Goldfinch Community Project
CAN YOU INVEST?
We previously canvassed for early views on our vision and your likely investment thoughts, and this has been extremely encouraging. The new comments/ expression of interest form below (scroll down) is our next request for information. This is still not a formal share offer or fundraising appeal as we are still at the stage of collecting views and gauging interest. Telling us what you might invest or donate is not a commitment, but we ask that you again let us know what you might invest and also add your name and address to the form at this stage. We need this information for our pre-approval application to HMRC for their treatment of any future investment that people might make to be considered for social investment tax relief (a bit like gift aid). This pre-approval is important for us to smooth the process and maximise the value of each investment or donation.
If you had completed our previous form, please can you do it again here, adding your address so that we may demonstrate to HMRC that you are a real person! If you hadn’t previously completed the form, please consider doing so here.
Remember that we will not hold you to what you pledge here. We recognise that a change in your circumstances may change your ability or willingness to invest. This is simply to provide an idea of how investment might go.
Thank You!
FEEDBACK FORM 2 - Investment
This page is for consultation and feedback only. It does not constitute a financial promotion or an invitation to invest. Any future community share offer will have its own, separate Offer Document and terms. We’ll use your contact details only to keep you updated about the Goldfinch Community project and any future share offer. We won’t share your details with third parties except for the purposes of HMRC demonstration that pledges are from real people.
Goldfinch Community Project
THE CHALLENGE
Independent bookshops and community arts spaces are where we go to think, to feel, to argue, and to laugh. They’re the rooms where a chance conversation over a coffee, a poem at an open mic, or a book pressed into your hand at just the right moment can gently alter your course. Ordinary afternoons become extraordinary evenings, stories become friendships, ideas become projects.
Yet these kinds of places are vanishing from our high streets. Rising costs, short leases and distant landlords mean that even thriving bookshops and creative hubs lurch from year to year, never quite sure if they’ll still be here next Christmas. In Alton, like so many towns, the high street is owned by private landlords. It’s hard to plan for the future, invest in people, or widen access when you’re always one rent review away from closure.
If we believe that we need places to meet, to read, experience the arts, see a band sing a protest song, hear a poem, cry on a shoulder, stand up to an injustice, find solidarity in community resistance to division, and we know that indie bookshops provide these spaces for all sectors of the community (Goldfinch hosted 628 organised events in its first 3 years, plus countless informal community connections over coffee, wine, music, poetry, books, art), then the challenge for me is to figure out what it might take to keep Goldfinch alive, not just whilst it is being run by me and my family around me, but what happens when we are all out of energy? How can Goldfinch be set up to operate on more than passion, volunteers, and goodwill? How can we shift away from paddling like mad below the surface just to feed the land-owning machine? I’m convinced of the importance of shared spaces like this in our community, spaces that offer refuge, inspiration, culture; places that open up conversation that can challenge and resist; inclusive spaces that don’t chase the profits.
Our 5-year lease runs until summer next year (2027), and if Goldfinch is to continue, we need a more sustainable, long-term plan that enables us to develop strategy and ideas beyond the short term, and a financial plan for the future that favours paying staff over paying remote landlords.
THE VISION
I articulated a broad vision in my first article in the series (link below) and reading back over it, it hasn’t changed.
What if Alton owned a building on the high street? What if that building could be purchased by securing investment - grants and funds, investors, community shares, busking…! Whatever works. What if that building is owned by a community Trust, or not-for-profit charitable society so that it remained forever in the ownership of Alton as a community? What if that Trust had a constitution that required the building to house an independent bookshop and community creative hub for the benefit of literature and the arts in the community, leased at an affordable rent irrespective of high street economics and landlord pressures? What if?
The GOLDFINCH COMMUNITY PROJECT is created to tackle this challenge in pursuit of realising this vision.
ABOUT THE PROJECT
Our aim is simple: to bring at least one high‑street building in Alton into community ownership and use it as the permanent home of an independent bookshop and creative community hub. Through a Community Benefit Society*[1], and the raising of funds through a combination of Community Shares*[2} and match grant funding, we plan to buy a building from which Goldfinch can operate, and hold that building in trust for the town, so the space – and the values it stands for – remain owned by its Members and can’t be sold off to the highest bidder. Community ownership would allow fair, stable terms to the operator, reduce the constant pressure of commercial rents, and free up energy and resources to invest in what really matters: books, art, conversation, inclusion and care.
This page sets out the essential background and vision, provides links to our newsletter articles (below) that explain the thinking in more depth, and offers a way for you to share your thoughts and early expressions of interest, before we launch the formal community share offer.
CAN YOU INVEST?
The current plan for launching a community share scheme is September/October this year (2026). In parallel, we will kick off grant applications for match funding, and we know this will be challenging in the current climate.
We previously canvassed for early views on our vision and your likely investment thoughts, and this has been extremely encouraging. The new comments/ expression of interest form above (scroll up) is our next request for information. This is still not a formal share offer or fundraising appeal as we are still at the stage of collecting views and gauging interest. Telling us what you might invest or donate is not a commitment, but we ask that you again let us know what you might invest and also add your name and address to the form at this stage so that we may demonstrate to HMRC that our pre-approval application for tax relief for investors is justified.
FOOTNOTES (DEFINITIONS):
*[1] Community Benefit Society (CBS) according to Co-ops UK: The 2014 Act requires a CBS to “carry on a business, industry or trade” that is “being, or intended to be, conducted for the benefit of the community”. The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) focuses on four key characteristics of a community benefit society: (1) Purpose: The FCA says that “the conduct of a community benefit society’s business must be entirely for the benefit of the community.” (2) Membership: The FCA says “it is not usually appropriate for a community benefit society to give any particular group of members greater rights or benefits, because the society must be conducting its business for the benefit of the community. So, for example, we would expect to see community benefit societies run democratically on the basis of one-member-one-vote.“ (3) Application of profits: Any profit made by a community benefit society must be used for the benefit of the community. Profits cannot be distributed to members. (4) Use of assets: Community benefit societies must only use their assets for the benefit of the community. If a community benefit society is sold, converted, or amalgamated with another legal entity, its assets must continue to be used for the benefit of the community and must not be distributed to members. In addition to these four points, FCA registration guidance acknowledges that a community benefit society might define the community it serves, but this should not inhibit the benefit to the community at large, in other words, community benefit should not be restricted to members only. In the context of community shares, it is assumed that membership is open to any person who supports the purpose of the society, without the distinction found in co-operative societies between user and non-user members.
*[2] Community Shares according to Co-ops UK: Societies can issue a form of shares known as withdrawable share capital, which is unique to society law. Withdrawable share capital can be withdrawn from the society, subject to the society’s rules and any conditions set out in a share offer document. Most societies have rules that give the board discretionary powers to refuse or suspend withdrawals if it is financially prudent to do so. This means withdrawable share capital is fully at risk. Members could lose some, or all, of the money they invest. But they also have the scope to withdraw some, or all, of their capital when they need it, subject to consent. Unlike with transferable shares, members don’t have to find a willing buyer, or negotiate a price for their shares. Withdrawable share capital places a responsibility on a society to manage its capital prudently. It needs to establish reserves to provide for withdrawals, or to attract new share capital from new or existing members to replace capital that is being withdrawn. Most new societies suspend withdrawals for an initial period, typically three or more years, so that they can build up reserves to finance withdrawals. Voting rights in a society are normally attached to membership rather than share capital, with most societies adopting the co-operative principle of one-member-one-vote. Investment in share capital can be encouraged by offering a financial return on shares expressed as an interest rate, but the interest rate offered must be the minimum necessary to attract and retain the capital. Profits cannot be distributed in the form of a dividend on share capital.
ARTICLES - links to Substack
1. WHAT ARE WE DOING HERE?
2. STANDING ON A BEACH- Staring at the Sea
3. COMMON GROUND: WHOSE TOWN IS IT ANYWAY?
4. COMMON GROUND, PART TWO: BUILDING A HOME WE OWN
5. WHAT KIND OF COMMUNITY?