The Practitioners' Guide to Community Shares

The Practitioners’ Guide to Community Shares is the culmination of a two-year action-research programme promoting equity investment in community enterprise.

Based on the experiences of ten co-operatives and community enterprises across England, from Ashington Minors and Cybermoor in the north to Brixton Green and Hastings Pier in the south, the guide explains how to raise risk capital for ventures serving a community purpose.

The guide focuses on the use of withdrawable share capital, a type of risk capital unique to co-operative and community benefit societies, which provides a democratic form of community ownership. The guide offers advice to practitioners in four key areas for development; the business model, community engagement, governance, and the offer document.

To order printed copies of The Practitioners' Guide to Community Shares @ £15 each, see the order form below.

The Community Shares programme was funded by the Office for Civil Society and the Department for Communities and Local Government working in partnership with Co-operatives UK and Locality. The programme was completed in March 2011.

Jim Brown was the lead consultant to the Community Shares programme. He works for Baker Brown Associates, a research and development co-operative in Bristol www.bakerbrown.co.uk