The Community Shares Booster Fund has extended its offer of flexible funding, after receiving a top‑up of support from Access – the Foundation for Social Investment.
This will enable the fund to continue supporting the community shares market throughout 2025 and beyond. Support through the fund includes pre-grant support, development grants, equity match investment, subscription underwriting and loan finance.
Of the £560,000 added to the fund:
- £200,000 will be allocated to development grants through Co-operatives UK
- £360,000 will be available for matched equity investments for community share offers through Co‑operative and Community Finance (CCF) and its investment partner Community Shares ICOF (the Community Shares Fund).
The additional funds will help more communities to raise their own patient, flexible finance in the form of community shares.
Development grants provide vital funding for organisations to prepare and launch a share offer, while matched equity incentivises others to invest by providing an institutional investment that builds trust and confidence in share offers.
John Dawson, head of market development at Co-operatives UK, said: “This is a great show of support to the power of communities raising their own finance and providing the answers to some of their own shared ambitions.”
The Booster Fund has already invested over £4m into 88 organisations alongside 19,242 individual investor members and provided development grants to many more. To date, the community shares market has raised more than £230m.
Seb Elsworth, CEO of Access – the Foundation for Social Investment said: “We are pleased to support Cooperatives UK, Cooperative and Community Finance, and Community Shares ICOF. This will enable them to deploy further community shares investments, which will boost the cooperative economy by providing opportunities for community focused cooperatives to benefit from more patient and flexible capital.”
Tim Coomer, business development manager at CCF, said: “We are delighted that Access has committed extra funds to allow us to continue investing in community share offers and make it easier for enterprises to raise the funds they need through matched local investment and finance.”
CCF adds that with Labour’s manifesto commitment to double the size of the co‑operative and mutual sector, there is significant potential to expand community shares investment.
“Alongside our partners in the community shares space, we wrote to government ministers in January making the case for a scaled-up Booster-style investment fund, within a new investment institution for the sector,“ it adds. “We now have formal agreement in place with our partners and are working together on next steps.”
