Funded by Access – the Foundation for Social Investment

Booster Fund full application – equity funding

Share

You have been invited to complete the Booster Fund full application for equity funding.

Please read the Booster Fund application guidance, which includes a preview of the application questions. We encourage you to prepare the answers to the questions in advance.

If you need to save your application at any stage, please follow the 'save my progress and resume later' instructions. Please note, the link to resume your application will be sent to the email address you enter into this application form. If you do not receive the link, please first check your spam/junk folder and then contact [email protected]

 




Declaration
Any information you enter on this website will not be given to anyone else other than the project partners – Locality, the Plunkett Foundation, Co-operative and Community Finance and Community Shares ICOF as well as our funders Power to Change, Access Foundation and the Architectural Heritage Fund and our contracted assessment panel members, governed by our Booster Panel Terms of Reference. Beyond this, we will not share it unless we can't withhold it without breaking the law. We may use some of the data you give us for research purposes to help inform our research work but only as anonymised statistical information.

You can read our privacy policy which explains how data will be stored and used. You can find it via this link.

This form is for applicants applying for Equity match funding.  

Information you provided in your Expression of Interest Form has already been filled in.   

If you have received a grant, relevant information you supplied in your Grant Application form will also be filled in already.   

Who is applying
Please update the primary contact details for your Booster application if they have changed since completing the Expression of Interest form.

By primary contact, we mean the main person we can contact about your community business and this application. 

We need this contact name to keep you informed of progress, and if you successfully pass this application stage we may need to contact you to request additional information for the detailed assessment. 




Your community business details
Legal form

This is how your organisation is currently set up, for example, a Community Benefit Society.


Please provide the date your organisation was registered in its current form.


If your organisation is not registered yet, please give us the date you originally set your community business up.
What makes your organisation a community business?
Please ensure you have read the relevant section of the guidance before completing this section.
In your Expression of Interest, you said that your organisation meets or is working towards the following community business values: 
  • Rooted in the community
  • Accountable to the local community
  • Trade for the benefit of the community
  • Broad community benefit
Rooted in the community
A business started by local people that will benefit the community around it.

Community businesses are usually built around the strengths and assets of a place and address the needs of the community of that place. A majority of your staff, volunteers and other stakeholders should be drawn from this area and reflect its diversity.   

When answering this, think about whether the following statements are true about your community business: 
  • Our business exists to meet a local need (tell us what that is and how you meet it) 
  • Our business is defined by its link to a local area (explain why this is) 
  • Our business exists to meet the needs of marginalised people facing particular challenges (explain what the challenge is and how it is being met)     
Accountable to the local community
The local community has a genuine say in how the business is run.

Ways you could demonstrate accountability to the local community include having open membership, regularly consulting with local people about your activities and plans or involving local people through a community share issue.  You may want to include information about how you involve the local community in decisions about how the community business operates? Or if you have local board members, volunteers and staff? 

When answering this question think about how true the following statements are for your community business: 
  • Our business was started by members of the local community 
  • Our business is led by members of the local community
Trade for the benefit of the community
Community businesses have a clear trading model and sell services and products in and around their local area. Community businesses create benefits for the local community with their profits and through the way the business is run.

All or part of your income will come from community activities such as delivering a service for vulnerable people, running community transport, hiring out your space for community activities, providing housing or selling the produce you grow. 

If you generate a profit/surplus from trading activity, what is this used for?
Broad community impact
Community businesses engage with a variety of different groups in their community and address different community needs. They may have a specific focus on a disadvantaged group, or support the local community more widely.

You need to describe how your community business gives local people real, ongoing decision making power to shape how your organisation is run and what it does. This can happen in many ways (for example membership structure, ownership, broad range of local trustees,) but you must be able to show evidence of regular community influence in decision making.  
You may run events, activities, or services to meet community needs. Broad community impact is about being open to a range of members of your local community and having multiple impacts. 

Tell us how your organisation is inclusive and gives opportunities for people with different abilities and backgrounds to get involved.
What are you raising money for?
Your project

Please tell us more about the project or business that you are seeking to fund through a community share issue. What makes it special? Why should we want to fund it? How does it our aims and priorities? What particular challenges will your project tackle in the area where you are working?  How will our investment be spent - what activities will it support?
Project impact
The Booster Fund wants to support projects that have high levels of community impact in a few key areas.  Please select up to two options from the list

Hold down the Ctrl key to make more than one selection.

Charitable purpose
In your Expression of Interest form, you identified one or more charitable purposes that your project will meet. 

Your community business does not have to be a charity to be funded by the Booster Fund. But we do need to know that our funding will further charitable purposes or achieve charitable outcomes for the benefit of the public.
Who are the people you are trying to help?
Who are the main beneficiary groups of your project, that is, who your community is primarily trying to help through this project?


Please select any other beneficiaries from the secondary beneficiaries list that your project also targets.

Please describe briefly the extent to which minoritised ethnicities and young people form part of your community of benefit.  Please tell us how you reach out to them and how you support them through your work.

By minoritised ethnicities we mean individuals and minority groups who have been minoritised in a UK context through the political and social discrimination and barriers that they face. 

By young people we mean people aged 35 and under.
Your Share Offer
Your share offer plans

This will help us confirm how best we may be able to support you. We may be able offer additional business development support to early stage offers. 

We can not guarantee a panel decision in time for share offer launches. Please confirm that you understand that by applying for equity you are aware that you may not be able to reference the Booster Fund match investment within your share offer documentation ahead of launch, although you could mention you have applied for it. If you are offered equity, you may not be able to announce it publicly until firm offer letters have been issued and all formal processes are completed.

  • The purpose of a pioneer offer is to raise share capital for a new society that will be spent on getting the enterprise investment ready. 
  • Time-bound offers are offers that seek to raise a target amount of capital for a specific investment-ready project within a specified timescale.
  • Open offers are integral to the capital flow of established societies, enabling people to join or terminate membership, and as members, to invest or withdraw share capital. 
  • The purpose of a business growth offer is for an existing society running a subsequent share offer to raise new investment and grow their membership. 
  • The primary purpose a membership offer is to recruit members rather than to raise investment capital.
  • The purpose of a recovery offer is to improve a society’s solvency and balance sheet position. This differs from raising capital for a new start up or a new capital project.      
You can find out more about the different types of share offer in the Community Shares Handbook, here: Community Shares Offer Guidance
You can find out more about best practice principles for recovery share offers here: Recovery Share Offers Guidance
Land and building information
Please tell us a little bit about any land or buildings that are part of your community share offer.


To be of special historic interest a building must illustrate important aspects of the nation’s social, economic, cultural, or military history and/or have close historical associations with nationally important people. More information can be found from Historic England here

Please click here for more information

Please only include numbers. No commas, full stops or symbols (£)






Equity match request form
Please click on file and 'Save As' to download the following spreadsheet to indicate how much equity match you are applying for:
We need to know the minimum amount you need to raise through your community share offer for your project to go ahead.  Please complete the boxes on the Equity Match Request form with all the financial information that is asked for.  Also, please tell us how many people you expect will buy your community shares. 

How much money do you need for your project?

Use the Equity Match Request Form to tell us the total amount of funding needed for your project. We need to know the minimum amount you need to raise through your community share offer for your project to go ahead. 
We want to know how you intend to fill the gap between the total amount you require and the amount you raise in community shares, including our equity match. 

If you are undertaking an Open Offer without targets, please leave blank.

If you are undertaking an Open Offer without targets, please leave blank.

If you are undertaking an Open Offer without targets, please leave blank.
You need to list the sources of other capital and show how much capital will be drawn from these sources, depending on whether your share offer meets it minimum, optimum or maximum target.


Affordability

Estimated share applications
How many share applications are you expecting?   

Please give us lower and upper estimates  

This is your "worst case" scenario of number of people investing (not the amount of investment)

This is your "best case" scenario of number of people investing (not the amount of investment)

The Booster Fund Panel will look at your investment needs, business case and how well you fit the investment priorities to determine how much we could invest. Investments could range from £10,000 to £100,000, although the typical investment is expected to be £20,000-50,000. 

Through this equity investment, Co-operatives UK and/or Community Shares ICOF becomes an institutional investor in your community share offer. We invest on the same terms as all your other community investors, with the same voting rights and terms as laid out in your share offer document. The only difference is that as a larger investor, we will only request to withdraw our investment at a pro-rata rate, so that we do not take priority over other community investors. 

Investment by either Co-operatives UK or Community Shares ICOF will not exceed 50% of the society’s overall withdrawable share capital, so that neither becomes a majority shareholder in the society.
Key milestones
Please give us much detail as you can of the timings of your share offer.

You may have already included this draft information at a previous application stage, so please use this space to inform us of your finalised information

You may have already included this draft information at a previous application stage, so please use this space to inform us of your finalised information

You may have already included this draft information at a previous application stage, so please use this space to inform us of your finalised information


You may have already included this draft information at a previous application stage, so please use this space to inform us of your finalised information


Your offer and the Booster Fund

Please tell us how you will communicate the Booster offer of investment to all your other potential investors, including reassuring them that Booster invests on equal terms as them, as stage in the share offer document. 
Supporting documents
Please submit documents containing the following evidence, as part of your application to the Booster Fund. These documents are the same ones you will need to submit for your Standard Mark assessment.

If you are not in a position to submit any of the required documents, you will have the opportunity to explain why at the end of the application form
You may have already included this draft information at a previous application stage, so please use this space to inform us of your finalised information















Please provide dates where possible as to when you will be able to supply these documents
That is the end of this form, if you would like to amend anything you can go back and edit your answers. If you are happy then press submit and we will review your form and be in touch

Contact Information