The Founding Vision
Stockwood Community Benefit Society was formed to preserve and protect Rush Farm in perpetuity and to embed ethical management of capital in mainstream business. The organisation has an amazing opportunity to promote and explain a wide range of environmentally and socially sustainable methods and processes.
The organisation is a co-operative society, with members that have invested and so made a financial commitment to the objects of the Society. This method of ownership widens the community hugely from those working on the site to include all the members of the co-op too. Those joining the co-op, which can include the tenants, are all helping to further the objects and demonstrate that social enterprise can reach out into mainstream business, and that just by trading and paying rent, companies can be a positive force for good.
This is special form of co-op, specially designed as it focuses not only on generating profit, but also on delivering particular community benefits, thus the name “Stockwood Community Benefit Society”. The Society is democratically managed with Board members standing for election each year. To protect the founding purpose of the organisation there are two Custodian Trustees – external bodies that have the task of holding the Society to its founding objects. The Custodian Trustees have the right to appoint one director to the Board each.