 Welcome if you're joining us now we're starting off with with a poll just to see what brings you here today so if you're here hopefully you're interested in platform co-ops that's what we'll be talking today. But we wanted to get a sense of who's in the audience. So you'll see in the chat, there should be a link to participate in the slide or I'll just show by second slide. You can participate simply by going to slido.com and using the code hashtag PCW2023. Great, so it looks like mostly people are here curious because they want to find out more about platform cobs, but also some of you are supporting people who are setting up businesses in general and want to find out more. So thanks that's really useful for us to know. Okay, so I will start the presentation now. And hopefully a few more people might be joining but I think it's a good moment to start now. So welcome everyone. As mentioned this this webinar is about platform cobs and platform cobs as a route to an ethical digital business. This webinar is hosted by Corruptives UK and Corruptive Development Scotland and Scottish Enterprise and it's made possible also thanks to the Corruptive Bank. I'll go through what we'll cover today. So I'll give a brief introduction and then I'll hand over to Suzanne Orchard from Corruptive Development Scotland and Scottish Enterprise who will tell us a bit more about their work. And then I'll give a presentation of around 20 minutes about what we mean by platform cobs, the support that's available to start one and what are the sort of steps that people take when they're starting one. And then we've got two great speakers from people who are actually running platform cobs and we've got Jennifer Bird from Sinelize and Kaylee Reed from Open Food Network and I'll introduce them better when we get to their presentation. After that we'll have a Q&A. Unfortunately, because we're in webinar format we can't hear, we can't see on screen but please use the chat to put your questions either directly to the panelists. I do do it also while we're speaking and then we'll just collate them at the end and try to address some of them. I think that's all for now. I'll just introduce myself briefly before I hand over to Suzanne. Hello, my name is Vika Rogers. I work at Corruptives UK and I run what is called the Unfound Programme and I've been involved in this for the last three years, which is set up specifically to support platform co-ops. I'm also currently interim head of Corruptive Business Development so I overlook sort of the business support that we provide particularly to startups and conversions. Now to Suzanne. I think I'll stop sharing. Thanks Vika. Hi there everybody. Sad I can't see all your faces but welcome, big warm welcome nonetheless. I'm Suzanne Orchard. I work for Corruptive Development Scotland, part of Scottish Enterprise as Vika pointed out and I just wanted to take a few minutes just to tell you a little bit about CDS, who we are, what we do and why we're partnering with Co-ops UK to bring this webinar to you today. So for those of you who don't know and I always assume people don't know because it's a mistake to assume people do. Co-op CDS was set up by the Scottish government in 2005 to ensure co-ops and employee on business models were factored into the government's approach to economic development. So we provide dedicated support around that so we are a government agency, unlike co-ops UK that the membership body, we're very much funded by government and we're based here in Scotland. So we're remitted to raise awareness of co-ops and employee on business models, as well as providing support to consider options set up and also recently we've branched out into helping co-ops existing co-ops to sustain and grow. There's a number of other areas to our remit, including research and policy, but the awareness raising and the practical support are really our key areas of focus. So we do sit within Scottish Enterprise, which can be really, really confusing. We all have Scottish Enterprise email addresses, but we very much provide a pan-Scotland service. So we work right across the country, work very, very closely with the other Enterprise agencies in Scotland, for those of you who don't know them, that's Highlands and Islands Enterprise and the south of Scotland Enterprise Agency to support them to deliver their economic development remits, which can be easier said than done because they've all got different approaches and styles, high, very much community-orientated, whereas SE very much more an innovation focus. So that's a little bit about who we are, how and who we support people. So we very much support a whole range of types of projects and businesses. We're often sort of lumped into the category because we sit within SE that we only support large or high growth ventures, that just isn't the case. So SE and CDS are able to support anything from small grassroots, social-orientated not-for-profit projects and co-ops, all the way up to the large commercial for-profit projects and co-ops and also anything, any combination of the two and anything in between. So we support a whole range of different types of co-ops, including community co-operatives, consortium co-operatives, worker platform, as we're here today to explore as well as employee ownership. And we provide free support, free practical, tangible support to explore those initial options around is this the right model for you? And if it is and it's something you'd like to progress with, we can support to help you to actually set up or indeed transition from your current business model into a cooperative or employee-owned model. As I said, we've branched out more recently into helping existing co-operatives, which has been really, really exciting and we've had some really fabulous projects come up through the pipeline around helping existing co-operatives to look at their structures, to look at becoming more sustainable, look at growth opportunities. It's also been a fabulous opportunity to get closer to the existing and very established co-ops and sector already in place in Scotland. Lastly, I just wanted to acknowledge that we're working in partnership with Co-ops UK today. Our relationship goes back a number of years. It's not a new thing at all, but we're really here to, I suppose, maximise and ensure that you have access to both our experience, our resources and our knowledge about the sector, particularly here in Scotland, for the benefit of you. It really is just an introduction. It's a taster. This isn't a fetter complete. It's not a one and done. We're not all going to disappear off the radar after and I would really encourage anybody who's interested or anybody who's been ignited or had an idea sparked by today to absolutely get in touch. I just want to say that I, for one, and I know folks at Co-ops UK as well, would be delighted to continue the conversation around how to take the next steps with you. I will be on the chat throughout the session and make sure my contact details are there for everybody. But without further ado, I'll hand back over to Vika and we can kick off and hear about this fabulous model. Yes. Okay, so thank you for that presentation of the support that is available. Okay, so I'm just going to share my screen again. Can I just have a thumbs up from another panelist at my slides are visible. Great. Okay. Thank you. Okay, so now we're going to talk about platform co-ops. And before I move on to actually talking about platform co-ops I just wanted to make sure that we all had a good understanding of what we mean by a co-op. Just as Suzanne was saying before we don't want to assume that everyone already knows about co-ops. So we, a cooperative is a business or organization that is owned and controlled by its members to meet their shared needs. And the members of the co-op can be really a very different types. They can be customers, employees, residents or suppliers, but they all have a say in how the co-op is run. They can also be in different sectors so they could be pubs, energy suppliers, taxi firms, etc. This is just a list of some of the ones that we have in our membership. They, there are about 7,000 co-ops that contribute to the UK economy and they contribute over 40 billion. The members are really at the heart of every co-op. The foundation of every co-op and it's why the co-op exists in the first place. So the purpose drives who the members should be and vice versa. And the members own their co-op and they choose what they can do with the profits. They can invest for the benefit of the co-op, but they can't invest just to make a profit. And most importantly, members have an equal say in the co-op. Now, before I talk about what we mean by platform co-ops, I just wanted to give a broad definition of what we mean by a platform business. There isn't an official definition of what a platform business is, but it is. It really became a term that emerged in the last 15, 20 years to describe how technology was transforming business and creating and generating new business models. And so this is quite a broad definition of what a platform business is. A platform business is a business that uses a digital platform to trade, connect people and or pull resources and data. And this is just a definition that we find useful to use for this kind of business. So these type of businesses have become much more present and dominant in our lives, particularly after the pandemic. They allow us to connect with loved ones. They allow us to do our daily activities from ordering groceries to booking a restaurant or booking care. So we all have gained a lot of benefits from the platforms, but unfortunately what is emerging is also the negative effects associated to some of these platforms. So I'm just going to give a broad sort of overview of some of the issues that have emerged. First of all, platforms collect and hold large amounts of user data and don't always disclose what they do with it. And they gain immense power due to the huge amount of data they hold in the large profits that they make. They often also use algorithms that contain bias that can skew the way platforms operate. But also the way that they're designed and they interact with their users means that they have a lot of top down control that impacts users and that the terms of the users can unilaterally change from one day to the other. Unfortunately, they also are undermining communities and workers rights so they facilitate dependency on precarious income streams and working conditions and they have shown to be openly opposing collective actions. Some of them also impact local communities by introducing disruptive economic practices and something that I think is overlooked often is how they exploit the crisis is and so they they appear very often as the saviours in the moment of crisis but actually they benefit immensely from the financial crisis or the current COVID crisis. Very often these aggressive business models are built on aggressive funding models so very often they're driven by VC funding that extract disproportionate value from other people's assets and labor. And they tend to try to create global monopolies by either destroying or buying up competitors and often circulate venting regulation. Now I'm sure these are all that none of these are new to you. But what the cooperative movement did in a decade around 2015 was really to put out a provocation and say, is it really the technology the cause of these problems, or is it the business model on which they're built. And what if these businesses were collectively owned and democratically controlled. And so effectively what if we manage this technology as a cooperative. And that's why I'll bring us back to the definition of a platform co-op, which is sort of merging this, the definition of the platform and the definition of the co-op that I gave before. And so what we mean by a platform co-op is a democratically owned and controlled business that uses an online platform or mobile app to trade connect people and or pull resources and data. If imagine if, for example, delivery was owned and managed by its riders, or a Spotify was owned and managed by musicians and listeners, or if Airbnb was run by local communities. What is exciting is that actually the cooperative movement is providing alternatives. The ethical alternatives that are really careful with workers rights and community rights and and producer rights so we have co-op cycle which is an international platform for careers. We have Resonate, which is a platform for music listeners and musicians where both the members of the co-op. We have FairBnB, which is a community powered tourism, which is powered by by local communities. And so what the movement is trying to say is, how would this technology change if we embed the cooperative principles into the technology that we use? I'm not going to go through all the principles because there's lots of information on our website and I'm sure Corporate Development Scotland also provides information on the principles. But just if you skim through them here looking at the slide, what I think is interesting is you can see how these principles wouldn't only impact how a business is run, but also how technology is used and how we use data and process it and collect it. And if you're someone who actually comes from the cooperative movement and is new to platform for businesses, I think it's interesting to see what technology could bring to cooperative businesses. And so here are just some aspects that have always been highlighted around the power of platform businesses. They tend to have lower startup costs compared to other high growth businesses. They eliminate the middlemen making direct connections, allowing direct connections between providers and receivers of a service. They allow autonomy where members can choose how much they want to use or provide a service. They allow collective participation, making it more practicable and reducing the barriers for access and membership. And then there's a network effect that allows reaching and scaling and reaching new people and scaling is made much easier. So it's really merging these two worlds and understanding the potential that it can create. So here are a few examples of co-ops based in the UK that are either in our membership or we've supported. And I tend to distinguish in two types of platform co-ops. Here I've grouped some platform co-ops where it's really about connecting the providers and receivers of a service. So for example, we have signalized for deaf people and British sign language translators equal that we'll hear from later equal care co-op, which is for caregivers and receivers. Red Brick Language School, which is an online English language school and dopo which provides abortion care and education for all. And I put just some quotes here to give you that have been provided by by the the carbs and I'll just read the one that's highlighted which is from equal care co-op. We want to see a care and support system which puts the relationship between giver and receiver first shares power and allows care and support to exist in abundance. And I think this word power is really crucial. It's really setting up a co-op is all about how you want to share and distribute power and technology can allow us to do that if we do this and do it in the right way. Another type of platform co-op is what I tend to talk about as infrastructure co-ops, where the technology actually allows then smaller co-ops on the ground to operate together and and also scale and grow. And so we'll hear much more from from Kaylee later about open food network, which is a network for ethical food producers and shops that share technology across different countries. Co-op cycle similarly the technology is internationally shared, but local worker careers set up their own co-ops locally. And we have similar cases for car sharing where there's technology is shared amongst other different co-ops for for creating car clubs. So a few words about how to start a platform co-op. So we've sort of mapped out the journey that a platform cop might take, but every cop is completely different. So this is just looking at some patterns that we've noticed in the in the founder journey of platform co-ops. But just please take it as as a as an indication it's not the only way to do it. So we sort of divided the journey into into three phases. There's an early phase that actually does take quite a lot of time and really, really important to get it right, which is when you're exploring the idea of the co-op you're starting to build your team you're understanding if there's a case for the co-op that you want to set up setting out your your business case your business plan. And that will take usually around a year before you're actually ready to incorporate as a business as a cooperative. Once you're incorporated you can start attracting funding and and that's where you start really to you start your initial trading you start testing your business case and building the technology. Usually within the second or third year we've seen a few platform cops raise a share offer. And so attracting equity to them be able to scale scale their platform in the cooperative sector there's a very specific type of equity, because as we mentioned, people can not invest in a in a co-op to just to increase the profit. And so we have a particular type of equity that we suggest to co-ops which is we call community shares. I'm not going to go into detail. There's a lot of information on this on our website, but just want to make you aware that equity raising in co-ops is different than in normal businesses. So usually we see that in the pre incorporation year founders able to attract around 15,000 pounds usually either through grant funding or founder grants. And then from year one year zero went from when they incorporate and they can actually officially start receiving grants as an organization, they'll probably raise around 75K. With a community share offer there's usually a big dump that we go between 200 with some actually raising up to 600,000. Our advice is really to start raising funds from before you even incorporate. So you're starting immediately to think like a business and not base it all on voluntary work. So yeah, just start thinking from the beginning about your your funding runway. These are just some numbers. I'm really sorry for some reason the years are not appearing here but it was from 2015 onwards, just to give you a sense of how much has been raised in equity. It was mainly media co-ops that were operating online that raised equity and then we saw more care care co-ops and also car car clubs with the highest raise being co-cars which was 600,000. What is also interesting is that there is some institutional match funding, and it's becoming more and more available hopefully, where if you're able to crowdfund the community shares from your community there is some funders are prepared to also provide match funding to that. Moving on to the support available. And I've been running the unfound accelerator, which is a program delivered by Corruptors UK and supported by the Corruptive Bank and it's been completely focused on on supporting the platform, a cooperative sector. I'm going to skip the next slide just so that I can move on quickly to the support that we're currently providing. Once a year we run an accelerator program for platform co-ops, which is a 10 week business support program for teams that are at the early stage of setting one up. And it is accompanied by a pitch event towards which the Corruptive Bank has contributed a 10,000 prize fund. It's for teams of at least two members that are ready to set up their co-op that are looking to register in the UK by the end of 2023. The deadline for applications is really soon, so the 5 March is the deadline for applications so if you're watching this webinar and you're interested in receiving support as a platform co-op please do look at unfound co-op. The accelerator will run from the end of April to the end of June with the pitch event in the second week of July the exact date to be confirmed. We also have a lot of resources so my colleague Megan who's very kindly helping out today will be pasting some of the resources in the chat. But we have a lot of information on our website and a regular newsletter where we also provide information about other events related to platform co-ops and funding opportunities. On Corruptive UK's website, you can also find a step by step tool which is generic for any type of co-op. So if you want to go with your own pace, you can just visit our website and follow the step by step tool. But we also have for that further support between the two organizations, we have a Corruptive UK direct support program which offers six days of support of one to one support and peer mentoring. We have an experienced advice team as well that can provide support and also as I mentioned, we have a lot of resources but also funding for those that are interested in raising community shares. And as Susan mentioned earlier for Scottish enterprises, there's support available also from Corruptive Development Scotland. Final slide and then our pause and finally we're going to hear our speakers, the other panelists. What's very interesting about the platform co-op movement, which is also typical of the co-op movement generally is that it is an international movement. And the platform co-op movement is quite active at an international level because of the nature of platform cobs that often tend to be some of them tend to be international. So we'll be putting in the chat links to various ways in which you can engage with the international network. So I think that was my last slide. So I'll stop there. So thank you everyone for following that presentation. I know there was a lot to take in. So let me just bring up. I think now we are going to hear from Jennifer Bird who runs Sinalise, which is a platform co-op for deaf people and British Sign Language translators. I'll hand it over to you, Jen. Thanks for being here. Thanks, Vika. On Jen Bird, the business and development manager at Sinalise co-op. We are a multi stakeholder platform cooperative. And our members are deaf users who are the end users or receivers of sign language interpreting. And then the interpreters themselves. We also have a handful of other associated professionals like lip speakers and speech to text reporters and translators. So this is an all too common story. We see this around once a month sadly in the deaf community where family members are relied upon to become sign language interpreters because perhaps an NHS trust hasn't been able to source an interpreter. This can be down to many reasons. For example, the traditional delivery model has often been via agencies. These can be local or national charities, private businesses, or even very large global spoken language agencies who often have little or no knowledge about the deaf community. They quite often provide interpreting as well as a loss leader in order to gain business. So they're quite aggressive and competitive, yet they have very little experience of the market of sign language interpreting. Quite often these problems can occur because the staff turnover is high. Staff don't know who holds the contract and especially worse for the users who quite often have a lot of anxiety and it affects their wellbeing when they're on the way to, for example, a hospital or a GP appointment. So there was recent or not so recent research from Sign Health who said that the NHS loses 30 million a year in misdiagnosis or lost appointments through not having appropriate sign language interpreting provision. So these are exactly the reason why we set up as a cooperative in order to solve these problems. So our solution is that we're using tech for good, which is the platform side. I'll talk a bit more about that later. As we are cutting out the middlemen, we're sort of replacing the middlemen with us, the experts in delivery. So as a multi-stakeholder cooperative, the huge benefit to that is that we have regular user meetings with the deaf community, as well as on the worker side. So we're getting direct feedback about how the service is delivered from both the receivers of the service and those who deliver it. At the time, we were thinking about setting up, we actually went to a workshop held by Cooperatives UK. At the time was thinking very much of a worker's cooperative. And when I was told of the ability to have a multi-stakeholder cooperative, it blew my mind because having the deaf community actually involved in running a business has never happened on a community-wide ever before. We're the only people that are doing that in the entire of the UK. So previously, it may be more like a charity model where deaf users are beneficiaries, but they're not really consulted, or usually private agencies who don't have any kind of user involvement, whether that's on the worker side or the user side. So we're definitely unique in that sense. So we have regular meetings. We use sociocracy as much as we can to involve users in decision making. And we use any profits that are made, a plow back into raising interpreter standards or using that funding to actually hold events with the community. Our journey very much fits in with what Vika was describing. So I won't go into it too much because we're literally pretty much on the money when it came to the community shares raise or the funding that we obtained in the first year from incorporation. So if I skip to August 2021, the community shares raised just prior to that, we believe was a large part in enabling us to win our biggest tender to date, which was a sole supplier on a large NHS framework of 19 NHS trusts across Merseyside and Cheshire. We're now on contract number seven, as of December 2022, and hopefully more in the pipeline. Economy is a huge topic at the minute. We believe that we very much fit into what we would call the post COVID economy, whether that plays out with the current government or the current situation is a whole other debate. But we very much fit into that ethos of public services, obtaining social value. So, for example, the framework that we went for had a 10% waiting for social value. So we think we one of the biggest reasons we got that place on the framework was because we were able to demonstrate the social value that comes from that the cooperative model in working and being owned directly by the community. So how do we compete? We have a leaner business model less admin fees. We're using tech for good. We're not trying to be a gig economy platform, such as Uber or delivery. And everything that we do is co-designed with users. We test everything, we go back to the users, we get feedback, we change what we're doing so that it seats. And that's all users, including the customers that we deal with. That's the booking platform. If you want to see that, that's a beta.signalised.coop. At some point we'll transfer over and make that our main site. The majority of interpreters that we work with on Merseyside are part of the platform. One of the benefits and we consistently get good feedback from deaf users is having the interpreter profiles on the website. So one of the things we do that was very much driven from the community is when we book a sign language interpreter and for example a GP practice contacts us. And that's all done either via the platform or via the phone. Once we confirm somebody, we confirm that also with the deaf user. Also to my knowledge, nobody else in the UK does this. This is borne out of a solution driven by the community. And based on that research I mentioned earlier about deaf people not knowing who their interpreter is going to be and whether one is even booked. There are so many stories in the community about deaf people turning up at GP appointments and not knowing even if somebody is going to be booked. If they're going to have to go home again because there isn't anybody present. What we do is send a text message direct to the user and a link to the interpreter's profile. So very early on in the contract in 2021. One of the interpreters arrived at the one of their booked appointments and the deaf user said, did you send me this text message. The interpreter is like, well, which one's that and the deaf user said, well your face popped up on my phone. And I knew that you were going to be at the appointment and the deaf user had thought it was either the GP that had sent the message or the interpreter directly. They were able to explain that actually know that came from the booking service and the deaf user absolutely loved it because they knew a somebody was going to be there and be who they were. And see that they could actually look them up on the website if they didn't know them and see their face which for deaf people is a huge thing that's a very visual thing they want to see who's coming. So consistently over the last 18 months of delivering these contracts, the number one benefit that deaf users always say they absolutely love it. It's made a huge difference to how they receive interpreting services. So that the booking platform itself plays that obviously plays a massive part in that we've done a lot of work tailoring the platform to make sure that it works for the NHS contracts that we have as well. And there's a lot more work to do on it and a lot more potential that we could could deliver with the platform as well as we've got huge plans. And you can see on the navigation bar it says create a video booking. We also are one of the only not the only service but one of the only services who have a video interpreting service that works side by side with the booking platform. We use it quite a lot for perhaps a GP appointment where a member of staff hasn't remembered to book an interpreter, or it works very well for things like A&E appointments where a deaf user might just walk in off the street and nobody knows that they're coming. So, oh, I look quite tanned there. I'll have to get another tan soon. I think I look much better. And we're one of the only video services as well that in the second picture you can see there's actually three users on the screen. The majority of video services only have two users and the hearing person involved can't actually see what's going on. Whereas our service you can actually have a three way call with all people on the video screen so you can see me as the interpreter in the bottom left, and then two screens one for the deaf user and one for a staff member. Using this kind of technology alongside the platform as well enables us to be really responsive as a service. Many video interpreting services are solely online and they don't have a face to face provision. So we're able to really offer choice to the deaf user. For example, we can do you a GP appointment can be booked tomorrow via video or we can get someone face to face next week. And then it's always down to the choice of the staff member and the deaf user as to whether they want to hold appointments via video as well. So it makes us really responsive. So tech is playing a huge part in what we do in connecting people. So for us, it's about increasing our business, gaining more contracts in the same way, but also we've come to a time where it's important to review our strategy because the market is moving so quickly. And also we have some real challenges with things like the cost of living crisis. But as a multi-stakeholder cooperative, more specifically on the worker side, for example, we have regular meetings about pricing and fees where we can solve some of those challenges together and make sure that there's no drop in service and that everybody's happy with what we're doing. We continue to evolve our tech in line with feedback. We have regular quarterly meetings, if not more often with both music groups where we can gain feedback. And we also do a lot of outreach. We have an outreach worker who's deaf herself who goes out and the aim is to really increase the membership to about three times what it is of the worker members so that we can gain real user input and make sure they have a quality of say in how the co-op is run. There's our contact details. I'm happy to answer anything in the chat, of course. And if you do want to contact us, please do. Just then that was very inspiring. So please do please do use the chat for any questions and then we'll we'll gather them at the end for Q&A. So yeah, just please, please do use the chat to interact with us. I'm now going to hand it over to Kayleigh Reed, who's a member of Open Food Network, which is a co-op of organizations whose members collectively own and control an innovative software platform that they use to trade the food that they produce. It's great to have you here Kayleigh. Thanks for joining. Thank you and thanks for inviting us to present the Open Food Network today. I'm just going to share my screen from one. I always do that. Okay, so first thing to know about the Open Food Network is we're a global collaboration. I think Vicky, you mentioned we're a network of networks, we're like a co-operative of co-operatives. We founded in Australia, but now we're an international community and we operate in over around 20 countries, but we're growing all the time. And essentially we're a global community that are working together to develop shared resources, knowledge and software to support better food system. The flagship project is an open source e-commerce platform that's tailored specifically to community food enterprises and people have used the software to set up food collectives, manage food hubs and take their farmers markets online. So essentially you can set up an online shop with the software. We're a co-learning community, so we're not just a software, but we also focus on developing solutions to solving food system problems that isn't just with the software. And so that can be everything from different projects, research projects, shared resources. So essentially anything that we can create is a global community that helps the wider community thrive. And then also we do that on like a local level as well. And we're not just a business as well. We're a co-operative and we're governed sociocratically. And that's been a kind of an ongoing process for us to see what that looks like in the open food network. We've been looking at in the UK, we've been working on our governance process a lot over the last year. But in the way that we collaborate with the global community, everything is held in the common. So what we create in the UK can then be used by other members of the network in other countries and vice versa. We also create on an open and transparent governance model, not just globally, but locally as well. And we also use collaborative decision making within our network of communities. So we work collaboratively with the people who use the software, as well as members of the community and most of our community is made up of people who are also food producers or running food enterprises themselves. I'm not about the founder story. I'm not a founder member. So I always feel like I don't quite do this justice. But we essentially started off with four people who were all working in and running or founding food enterprises, community food hubs in their communities. And they developed a software that was had lots of issues and was very buggy together. And then they were linked up with the other final Australia and what was happening there. It was really early in the project, I think 2015, so only a few years after the software being developed in Australia. So, the group of founders brought the software to the UK and gained funding for the first three years. So the open food network UK launched, then the pandemic hit, and I joined the OFN just before the pandemic, and it led to a massive amount of growth in a short space of time, which then led to more funding. So the opportunities for funding opportunities have led us to be able to build our reputation in the movement. Most of our revenue is through funding currently, although we, so we're free for some is free for someone to set up and a shop front on the software. And we only start asking for membership contributions when they're trading more than 500 pounds a month through the platform. So it's very accessible. I'm just small scale producers and smaller community food hubs. And then we're also invested in as a community and helping each other grow. So this is our vision of mission. Our vision is we want to see healthy and connected communities co creating more resilient diverse and secure food systems that nourish everybody and regenerate the planet. And our mission is to support them to do that through comments of software resources and community learning networks. So this is our vision for the way that we were founded and also the members who are part of the open food network. Everything we do is really growing from the real needs of food hubs and farmers across the UK and globally. So we're constantly developing the software to improve how it functions. And then also on top of that we're constantly imagining new resources that we can share with the community. Yeah, I'm building stuff. I spoke about this before. So I'm just going to skip just where the time and that we have some time for questions. So the open food network UK, we're committed to non hierarchical and social classic ways of working and we're constantly developing this in April last year, our CEO stepped down and is actually still part of the open food network community but focusing on the global community and the platform development. So it means that in the in the UK we've had to kind of rethink how we organize together and there's now we've got quite a big team when we're all working this round 16 of us in the coordinating circle that provides support services as well as to help create resources for community members, etc. So it's been an interesting journey for us this year, we're looking at lots of different ways of how we organize but we've landed on organizing social critically. So we've, we now operate in different circles in the team that fulfill different functions within the team. So this is what the platform looks like on the first page that you'll come to. So you can set up a food and enterprise, you can set up your online shop through the platform but also as a shopper. You are really cool features you can search for, oops. You can search for, you can search for local food enterprises near you we currently have around 800 food enterprises that are using the software. So you've got this map function so if you're a shopper you can see who or what community food enterprises in your local area or producers, and you can also search by text as well where you are. And yeah, I think that's it for me I want to keep it short and sweet because of question time. So, hope that's okay. It's excellent and great to see the whole journey. So exciting how how it's been growing. So, yes, please do put some questions in the chat there was, there were two questions that were specific around community shared so I'll answer those. But if you have any questions for the other panelists do put them in the chat direct them direct to the panelists that you'd like the question to go to, or if they're general questions about platform cards more than happy to to respond. So there was one question, which was related to how do does institutional match funding work with community shares. So, what is interesting about community shares and make some very different from shares in a normal company is that independently from how many shares you hold in the company in the cooperative, you only have one vote. So this really allows to bring in also big investors that are interested in supporting the cooperative, but don't necessarily are not necessarily looking to have a lot of control and power over the organization. In very simple terms that might be more complex structures where in particular as as Jen was was mentioning that you can set up a multi stakeholder cooperative where actually you have different member groups and it's not only the receivers and the providers of the service, but there's what is often called supporter members and so those are the ones that are investing in the co up but they're not actually transacting that necessarily directly with the, with the co up. And so you can also wait voting based on on the membership structure but that's going into a lot of a lot of detail. Unfortunately, the funding we currently can provide as much funding through the booster program that we have a carpet is UK is focused only on England, if I'm correct. It's also very focused up to now has been very focused on place based projects. So actually, platform carts have struggled to receive the same type of funding as other community projects that are usually related to saving an asset, etc. But having said that what we do hold a couple to UK is the is the experience and knowledge of community shares and how institution is investors can get involved. So if you are talking with grant funders for example that we are interested in investing in community shares do we're happy to sort of support share our knowledge on on how that can be done. There isn't any specific grant funding for platform co ops, all the platform co ops that I've seen that have been able to raise funding, they have raised it from really specific it related to their sector. There's a specific tech for good funding grant, but, but then not necessarily just the fact that you're a co op will make you access that grant it's really what the purpose of your co op is, if that resonates with the with the funder. Do you want to say anything more about funding available for co ops in Scotland. I think you've just made the point I was going to make Vika in, in that there's a real lack of fun of cooperative specific funding available in Scotland and what I found through my work here at CDS is as you've just highlighted it really does depend on the thematic and sector funding that are available for co ops that we're working with somebody in the chat mentioned, you know, out with the community shares that the funding packages that you mentioned in your slides weren't available in Scotland and that is indeed correct. In terms of working with platform co ops it really is a bit of a learning curve was at the moment we've only been in this space for about 12 months. We've just sort of feeling our way based on the type and sector of the platform co op that comes forward we've had some, some success stories around around platform co ops it was supported in terms of accessing funding from local councils who perhaps have a funding co ops available. We've worked, we're working with a platform co at the moment at the moment who successfully mixed a variety and a blending funding package to get their co op off the ground including institutional finance, funding from a local and doing a community share offer at the same time so it's it's all really we're just feeling our way a little bit and we work with clients on a sort of bespoke one on one basis to plug them into support that's available we we use our own networks we use the networks of our advisors and practitioners that we work really closely with as well. But yeah I think you mentioned the main point in that there's no, no specific funding pots for platform co ops or indeed co ops at at the moment that they're mainly sectorally automatic based. Thank you, thank you Suzanne, and just to reiterate reiterate also the examples that Suzanne was giving it's always a combination of funding grant funding revenue partnerships with local authorities, never focused just on one. Yeah, it's a, I'm sure Jen and Kay. No, it's a hard job. Again I will mention the newsletter the unfound newsletter because whenever I see opportunities for that I think I could apply to platform co ops I do add them there so do subscribe to that. You can find out if you go to unfound co op you will find a link to how to subscribe to that. Any other questions. Great, well, thank you everyone and thank you to our panelists. Before I say goodbye I might just hand over to Suzanne in case you want to say a few final words as we wrap up. Well, thank you. Thank you everybody for coming and it was really just to reiterate what I said at the outset, not a one and done not the end of the conversation. My contact details are in the chat and CDS is certainly here to continue the conversation with you and explore what potential next steps could look like. One point I wanted to mention was often with these with these partnership webinars I think people might feel it's it's one or the other is potentially co ops UK or CDS that isn't the case. We were really, really closely behind the scenes to make sure any project or client that comes through either of our doors is accessing, you know, the breadth of support that's available from both of our organization. So, I suppose that's a long way of saying no, no wrong door, get in touch with with either of us, and we'll be keen to carry carry the conversation on with you and plug you into the relevant and available support. And thank you. Thank you for joining us. Yeah. Thank you everyone for joining us. Thank you for the panelists. Thanks really for your contributions. And yes, just to reiterate we're here to support so get in touch with both organizations and we'll make sure that the best support is available for you. Thank you everyone. Bye. Bye.