Supporting fair and ethical business in partnership with The Co-operative Bank
Business Support – help for your co-op: Application guidance
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About the programme

Help for your co-op offers

  • Up to six days of one-to-one support with a co-op expert 

  • Half a day of peer-support with an existing co-op 

One-to-one support from a co-op expert

You can receive up to six days of one-to-one support with a co-op expert tailored to your specific needs. It will usually involve a combination of some of the following types of support:

  • Reviewing or developing a business plan

  • Financial review and planning

  • Reviewing or developing your organisational strategy

  • Market development strategy (user research, marketing and customer engagement)

  • Review and modification of articles or rules

  • Reviewing or developing a membership strategy

  • Improving your democratic processes (can include sociocracy)

  • Defining a fundraising strategy (can include community shares)

  • Succession planning

  • HR, including redundancy

Six days of support will not be able to cover all the topics above, so we will ask you to indicate your top three priorities.

The support will be delivered by a co-op expert that is part of our extensive network of advisors located across the UK. You may choose your own advisor from the network or leave it to us to choose the most appropriate for your organisation. If your application is successful, we will make every effort to allocate you your preferred support advisor. However, we reserve the right to offer an alternative based on availability, geography, skills and experience. 

Peer support from another co-op

Peer support is a great opportunity to learn from an existing co-op. They will have the lived experience of running a co-op similar to yours and can offer you insight into the challenges you might encounter and how to overcome them. You can get into the details of running the business or simply visit their premises to get a sense of their day-to-day activities. Once we have assigned you a co-op for peer support, it will be up to you to define with your peer co-op how to best make use of this time. 

In your application form you can suggest the co-op you would like to be paired with, or you can leave it to us to propose the most appropriate co-op. You can find other co-ops by exploring our directory of co-ops. If your application is successful, we will make every effort to allocate you your preferred co-op. However, we reserve the right to offer an alternative based on availability, geography, skills and experience.