Your Regional Communities

At Your Co-op it’s all about supporting the local community – it's at the heart of everything we do.

Owned by our members, who guide us in our decision-making and help us to understand what local communities really need and together we work to achieve that.

You, our remarkable colleagues are key to the success of our Regional Community focus and we know how important it is to you to have all the information you need in one place so we have created this page to enable you to have access to all the key information, so that you can easily reference and refresh as you need to.

Our Strategy for 2023/24

Our new community framework (so what we do and how we deliver it) will launch from 1^st July 2023, so here is everything you need to know. Don’t worry we aren’t changing everything – but we will be taking a more focused approach to maximise impact:

We want all our colleagues in every site to be fully engaged in the work of their Regional Community, so here we have an overview of the commitment we are making to support the success of this… Every Regional Community will have:

A Local Plan meeting local needs and member expectations
Dedicated Leadership Ambassador support
Steering Group (made up of colleagues, active members, community partners) meeting on a regular basis to discuss, plan and deliver the local strategy
Member involvement: Members included in local decisions, fundraising, grants, activities, volunteering and support
Local Secondary and Primary School partnerships
New local fundraising partner to be in place for the period 1^st July 2023 to 31^st May 2024, click here for details of each new partner
Minimum of 1 Foodbank partnership
Charity and community partners Legacy Partner Programme (these are our outgoing fundraising partners and other historical partnerships we have formed that we will continue to work with on a mutually co-operative basis)

Don’t worry – there are some things that we won’t be changing, as we know just how important they are to you……

you will still be seeing –

The continuation of fundraising for your local fundraising partner (new from July 2023 through to May 2024)
Ongoing work with, and maximising the relationship you have with your local foodbank partners – by encouraging in-store food donations, promoting our foodbank December fundraising campaign and helping to raise awareness of the work of your partner foodbank in the community, find out more about how we work with foodbanks by clicking here.
Annual fundraising campaigns that the society is happy to support such as the Poppy Appeal, Children in Need, Red Nose Day will all still be part of your calendar
Volunteering – up to 22.5 hours per year (pro-rata) for every colleague to support their local community by giving their time - check out all you need to know about volunteering and submitting your hours by clicking here.
Continuing with our community grants funding opportunities, via the online application platform here.

Find out if you work at one of our sites In a regional community area by clicking here.

Find out about YOUR regional community by taking a look at the information guides, these guides tell you everything you need to know from who the community partners are that we work with in the area to what the correct PLU code is to bank your fundraising money:

Check out who our current fundraising partners are in each Regional Community by clicking here. You can also find out more about how the agreement to work with these fundraising partners works by clicking here.

Find out more about how the legacy partnerships work by clicking on the following links:

Think you may be interested in joining the Regional Community Steering Group? Then take a look a the profiles for each of the five key roles in the team by clicking on the links below. If you would like to chat further about opportunities to join your local team then contact the community team at yourcoop.community@midcounties.coop

Have a question? Then check out our FAQ/Hints and Tips Guide by clicking here. This will give you info on everything from how to find out about our grants programme to helping a local group to get a collection slot in one of our larger Food Markets.