A high street that pays for the things a town cares about

Why this exists

Every town has the same two conversations. Local businesses know they should sell online and cannot justify the cost of doing it properly. Meanwhile the PTA is planning its fourth fundraiser of the year, and the rugby club is chasing the same forty families for the same money.

Both are really the same problem: the money is already in the town, it just does not move in a way that helps. People buy bread, tickets, gifts and veg boxes every week. If some of that spending goes through one shared checkout, a slice of it can be pointed at the school or the club without anybody spending a penny more.

So BackMyTown charges the business 4% for the sale, and gives 2% of that sale to whichever group the shopper picked. The shopper pays the ordinary price. The business pays nothing until it sells something. The group does no fundraising at all.

How we make money

We keep what is left of our fee after the group’s share, which on a 4% fee and a 2% share is 2% of the sale. Where a shopper picks no group, we keep the full 4%. That is the entire business model. We do not sell data, we do not take a cut of the group’s share, and we never hold anyone’s money.

A trading company, deliberately

BackMyTown is a normal limited company, not a charity, and that is on purpose. The community groups we pay include charities, and mixing a commercial platform into charitable structures makes everyone’s accounts harder and everyone’s obligations murkier. Keeping the trading company separate means a group’s trustees can see exactly what they are signing: a contract with a supplier that pays them a share of its revenue.

Where a group is a charity, we act as a commercial participator under Part II of the Charities Act 1992, and we say in every place we claim a benefit exactly how that benefit is calculated.

Where we are now

The platform is built and the company is incorporated. We are not yet open to shoppers. Reigate is the first town, alongside InvestReigate, and we are signing up the businesses and community groups that will be there on day one.

Every town after that is the same platform with different names in it, which is the point: a town should not need a software project to get this, only a few people willing to go first.