city-bridge

9carrots provides a way for community and local business to co-operate in the fight against Climate Change. 9carrots makes every purchase count towards stronger, more sustainable community.

What does your organisation actually do? These are the main activities you carry out in order to meet your aims.

The 9carrots project seeks to strengthen the supportive relationships between community and local business by providing them with a way to co-operate in the fight against Climate Change. Participating retailers choose upgrades that will make their business more energy efficient, 9carrots advertises them and consumers support them. Each business commits 10% of the extra revenue they make from the extra 9carrots customers towards their target upgrade.

Local comunity groups run the scheme in their area using their local knowledge and our free core services. We try to serve their needs and work to their agendas.

Complete this section whatever the amount of grant requested. In addition, if the request is for £25,000 or more in total, a fuller proposal should be sent with this form. Also, if your application is for all or part of new or existing post(s), please enclose a copy of the relevant job description(s) including the salary level.

Please make sure that the following points are addressed when answering question 15:

• Describe the need for the project and how the need was assessed – this should give us an idea of why the project needs to be delivered and can be demonstrated through existing internal evidence and/or external factors.
• How will the work be delivered? (If any planning or other statutory consents are required for the project to proceed, what stage have the applications reached?)
• What will your project aim to achieve? Please list up to 4 clear objectives for the duration of the grant. Each objective should be measurable through outputs and outcomes (*see definitions) for monitoring purposes at the end of each year of the grant.
• Why are you the right organisation to deliver the work?
• Describe how your project meets the Trust’s theme under which you are applying. Explain how your project meets the Trust’s ‘Principles of Good Practice’ as set out in each programme.
• If your application is for all or part of new or existing post(s), please enclose a copy of the relevant job description(s) including the salary level.
• If you are providing a more detailed proposal, it is important that the summary you provide here is adequate for the Committee to be able to understand your request. The application form will be seen by the Committee, whereas attachments will not.

9carrots is all about a return to local. Local Businesses are an enormously important part of a community, making its supply decisions, providing communication hubs and employing people. They also have great resources and energy. By strengthening the supportive relationships between consumers and local business, communities can become more resilient to peak oil and Climate Change and re-vitalise their areas with all sorts of projects supported by local businesses. Community groups around the country have always been trying to engage local businesses around Climate Change and other community priorities, but with little success. 9carrots provides a very effective model for them to now achieve this with over 70% of businesses approached signing up.

The mechanics of the scheme are explained in the "Main activities" section.

Our pilot study in conjunction with Transition Town Brockley signed up over 40 diverse local businesses to the scheme. 70% of local businesses approached signed up. 1 business in the pilot study area has already upgraded its lighting to energy efficient lights as a result of the community support.  After the pilot study, 9carrots received a millenium award from UnLtd.The project is now rapidly growing in popularity. Groups around the country have requested our "starter kit" and need our core services. From our news page:

• A steadily increasing number of Transition Towns around the country (currently 12) are waiting to implement the scheme and the founders of the Transition movement are actively promoting the idea. (http://www.transitionnetwork.org/news/2010-07-28/engaging-local-business-9carrots)
• People and Planet are awaiting starter kits to send to their student groups around the UK.
• Goldsmiths University is actively supporting the project.
• EthicalConsumer magazine covered 9carrots in its July edition.
• 1 London Council is actively implementing the scheme and another has proposed it.
• Supporters in the Green Party have spoken publicly in favour of the scheme. (http://greencroftonpark.blogspot.com/2010/02/merry-carrots-mr-lawrence.html)
• The first 9carrots franchise is currently being set up in Canada.
• CarrotMobs from around the world (see below) are contacting 9carrots as their next move.

Our objectives can be best summarised by one overall measure. To Surpass £1 million worth of 9carrots transactions / month: for example 10,000 people making 10 purchases / month each at participating shops, average £10, in 100 communities with 20 businesses in each). This would mean approximately £150k investement in energy efficiency / month from local business at 15% average investement commitment.

One of the primary aims of the project is to bring local business people (who come from a diverse range of backgrounds) in to the debate around Climate Change thus connecting with diverse communities of people. This can be seen in action by looking at the varied types of businesses that are already on the system. They are not in any way ethical or green already, simply normal take-aways, carpenters, opticians, pubs etc. that see the business sense in joining the system

The project has been developed by volunteers, Annesley Newholm (IT) and Jonathan Melhuish (UXD, marketing) who have strong connections with major organisations within the environmental sector, key to the national implementation of the project. We developed the idea from our CarrotMobs in 2008 (http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2008/sep/18/activists.carrotmobbing) and have a strong belief in community run, not-for-profit, grass roots initiatives.

The funding would be used to pay 1 full-time marketing person to spread the idea throughout the environmental networks, facilitating and helping them use the model to re-connect their communities and get local businesses involved in their projects.

see our website or brochure for further details

Londons Environment

9carrots has various revenue models that will cover the costs of the operation beyond the grant funding including:

• supplier commission when installations are carried out
• permission based advertising from the participating businesses to their registered supporters