Funded by Power to Change and Access – the Foundation for Social Investment. In partnership with Locality
Booster Fund – application guidance
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What kind of projects are we looking to support?

Key themes

We are keen to support groups looking to:  

  • Revive and take ownership of local assets, particularly in areas of high disadvantage 

  • Protect the services in their local area upon which people rely

  • Tackle issues relating to climate and nature crises

  • Support digital inclusion

  • Swap out expensive debt or re-financing

  • Grow and scale the impact of existing community businesses

  • Meet the critical needs of their communities

  • Create broad and diverse local membership and control

Booster Fund priorities 

We welcome expressions of interest and applications from groups at the early stage of their development, as well those who are ready to launch their share offers. We support both new and existing community businesses.

While we welcome a range of applications, we have the following priorities:

  • Promote equal opportunity, diversity and inclusion, including applications from and supporting:

    • Under-represented communities in the use of community shares

    • Disadvantaged communities facing systemic inequality

    • Minoritised ethnicities

    • Less affluent communities (defined as IMD 1-3 areas). Indices of multiple deprivation (IMD) are widely-used datasets within the UK to classify the relative deprivation of small areas

    • Community businesses that embrace diverse leadership

    • Younger people (35 years and under)

  • Tackling the climate crisis and improvements to local green environment

  • Digital transformation

We expect applicants to be working in at least one of these impact areas: 

  • Reduce social isolation 

  • Improve health and wellbeing 

  • Increase employability 

  • Create better access to basic services 

  • Enable greater community cohesion 

  • Foster greater community pride and empowerment 

  • Economic regeneration

An inclusive approach 

We believe in being truly inclusive and treating everyone with respect. We seek to be a genuinely inclusive organisation by advancing equality and diversity through our policies and practices. We encourage and welcome applications from people from all backgrounds who are looking to make a real difference to the lives of their local communities. 

Eligibility criteria

To be considered for the Booster Fund, applicants must meet the following eligibility criteria:  

  • Be based in England. If you’re not based in England, see what support is available if you're based in Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland

  • Have charitable purposes

  • Have a trading model

  • If not already a Community Benefit Society, a Charitable Community Benefit Society or a Co-operative Society, be willing to convert to one or set one up

  • Be exploring or aiming to issue a community share offer, or already launched a community share offer

Minimum and maximum individual investment limits

It is up to the society at what level to set the minimum and maximum individual investment limits.

To set a lower limit for people living in the local postcodes to the project can be a great way to garner local interest and facilitate a feeling that the society is prioritising and supporting local people. One of the Booster Fund's funders, Power to Change, is especially interested in supporting projects that have high local community engagement.

Societies can also set different limits for investments from businesses and also for institutional investors, such as Co-operatives UK via the Booster Fund. 

It is especially good to engage with local co-ops as there is no limit as to how much they could legally invest.

Investment performance

The Booster Fund has been designed to be an instrument that will be able to recycle its capital. This will be through the cyclical nature of investing into community share offers and gradually withdrawing this capital to use it to re-invest into the subsequent cohorts of share offers. Co-operatives UK has a long-term commitment to the businesses in which we invest, and we act as an active investor, providing guidance and support to our investees. Therefore, applicants to the Booster Fund should be aware that equity investment is fully expected to be repaid by the business, in a patient yet consistent manner.  We expect you to fully model the return of our investment over a set timescale, ranging from 5-20 years from the date of investment, subject to location, business sector etc.

 

As the Booster Fund has been designed to operate as a long-term social investor, we will need to cover its running costs, to be able to continue to make investments into community shares offer for many years. As such, we anticipate most of our investments to be interest bearing. We do not have a fixed % threshold for approving investments, but we are guided by the business sector, location, and economic circumstances of each application. Therefore, applicants to the Booster Fund should consider whether their business model supports the offer of interest, in order to attract capital investment.

 

A note on support for community pubs, cafés and shops/post offices

The Booster Fund receives many, many applications from groups aiming to purchase and run pubs, cafés, shops and post offices.  We can only support applications from these sectors that clearly meet some or all of the priorities laid out above. 

Applicants will need to demonstrate how they will deliver more than a standard level of services. These services should be inclusive and meet the wider needs of the community, particularly the most disadvantaged. Business plans and costings will need to be supplied as supporting evidence – in draft form with grant applications and in final form with equity applications – and must include any activities mentioned in the application.