Community-run food enterprises have grown in popularity in recent years, with communities setting up local bakeries, veg box schemes, farmers’ markets, food growing schemes, village shops and micro-breweries.  They are motivated by a desire to take back control of their food and where it comes from, cultivating good food, good livelihoods and strong social connections in their neighbourhoods.

As with all enterprises, the need for funding is ever-present.  This might be for start-up finance for a trading enterprise, an investment in equipment, vehicles or market research, or to subsidise the more socially environmentally focused work that may never be fully financially viable.

Over the past five years, a consortium  of charities – including by the food organisation Sustain, and coordinated by the Plunkett Foundation – has been helping communities to set up and develop viable community food enterprises, as part of the Big Lottery funded Making Local Food Work programme.  As part of this work, Sustain has brought together organisations that assist community food enterprises, with progressive funders, to discuss how best to secure funds for community food enterprises in the future, to help them through the all-important start-up phase, and to obtain funds to grow.

The resulting two reports – one examing where food enterprises get their money, and the other looking at policy options for funders, enterprises and the organisations that support them – were published in January 2013.  They set out to ask questions such as:

  • Where should community food enterprises now go to get the sympathetic and socially-motivated investment they need and deserve?
  • What types of funding are most suited to community food enterprise, such as grants, loans and community finance?
  • What are the strengths and drawbacks of each?
  • What would it take for sympathetic funds to be made readily available?
  • How much is needed? How should funders present those opportunities?
  • How should the community food enterprises, in turn, develop and present themselves to make a convincing case for that investment?

Courtesy of ‘In Touch’ – Magazine of Social Enterprise East of England  – Issue 38, page 24

Both reports are available free to download on the Sustain website: www.sustainweb.org – put the word ‘finance in’ the  key words search function.  The reports will come up and can be downloaded.  In order to do this, you need to click on the report you want and download right to the end to see the PDF version.

Or you can go direct to http://www.sustainweb.org/publications/?mode=info&id=259