Jubilee Pool is a tidal-filled outdoor pool on the Penzance seafront in Cornwall. Previously owned by the County Council, we were commissioned to give them options for accessing an EU-funded grant to give them geothermal heat. This was crucial to making the pool operate year-round, but need £1.8M of funding.
We recommended the pre-existing ‘Friends of Jubilee Pool’ be reconstituted as a Charitable Community Benefit Society and undertake a community share issue. We worked with the new society to amass their funding package with a mixture of grants, and loans and then helped them launch their share issue in 2018 to raise the final £500,000. They smashed through their target, raising £529,000 (which they followed up with a second share issue to rebuild their cash flow after the pandemic) from 1,400 shareholders. They cleverly used tax breaks and share interest to attract major investors, and just 24 people provided 75% of their total, with 1,000 investors paying the minimum £25 membership.
