What’s next for community shares? – Isla McCulloch

“For this innovation to happen, enabling community shares to be used by a greater diversity of people needs to be at the heart. We cannot just innovate from within.”

A Pound in the Pot for Worker Co-operation – Sion Whellens

“If we had set up Solidfund 60,000 years ago – around the time the Neanderthals became extinct – and collected £10,000 every day since then, without redistributing any of it, we’d still have a long way to go before matching the personal financial firepower of Elon Musk.”

Q&A – Pia Mancini, Open Collective

“The assumption that underlies our financial system is that corporations are entities that operate in a scarcity-driven economy, and they compete with one another. It’s not that these assumptions are wrong, but they are dated.”

The rebirth of mutual banking – Tony Greenham

“Even though B-corps exhort directors to seek positive social and environmental impacts, the shareholders still ultimately call the shots.”‍

​​Money and non-money – a novel approach to counting the things that matter – Diana Finch

“Looking at how much money we have in the bank tells us nothing about our environmental and social value creation. Our starting point for the tokens was this: how could we use tokens to count the things that money doesn’t?”

Currencies of Social Organisation: The Future of Money – Sherryl Vint

“As a social technology, the tool of money can be oriented towards other kinds of ideas and practices, other kinds of social orders, other kinds of subjectivities.”

‍Growing Liverpool’s Social Economy from the Ground Up – Danielle Cohen and Andrea Lee

“Liverpool City Region is home to a lively and creative social economy, full of potential for social and economic change. The access to finance that Kindred provides will support its growth and development. Kindred demonstrates a new approach to place-based investment in the social economy.”

In Pursuit of Democratic FinTech – Simon Borkin

“I’ve become increasingly interested in how technology can help scale community shares as a finance model to help grow co-operatives and community enterprises across the entire economy, rather than how community shares can disrupt the technology sector.”

10 hacks for working with local government, if you’re a democratic business

“These ‘hacks’ are based on the shared knowledge and experience of democratic businesses who are working with local government around the UK, from Islington to Birmingham to Manchester to Preston, opening up new opportunities for democratic business to become part of how we address local and regional economic challenges in UK communities.”

Illustrated Guide to Democratic Finance

“Over the last decade, there’s been significant experimentation with existing and new financial tools, which offer democratic control in our undercapitalised sector. With the revival of Community Shares from 2012 – a market now worth in excess of £150M – the rise of digital platforms, and recent plans for new regional banks, this guide is an exploration of how democratic finance can address the capital gap within the democratic economy.”