PowerSwitch

As many of you are aware, Powerswitch is organising the Peak Oil and Energy zone of the South London Urban Green Fair in June. This is going to take a lot of work and we will soon be looking for lots of people to help.

In the meantime, we have discovered that applying for grants etc is made a lot easier if you are a charity or community interest company (CIC). For this reason we thought it might be an idea for Powerswitch to become a CIC. In essence this means:

?The Community Interest Company (CIC) is a new type of company, designed for social enterprises that want to use their profits and assets for the public good. CICs will be easy to set up, with all the flexibility and certainty of the company form, but with some special features to ensure they are working for the benefit of the community. CICs will report to an independent regulator on how they are delivering for the community and how they are involving their stakeholders in their activities."

http://www.dti.gov.uk/cics/

As Powerswitch is petty much its forum members, this really has to be put to the forum to discuss and to agree (or disagree).

So ? let me have your thoughts.

Initial thought: add a poll.

Yes please.

It might be useful if the "No" votes could let us know why. Cheers

Can only be a good idea!

Depends what extra responsibilities this would involve for PowerSwitch owners/managers

Could someone with too much time please summarise the pros and cons?

Are there any cons?

I think cons would be most importantly a) if I take this on it will be a bit of work, including filing year end accounts.

Otherwise we need to make sure that we are happy that it won't change the ethos of Powerswitch i.e. open, democratic, anarchistic, friendly and fun. I don't think it would do this.

You'll probably need a committee, official treasurer, chair, secretary, etc, and a constitution... can be done, it's work, and responsibility, but in a wothwhile cause like this, and given your membership, I'd think it likely that you've got the personnel to make it work.

You'll then be needign a bank account, keeping tabs on resources, annual general meeting etc... votes and proxies... offficers standing for election... if it's at all reasuuring, this is what thousands of clubs and societies do all the time - your local archery club, the PTA, the am-dram group, whatever. Can be done. Be prepared for some fireworks come AGM time.

If none of this is relevant to the new model (I'd never heard of a CIC) then I'll shut up and sit over here with my sewing basket.

Probably a good idea, on balance.

Tattercoats

tattercoats wrote:You'll probably need a committee, official treasurer, chair, secretary, etc, and a constitution... You'll then be needign a bank account, keeping tabs on resources, annual general meeting etc... votes and proxies... offficers standing for election...

As soon as events that involve spending money need to be organised, it's probably worth doing all that stuff. It can be as simple as you want. I'm involved with another online community that went for it when it started holding real world events. It's quite feasable.

Given that we've heard this afternoon that the DTI wants all the expected 7000 responses to the Energy Review to be analysed in a mere 2 weeks, it is even more important that PS becomes a formal body that can represent the views of its members to external parties when individuals are being ignored.

L

What are the advantages/disadvantages between charity and CIC status?

I voted no on this poll simply because of the term "ensure they are working for the benefit of the community". Its a terribly obscure requirement and I'm not so sure that powerswitch, in its vanilla un-edited form, would be considered as being of the benefit to the community by government bureacracy.

Would these requirement force powerswitch to water down it's message to qualify for aid?

If the message isn't affected then I'd happily alter my opinion on this one.

No. Its a trap. Don't touch it with a barge poll.

look at the regulations section 2

http://www.opsi.gov.uk/si/si2005/20051788.htm
----------------------------------

The community interest test and excluded companies

Political activities not to be treated as being carried on for the benefit of the community

3. ?(1) For the purposes of the community interest test the following activities are to be treated as not being activities which a reasonable person might consider are activities carried on for the benefit of the community:

(a) the promotion of, or the opposition to, changes in?

(i) any law applicable in Great Britain or elsewhere; or

(ii) the policy adopted by any governmental or public authority in relation to any matter;

skeptik wrote:No. Its a trap. Don't touch it with a barge poll.

look at the regulations section 2

http://www.opsi.gov.uk/si/si2005/20051788.htm
----------------------------------

The community interest test and excluded companies

Political activities not to be treated as being carried on for the benefit of the community

3. ?(1) For the purposes of the community interest test the following activities are to be treated as not being activities which a reasonable person might consider are activities carried on for the benefit of the community:

(a) the promotion of, or the opposition to, changes in?

(i) any law applicable in Great Britain or elsewhere; or

(ii) the policy adopted by any governmental or public authority in relation to any matter;

Hang on though - the guy who told us about these at the meeting in February was part of a "green" group of some sort that had registered as a CIC, so I wonder how they'd got round it?

The problem is, we need to register as something, before we get in trouble with VAT people on the DVDs, never mind the issue of applying for funding. The trouble is, I gather it's pretty hard work setting up and running a charity (my Dad's a trustee of one), and I've no idea what we'd need to do to set up a company.

Whatever we do has to be cheap, and require very little of anyone's time - we all have full-time jobs, and those who are very active in PowerSwitch are busy in campaigning, etc. and probably don't want to get bogged down in paperwork?

Ideas? Or, better still, volunteers?