social.coop facilitators - please feel free to move this somewhere more appropriate!

I wanted to start a brief discussion about the idea of starting a Platform Co-op version of Solid Fund - the innovative solidarity fund set up by the UK worker co-op movement.

What is Solid Fund

It is a fund were worker co-ops and worker co-operators make monthly contributions (from as little as £1 a month) and the members of the fund decide democratically were to spending the capital.

To date is has focused primarily on making gratis payments to support awareness events, trainings, travel and small grants for in need worker co-ops.

There are lots of ideas about how to refine / expand this - but at present it is focused on the above.

There is current about £71,000 in the fund, with a further 30/40k raised and disbursed already.

What is its legal status etc.

It currently operates on much the same basis as social.coop does now. There are bye-laws that are upheld on an honour system, there are co-ordinators who are well respected members of the worker co-op movement in the UK and the money itself is held in trust by a co-operative.

In short - they are not legally incorporated at present.

What would a Platform Co-op Solid Fund look like?

I can imagine a platform co-op solid fund, operating on a similar basis - with bye-laws, well respected co-operators in the field (maybe the IOO, platform co-op consortium etc.) and an institution holds the accrued capital in trust.

We the members would then be able to propose what to spend the money on.

Ideally we would stick with the kind of purposes (sponsoring events, training etc.) that Solid Fund does.

Why wouldn't we want to start bigger - something like an investment club for example?

It is a lot more complex, will likely require a professional team and legal incorporation and finally... why not crawl before we walk. :)

Is there a proposal coming? :)

In the spirit of the best kind of consensus decision-making, I propose that we spend some time talking about this, working out the details etc. and maybe return to a proposal in the next few weeks/months.

I do however think it could be worth talking about committing funds to starting this up (though this will probably prompt a discussion about spending our funds on remunerating volunteer time on social.coop - which is a conversation I would like to have too! :) )

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Possible future proposal
- Commit a proportion of existing social.coop fund on establishing a #platformcoop solid fund
- Commit a proportion of existing social.coop fund to remunerating a project manager to set up a #platformcoop solid fund.