ICOF50

One of the joys of any birthday is surely the party – the chance to connect with friends and loved ones whether close by or far flung. Our 50th birthday has so far provided a wonderful opportunity for what, in some ways, feels like a year-long party.

We shared this video at our recent AGM, showcasing the work of ICOF and Co-op & Community Finance over its 50 year history. This is a great storyline of our journey so far, and how we look to meet the needs of the co-op sector in the next 50. We hope you enjoy it!

Today in our series of interviews looking back over fifty years of friendship and finance we speak to Brian Titley. Brian joined ICOF as a Trustee in 2003, having known about the organisation previously and in fact having borrowed from it, as part of CAN – Co-operative Assistance Network. Brian remains involved in Community Shares ICOF today.

‘I remember the first Strategy Weekend I was part of vividly, as the Sunday morning session was also the Rugby World Cup final, and I remember not being *quite* sure I really wanted to be at the meeting while that was on *laughs*. That was in 2003 and I stayed as a Trustee until 2019, just before Covid.

Early on, I became the staff trustee. Alain Demontoux had been in that position, and he then became a member of ICOF staff so I took it on. I was staff trustee for about 10 years and then became Treasurer. And, obviously, when I left that left a huge hole *laughs*. Other involvements rang alongside that too. I’m still on the board of CSI – Community Shares ICOF. This started up from within ICOF, but is independent and there are some cross-overs and links. 

I’m also a member, employee and Director of Co-operative Assistance Network – I’ve been an employee since 1999, and I was as a subcontractor for five years before that as well. We have had 12 or possibly even 13 loans from ICOF. When I stood for the ICOF post in 2003, I had to stand up and say a little bit about myself. At that stage, I think we’d had six or seven loans. I stood up and declared we’d had these loans, and I remember Lord Graham was there who was a Labour peer, and he blurted out, as I said, this, ‘But how many have you repaid?’ My answer was all of them!. They were all for different things –  refinancing, working capital and actual capital items.

I also remember being in a meeting once when we were looking at a graph of cumulative loans. And the point was made by one Trustee that one of the positive things was this graph always went up. Which is the point of a cumulative graph! Unless you start doing negative loans *laughs* it’s always going to. And I pointed this out, not trying to be a clever clogs, but it was very difficult not to sound like one at that moment. 

Well done ICOF and happy birthday. Let’s keep on lending to co-operatives and community-owned enterprises, but especially to workers co-operatives, to democratise the workplace and put the means of production into the hands of the workers. Happy birthday!

Today in our series of conversations with friends of ICOF, we meet Ed Powell, Director of Community Shares ICOF limited.

‘I’ve been involved with ICOF through Community Shares ICOF Ltd for the last two years. Before that, I’d worked for the Co-operative Group for around fifteen years, who helped to fund it originally, and came onto the Board first as a co-opted member, and then the Director.

Part of my involvement in the Co-operative Group had been around looking at co-operative development in the UK, and supporting collaborative partnerships, both domestically and internationally with the Co-operative Group. So it was an obvious extension of that to look at opportunities that supported the co-operative movement and community businesses to grow. And that’s how I found out about community shares.

That background with the Group gives me a broader lens, beyond cooperatives into community businesses, beyond the legal sense of cooperative structures to culture – businesses having that sense of spirit of mutuality, and communities coming together. Being able to invest in expertise locally, to support them to make a change where they are is a fantastic thing.

I’ve joined ICOF during the pandemic and it’s brought a lot of things together that I’ve worked on. Seeing how community businesses get funding has been really interesting and it is really important. Particularly for cooperatives, access to capital is a real challenge. We can see that recently in some of the recent stories around John Lewis. For very local coops, actually having opportunities to be able to fundraise and to have the investment from people within the community means there’s not just a financial investment, it’s an emotional investment, an investment of care. Things like the Port Bannatyne Development Trust and the Stokes Croft Land Trust – they’re grounded locally, they are actually making a real difference to their communities, but also the communities are also choosing to invest both money and their emotional energy there time into them as well.

This is a wonderful celebration to wish ICOF a very happy birthday, and to see all the investments that ICOF have made, supporting communities and enabling communities to lift themselves up. The power of ownership is just as important now, as it was 50 years ago. So I look forward to the next 50 years!