The Midcounties Co-operative
The Midcounties Co-operative operates the ‘Your Co-op’ family of businesses, which includes food retail, travel, childcare, utilities, pharmacy, Co-operative Flexible Benefits, and several post offices. Midcounties is one of the largest independent co-operative societies in the UK and has more than 500 sites and 700,000 members.
In February 2021, the Society was named as the Business of the Year at the edie 2021 Sustainability Leaders Awards in recognition of its work to create a sustainable future and support local communities.
The Society has headquarters in Warwickshire, with trading outlets in Oxfordshire, Gloucestershire, Wiltshire, Shropshire, West Midlands, Avon, Somerset, Dorset, Worcestershire, and the surrounding counties.
The Society’s mission statement is ‘To be a successful consumer co-operative working towards creating a better, fairer world, and to enhance the lives of our colleagues, members, customers, and the communities we serve.
As a charity partner for Stroud Regional Community we continue to support CCP and in particular Season House in Stroud, providing young people in Local Authority Care somewhere to live and give them the support they need. This is particularly important as it’s an area that we trade and are part of our community.
Olly Wiltshire - Stroud Regional Community AmbassadorHow did you come across CCP?
As part of our regional communities initiative we partner with local charities or community groups for 2 years. During this time we undertake a number of volunteering and fundraising initiatives to support our partners. In 2019 we asked our Coop members to vote on who they would like our partner to be for Stroud. CCP made the top 2 and our partnership began, with a focus on being able to support Season House in Stroud.
Describe how you have supported CCP in 2020-21
During the pandemic we have been limited on the support we can provide with things like volunteering and fundraising events. Each year we support the CCP initiative Hamper scamper leading in to Christmas and we were able to gain a lot of food donations through our childcare and food sites. More recently we did a charity carwash and raised over £140 for CCP in 1 day and a number of colleagues have taken part in the Cheltenham Challenge this year.
In order to ensure that Midcounties Coop continued to support our charity and community partners during the pandemic, we implemented a Food Bank Fund and a Community Restart Fund for our charity partners, which CCP have benefited from through 2020; £1,100 from Foodbank Fund & £2,000 from Community Restart Fund.