The Clipper Share Offer

You are invited to invest in Nudge Community Builders and come with us on our exciting journey to make a difference in our community. We need to raise £200,000 to begin transforming Union Street and create brilliant businesses and homes for our community. Buy a share today and get involved!

We are a community benefit society bringing empty buildings back in to use along Union Street. We have bought The Clipper and are turning it into a community market and homes for local people. We will learn from this and use it as a model to buy more problem buildings in our community for local benefit. If you have walked past lately you will have seen a big change!

We are local residents living in Stonehouse, Plymouth. We bring buildings and spaces to use by listening and working with our community, collaborating with other organisations and taking fun and creative approaches to difficult issues. You may know us from the Union Street Party and Union Corner that we started with Stonehouse Action. We love making change happen in our community and making special things happen on Union Street.

The Union Street Party

Our plans for the Clipper...

We are transforming a closed down pub, the Clipper, 65 Union Street, to create two residential flats and a quirky market full of small units on the ground floor. The market will connect pedestrians in our community to where the Council led Bath Street regeneration development is happening. We are open Thursday - Saturday 12-6pm so pop in and take a look!

The ground floor and spaces at the back will create a market area and space for small start-up businesses in partnership with organisations across the city. Creating an unusual place to go that contributes to developments happening along Bath Street, and acts as a short cut or different route on to Union Street.

This is the Facebook live tour from our opening... 

Our plan is to convert the first, second and third floor into two 1 bedroom flats rented as social housing and developed to meet local need. We are particularly interested in providing homes that meet the needs of single parents who have their children to stay, these parents find that the housing they can access as a single person means that their children do not have a private space when they stay.

The Clipper in January 2018

Working in partnership with Plymouth Energy Community, we will provide good quality energy efficient accommodation and develop a model that could also encourage private landlords to do the same.

Learning from Union Corner we will ensure the ground floor remains accessible for local people in all ways. An important part of this is about showing a different way, we are therefore planning a surprising and fun feel to this space where local people can contribute and take a lead. Many local people are having a really tough time and that their options are limited, creating a space that feels great and has a range of opportunities and ways of access is very important.

Throughout the process we are aiming to spend 70% of our spending with Plymouth based businesses and 45% within a mile of the building supporting local people and businesses.

We are passionate about making a difference in our community that is not lead by gentrification but works with the communities in our local area to create real direct benefit for existing communities and lasting change for them and the local area.

The process of bringing life into buildings is really important to us. We are very open and collaborative in our approach, encouraging volunteering, new ideas and exploring what uses are needed and would add value. We involve local people in fun and accessible ways throughout everything we do. 

Benefits to the Community include: 

• Developing the Clipper as a long-term asset for the community. 
• Alternative model of social housing meeting local need and challenges current offers
• Volunteering opportunities that increase connectivity and employability
• New pedestrian route for local people connecting to a major regeneration area
• Providing unique selling space for local people, student, start-ups and experienced sellers keeping it affordable and accessible
• Offer a safe, welcoming, curious space for local people

About the shares...

If you are new to the idea of community shares it’s a great way to support things to happen in your community, invest your money in a social enterprise that will put your money to good use, and get a return on your investment for you as well as a social return to the local community. 

We are budgeting to pay 3.6% on investments from November 2019 but this will be subject to how well the Clipper is doing. This will be decided by the board each year and voted on by our members at our Annual General Meeting. We want it to be a great investment for you as well as for the community. 

You can invest from £50 to £20,000. You can buy shares as a group or pay over instalments. Please do not invest more than you can afford.

If you are interested in buying a share you can read our detailed share offer, business plan, constitution and our story so far at www.nudge.community

You can by a share by bank transfer, cheque or request to pay over 10 monthly instalments using the form on our website or pop in and see us, we have paper forms available - and you can quiz us about all the amazing things your investment will help us to do!

Help a local person buy a share

We have a dedicated group of volunteers that have been helping at the Clipper and at Union Corner. If you would like to thank them for their contribution you can add an extra share as a gift for a local person.

Funders invest alongside you too!

Nudge has applied for support from the Community Shares Booster Programme. Under this programme, up to £100,000 is available to match applications for shares from the public. Nudge is in negotiations to secure an equity investment from the Booster Programme for this offer. If successful, it would mean that for every pound invested by individuals up to £100,000, another pound will be invested in match shares.

The money comes from Power to Change, the decision is made by the Community Share Unit, a partnership between Co-operative UK and Locality

https://www.communitysharesbooster.org.uk/

A bit more about Nudge...

Nudge is a community benefit society (a type of co-operative) that owns, creates and runs activity in disused, underused or unusual urban spaces. Leading to lasting positive change and community led regeneration.

We are local residents living in Stonehouse, Plymouth – making things happen in our community. 

We bring buildings into community ownership and back into use in collaborative and creative ways, celebrating their history and opening up opportunities for local people. We use social investment as bridging finance followed by a community share offer so local people can benefit from and connect with the improvement in their area and other investors can support a community that is making change happen.

We have enormous support from our community, local organisations and investors. As two professional people with backgrounds in housing, planning and regeneration, coupled with a passion for our community we are well placed to deliver this change and are scaling rapidly. This is evidenced by the amount of support and investment we have managed to secure over the last year to get this venture off the ground and move from volunteers to paid workers. 

Nudge is now a strong resilient unit of skilled professionals that are able to own buildings and provide leadership, contributing time and resources to each building to ensure it contributes to our community. We have core funding secured and are taking on consultancy work to enable us to create mini nudges that are visible and build community involvement.

These ‘nudges’ unlock unused or underused spaces and enable local people to benefit and build confidence that we can take control of regeneration in our community.

We do this by owning buildings that we care about as a community and bringing them back into use in a way that uses our skills, resources and partners to find a way to invest in our community every step of the way; local spend, local skills and local love.

A little Nudge on Union Street

We have had fantastic support from The Rank Foundation, RIO and Make Things Happen, Plymouth City Council, the School for Social Entrepreneurs and the Reach Access Fund and our early first investors who helped us on our way with the deposit.