Kindred is a community interest company (CIC), owned locally and collectively, that reinvests money, space and learning in Liverpool City Region’s socially-trading economy. Socially-trading organisations (STOs) are businesses that deliver social benefits AND trade commercially –businesses with a social mission.
Our ambition for our city region is to create an economy here that is kinder and fairer for us all, and to grow the impact of businesses that trade socially. We offer each other hands-on, peer-to-peer support and learning, tailored to grow both individual and collective social impact.
We offer patient money at 0% interest, with options to pay some funds back as social, as well as financial, returns. Created with input from more than 150 socially-trading organisations (STOs) across Liverpool City Region, in its first 12 months, our community grew from 150 to more than 500 organisations. Within the first two years of operation Kindred has committed £2M pounds to over 40 organisations across LCR.
Kindred has two key functions:
- Membership – a collaborative, peer-to-peer support network to develop and grow our collective impact, across LCR
- Money – we support the region’s STOs with money to help them grow and multiply their impact Kindred's process is none competitive and is based on collaboration and co-design of STO's contributing towards changing the economy to be more social and creating better places to live and work.
Kindred also supports BlaST (Black led social traders) Network to encourage more black and brown led social business across the city region.
