What is a Community Benefit Society?
Stitched Up is a Community Benefit Society, a type of co-operative. As such, our organisation has the co-operative values and principles at its core, including honesty, openness, democracy, solidarity and social responsibility. We’re owned by our members, who have a say on how we’re run. Unlike other types of co-operative we can’t share our profits with members as a dividend – instead, any profits we make must be used for community benefit.
The ‘objects’ (purposes) of our organisation:
Join as a member
We invite our community to become members of Stitched Up and have a direct input into the work we do. As a Member, you help us ensure that our work creates real community benefit. To join, you need to be:
- 16 years of age or over.
- in support of our Objects above.
- a member of our community in some way, i.e. you attend our events, participate in our projects, volunteer with us, or you are a member of our local community or our ‘community of interest’.
- prepared to take an active interest in our work and development.
What membership involves
Members are kept up to date with our plans via our quarterly members newsletter, are invited to provide feedback to the management team via members surveys and are encouraged to attend our Annual General Meeting every year to hear about our progress and future plans. At our AGM you can also vote on plans and proposals (each Member has one vote) and stand to be elected onto our Board of Directors (if you are age 18+).
Members pay a one-off nominal fee of £5 for a share in Stitched Up Community Benefit Society Ltd. This helps to cover our admin costs. We don’t want cost to be a barrier, so in cases of financial hardship we can cover this cost with our Membership Fund.
If you’re interested in becoming a member of Stitched Up Community Benefit Society Ltd, fill in the application form below and we’ll be in touch!