What kind of support may I get?

The main basis of your cooperative project is now settled: a motivated team has been assembled, a viable business model generated and main steps for realizing the idea identified. Before actually launching the business, you may consider external support mechanisms. The business support organisations listed in the complementary document are available to provide you with relevant information regarding practical aspects of your daily cooperative life, such as:

• Legal support
• Business plan consolidation and implementation
• Definition of a marketing strategy
• Available funding mechanisms
• Training (cooperative management, human resources development, etc.

b. Raising the money

Generally, cooperatives in the start-up phase own nothing: you may therefore be confronted to a lack of capital, preventing you to make the initial necessary investments to actually launch your activity. Different sources of external funding should be considered: their availability and relevance vary from country to country, but the typology presented in Annex 2 might help you getting a comprehensive overview of potential financing mechanisms. Also, the cooperative federations may be able to provide you with relevant technical information fitting your project.

Have in mind that those can be complementary, and creating a finance package – mixture of different times and kinds of finance – may be a cheaper and more convenient option. Also, would you consider lending, you should try to precisely assess what you actually need: borrowing more than you need would make you pay interests and repay money that you did not actually use. Obviously, this should be assessed on the basis of your financial plan, which integrates all the loan repayments and interest payments.