of community businesses changing their ways of operating to keep doing what they do best – support those who need them. We know they are keen to get back to operating in as near a way to normal as possible, through no-one is sure yet what this will look like for co-ops such as Community Pubs.

But we have hope.

This from Power to Change considers a stronger community and a social economy post virus; this from their CEO Vidhaya Alekson quotes a YouGov poll run for the RSA in April – 40% of those polled felt a stronger sense of local community since lockdown and 85% want at least some of the changes to stick. We’re in that number. This from Local Trust presents four alternative futures and a future for communities, and the outpouring of help through Mutual Aid groups – and the establishment of a support network for those groups – demonstrates that people are willing, keen, even, to act when they can see a need and know it will help. People *are* community. People *are* co-operative. We just need to make space for it to flourish.

Read the full report here Co-op Economy Report here

Opening for applications at 9am on Monday 22nd June, our friends at NatWest Social and Community Capital are launching a new £1million fund offering grants of between £5,000 and £50,000 to organisations across the UK that employ people from vulnerable or disadvantaged groups.

These grants are unrestricted and can be used for any purpose, including core costs. Organisations must have an annual turnover between £50,000 and £1 million, must have been generating at least 30% of revenue from trading income before the crisis and must have suffered a loss in trading income due to lockdown restrictions. Full eligibility criteria are outlined below.

Applications will stay open for at least one week. It is hoped that applications will remain open for longer but may need to close after a week depending on how many applications they receive and if they reach their capacity, so applicants are encouraged to submit the application as soon as possible.

Full information on the grants, including the application form and how to apply, will be available here from Monday 22^nd June.

Eligibility criteria:

• Organisations must employ people from vulnerable or disadvantaged groups
• Organisations must generate at least 30% of revenue from trading income
• Organisations must have had a pre-coronavirus annual turnover of between £50,000 to £1 million
• The organisation must have suffered a loss of trading income since March 2020, caused by lockdown restrictions
• The organisation must have been founded and trading prior to 1st January 2019
• The organisation must have been financially sustainable (or on a path to financial stability) up to March 2020
• The organisation must be constituted, operating and delivering impact in England, Scotland, Wales, and/or Northern Ireland
• The organisation must have one of the following legal structures: Community Interest Company (CIC), Company Limited by Guarantee, Community Benefit Society, Co-operative Society, Unincorporated association, Charitable Incorporated Organisation (CIO), Charitable Trusts, Registered Charity

The following will need to be provided in the application form:

• Basic information about the organisation, contact details, staff and volunteer numbers, year and date founded, financial information for the last 3 years and forecasts for the next 2 years
• A description of the organisations mission, key activities and impact over the last year
• Details about the grant request including what it will be used for, why it’s needed and what impact would be achieved

Updated 28th May 2020: The deadline has been extended to the 31st May – apply now!

Power to Change is running a longitudinal research project with the Young Foundation to learn more about how Community Business has adapted, managed and innovated so far and as we progress through the COVID19 outbreak

They want to hear from you about how the COVID-19 crisis is impacting your community business and your local community. Anyone from a community business (leaders, staff or volunteers) can share experiences of the pandemic over a 12 week period. Regular activities and discussions will allow you to share your experiences while connecting to others in a virtual setting – at a time that is convenient to you.

They will also be offering cash prize draws and other incentives for those participating. If this is something you’re interested in, please use this link to register interest.