The Cooperative Membership Fund

Whenever I see the words Co-Op I always get confused about the use of hyphens, capitalisation of the "Op" and various other trivialities that really don't matter. What does matter is what the Co-Op are doing  with their rather excellent Cooperative Membership Fund. Basically the Co-Op shares its profits with its members (it's the principle behind a cooperative) twice a year and some of those members chose to give a percentage of their share of the profits to a charitable fund. So far this year £1.2m has been added to the fund. Wow, that's a lot of generous people isn't it? It's proper local too, the projects funded in an area are funded by donations in that area- a real tangible link between what's given and what's happening, which is  important in my mind as it stops giving fatigue. Grants vary from a minimum of £100 to a maximum of £2,000. To successfully apply for a grant  a group must carry out positive work in the community (it does not have to have charitable status to apply). And the project must also address a community issue, provide a long-term benefit to the community, support co-operative values and principles and ideally be innovative in its approach.

So if you want to set up a local brass band like that lot have, it's a good place to start. Round here we could do with something that gets the local kids off their Playstations and outside in the summer, maybe a project coupled with some of the local forest planting that's going on, aimed at getting the youngsters enthused about sustainability and the like. It doesn't have to be rocket science as long as it meets the criteria.










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