September 2023
Becoming a Community Interest Company (CIC) is an exciting step in our Design Declares journey, a process of reshaping our operations into a structure designed to help empower social enterprises to operate with purpose, supported by a company framework that confirms our alignment of practice and community. We are, first and foremost, dedicated to the planet and the people who champion our message and mission – becoming a CIC will help us accelerate impact where it matters most, bringing the community together to action real, meaningful, and enduring change.
Read on to hear more about what becoming a CIC means for us and how it will further our future impact…
Motivated by the climate crisis and ecological emergency on our doorstep, Design Declares has always been committed to advocacy and action. Our 8 Acts of Emergency are designed to be a guide to this process – from sounding the alarm and starting the journey, to measuring what we make and redefining “good”; we’re working as a community to design for a future of environmental equity and climate justice. By becoming a CIC, we are committing afresh to our declaration, and invite you, your colleagues and collaborators to do the same.
For a CIC to be successful, it must support, build and benefit its community, shaped by a framework that places progress and impact over making more money for our own gain. We see our growing community of signatories as a vital part of the impact machine, contributing their insight, knowledge, and expertise by sharing thoughts in our open sessions, providing case studies for our toolkit, and collaborating on new ideas for a hopeful future. Being a CIC means championing our community, and working to optimise our output to support people and planet alike.
At present, each team member behind the D! scenes is working voluntarily to build us up, a sadly unsustainable and precarious structure for the longevity of the movement. Practically, becoming a CIC opens us up to receive grants and funding to help us push forward for the next phase of impact, making it easier for us to accept donations and offers of financial support from our allies in and beyond the industry.