In 2025, GMCR successfully raised £187,000 in community shares in order to fund solar panels on 3 schools and a community centre. This is made up of £162,000 raised from the community and c. £25,000 from the Co-operatives UK Booster Fund.
But how did we do it?
You can read about our engagement tactics, marketing materials and potential routes to investment in our 2025 Business Plan (PDF). This year, we engaged expert advice to work on our marketing plan.
Marketing strategy
The first stage was to consider potential investor groups, what was important to them, and what would motivate them to invest. Potential investor groups included existing members, “eco-affluents” (people who care about the climate and have some spare money to invest), school and community networks, and ethical businesses.
We then looked at the aspects of GMCR which were important to each group. For example:
- Our credibility and track record
- The environmental benefits
- The benefits for the school and the children
- The tangible results (in terms reducing carbon emissions)
- The speedy and low effort investment process
- The local connection
- The legacy created
- The opportunity to take part in carbon reduction and community-owned energy
- The sense of community
- The detail we provide in the share offer documentation
Messaging was then developed to appeal to each group based on their interests and bespoke marketing material was created to match the different appeals – see photos.In 2025, GMCR successfully raised £187,000 in community shares in order to fund solar panels on 3 schools and a community centre. This is made up of £162,000 raised from the community and c. £25,000 from the Co-operatives UK Booster Fund.
But how did we do it?
You can read about our engagement tactics, marketing materials and potential routes to investment in our 2025 Business Plan (PDF). This year, we engaged expert advice to work on our marketing plan.
Marketing strategy
The first stage was to consider potential investor groups, what was important to them, and what would motivate them to invest. Potential investor groups included existing members, “eco-affluents” (people who care about the climate and have some spare money to invest), school and community networks, and ethical businesses.
We then looked at the aspects of GMCR which were important to each group. For example:
- Our credibility and track record
- The environmental benefits
- The benefits for the school and the children
- The tangible results (in terms reducing carbon emissions)
- The speedy and low effort investment process
- The local connection
- The legacy created
- The opportunity to take part in carbon reduction and community-owned energy
- The sense of community
- The detail we provide in the share offer documentation
Messaging was then developed to appeal to each group based on their interests and bespoke marketing material was created to match the different appeals – see images below.
The social media assets were put out across GMCR’s social media platforms (LinkedIn, Instagram and Facebook). For this share offer we trialled paying to promote or “boost” the content across Meta’s platforms. We spent around £100 boosting several posts and our experience over the course of the Share Offer was mixed. Our posts seemed to get plenty of “impressions” (i.e. where they appear on someone’s social media feed) however it is not easy to say if this led to any additional investments. One useful aspect of the Meta promotion is that it allowed us to only promote to people in certain geographical areas (in our case, Greater Manchester). Again, however, it is not easy to tell how successful it was at doing this.
We also reviewed the route to investment and decided to hold webinars and provide a drop in session in case people had questions. We thought this was an important addition to complement social media messaging so potential new members could meet us (the people they would be trusting with their money).
Finally, we are well aware that existing investors can make up a large portion of the total Share Offer investment. To this end, we utilised our newsletter mailing list and member mailing list to regularly share updates on the Share Offer. This was an important part of the marketing throughout the Share Offer.
