I’ve just spent a wonderful couple of days camping in Oxfordshire so that I could attend the Worker Co-operative Weekend (#WorkerWeekend). One of the many things I learned about (in addition to a five-hour course on basic financial literacy for co-operatives!) was the Worker Co-operative Solidarity Fund.
The SolidFund was an outcome of last year’s Worker Co-op Weekend and has been discussed intensively on Loomio over the last few months. Although it hasn’t yet been widely advertised, it’s currently accumulating about £2000/month and has the potential to grow considerably if members of all UK worker co-ops and their supporters join the fund.
To give you an idea of what it’s about, the first principle of the SolidFund is:
The Worker Co-operative Solidarity Fund (the Fund) is a permanent commonwealth resource, accumulated through a voluntary subscription paid by worker co-operators and workers’ co-operatives. It may also receive subscriptions and donations from other individuals or organisations who support industrial democracy and collective ownership.
You don’t have to be a member of a worker co-op to contribute to the fund. If you’re interested in supporting worker co-ops, 1 then you can help by joining the fund and through doing so, you can have a say in how it is used. The fund is held on behalf of its members by Co-operative and Community Finance.
Currently, there’s no formal website for the SolidFund (getting that ready was part of the discussion over the weekend), but you can read the mission statement and policies and sign up at these two links:
SolidFund rules: http://s.coop/solidfundrules
Join SolidFund: http://s.coop/solidfundjoin