Freelending CIC Company Number 6749438 was incorporated 14th November 2008

Community Benefits foreseen at the time of forming Freelending CIC:
Why we chose to form this CIC:
Memorandum & Articles of Association

Community Benefits

To create a Community Interest Company (CIC), the registrar has to be satisfied that the would-be-CIC has clear community benefits in mind.

Community Benefits foreseen at the time of forming Freelending CIC:

Facilitate the lending and borrowing of items, skills etc

- The community will benefit from:

1) Increased opportunity to access items, skills etc at no cost to user or lender.

2) Increased social engagement with the key skills of being able to work constructively with problems that arise out of loaning/borrowing.

3) Building trust and connectedness amongst the residents of a local area.

4) Saving expenditure and resources

Enable the exchange (or barter) of items

- This connects people who see value in exchanging items, enabling them to live on lower incomes.

Enable the giving away of items

- Creating more space where people recognise the value of de-cluttering.

- Finding new homes for what is not wanted.

- Creating more opportunities for others to benefit from the generosity of individuals.

Enable the receipt of given items

- Creating satisfaction and support.

Researching and developing both hi-tech and low-tech methods of encouraging sharing and community-building.

- The community will benefit by shared learning of which schemes have achieved which outcomes in terms of community participation, community cohesion and generosity.

Why we chose to form this CIC:

We have formed a company to manage freelender.org:

- to keep freelender finances and reputation as independent as possible from the other on-going concerns of those involved

The form of the company is a Community Interest Company:

-to be more accountable to the community and lock assets.

(We are not forming a charity yet due to the added complexity)

"[We] want to incorporate (be a company) with limited liability.
[We] want to be a company because it is a familiar legal form with the flexibility to tailor it to [our] own organisational structure, membership and governance.
[We] want it to be clear to [our] members, financial backers, customers and others [we] deal with that [we] will work for the benefit of the community rather than private gain.
[We] want to be sure that, if the organisation ceases to be a CIC, the remaining assets will be preserved for the community rather than distributed to members.
[We] do not want charitable status [YET] e.g. because it is not appropriate to [our] planned activities or the financial benefits of being a charity will not be material.
[We] want transparency of operation so that anyone affected by the companies activities can see, on the public record, an account of the benefit provided; how stakeholders were involved; and what assets were transferred and to whom."

Considerations from Chapter 2 of the Guidance

(If we later have the wherewithal and wish to become a charity, this is achievable by dissolution of the CIC:

"Under s 53 of the Companies (Audit, Investigations and Community Enterprise) Act 2004 a CIC is only allowed to cease being a CIC by dissolution or by converting to a charity, which means that once a company has become a CIC it cannot convert to an ordinary non charitable company."(taken from this page))

A useful brief factsheet (albeit misleading in relation to converting a CIC into a charity) is here: co-operative-futures-cic-factsheet.pdf