Community Shares

Community Shares & Microgenius

On 11 June the Community Shares Unit re-launched the Microgenius community shares platform adding to the package of  support being developed to support those wanting to use community shares  as a way of  raising finance.  

The Microgenius online platform (www.microgenius.org.uk) will support the UK’s fast growing ‘own it yourself’ economy and will make it easier for societies to administer the selling of shares.

The Community Shares Unit (CSU) was established in October 2012, with the aim of growing a sustainable community shares market.  The Unit enables more community enterprises to utilise shares as a way of attracting community investment and raise finance to develop and run local ventures.  The Unit offers a one-stop-shop for community enterprises, investors and practitioners with services such as checking offer documents, market intelligence and access to best practice.

The (CSU) in the last few months has been working to develop and expand the Microgenius platform so it can be used for any community enterprise undertaking a community share offer.   The unit took on the operation of platform earlier this year following Microgenius’ success in hosting  a number of share offers for renewable energy schemes in 2012- supporting the achievement of their funding targets

Microgenius is a dedicated web platform for community shares, providing a secure, online mechanism for people to invest in share offers and for enterprises to accept funds from new members. The site works in a similar way as a crowd-funding site and operates with the added bonus that communities purchase a stake in the enterprise and participate in its success.  In order to be eligible, groups will have had to be incorporated as an Industrial Providence Society (IPS), the legal form that allows the issuing of shares, however the CSU provides advice to non-IPS organisations on how to adopt this legal form.

The CSU is piloting the site for an initial six-month period and is hosting a number of offers and seeing how best to support community share offers going forward.  Microgenius will host three new community share issues including a community buy-out of a well-known pub in Hebden Bridge, a co-operative seeking to run the first community-owned farm in Scotland, and an enterprise looking to install woodchip boilers to heat a local college in Leicestershire.  The Hebden Bridge ‘Fox and Goose’ community pub raised £21k within three days of launching their share offer on the Microgenius platform!

To register an interest to use the platform and to learn more about the support on offer contact the Community Shares Unit at: http://www.communityshares.org.uk/