#CoPowerBudget submissions open for 2023

1st Round Voting Results

We had a total of 310 households voting in our first round of voting this year, which is double last year’s results. The vote results included a 98.4% endorsement of the operational budget. Members also voted for a 50% allocation to the services budget, and a 50% allocation to the impact budget. The raw vote results were 49.65% for services, and 50.35% for impact with both being rounded to the nearest whole percentage figure. It’s clear from the vote results that there is a strong appetite from members to invest into better protecting households from corporate profit fuelled inflation while also exercising care and solidarity with our wider community. 

We also collected a member census which we will post in coming days for member interest.

Next Steps

Budget submissions for both the services budget and the impact budget will be open until 11:59pm Sunday 28 May 2023. This will trigger a second round of voting on specific submissions as per our published process for this year.

Services Budget

Our service budget is what we use on helping out our customer members. We allocate this money to priority areas which then invests in services over the course of the year that reduce the cost of living pressures for our customer members, help them get off fossil fuels or deliver major capabilities that help our customer members better engage with the cooperative like upgrades to our billing and payments systems or tracking their household energy usage. These service priority areas are overseen by our customer member working groups like our digital capacity group and our energy efficiency group.

We are now collecting service spending ideas from our members. Fill out this survey here to have your say about ideas for voting in the 2nd round.

Impact Budget

Our impact budget is what we use to fund good works in our communities. We invest this money into projects run by organisations our members are active in or to support causes that are left out by other major funders like strikes and climate resistance. Projects funded by our impact budget must have the active participation of our customer members or member organisations and work towards one of our seven objectives.

Prospective impact budget applicants should download this PDF application form and return it via email prior to 11:59pm Sunday 28 May to [email protected]. If you have any questions, feel free to reach us at the same email.

We encourage prospective budget project applicants to read this guidance note.