# Democratic Engagement Fund - for co-ops in England

**URL:** https://forum.workers.coop/t/democratic-engagement-fund-for-co-ops-in-england/1454
**Category:** News and announcements
**Created:** [1 July 2026 12:01 UTC](https://forum.workers.coop/t/democratic-engagement-fund-for-co-ops-in-england/1454 "2026-07-01T12:01:14Z")
**Posts on this page:** 2
**Page:** 1

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### Author: ![Nancy](https://forum.workers.coop/user_avatar/forum.workers.coop/nancy/32/959_2.png) [@Nancy](https://forum.workers.coop/u/Nancy)
#### Post date: [1 July 2026 12:01 UTC](https://forum.workers.coop/t/democratic-engagement-fund-for-co-ops-in-england/1454/1 "2026-07-01T12:01:14Z")

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Louis from Co-ops UK mentioned this [grant programme](https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/democratic-engagement-fund-prospectus/democratic-engagement-fund-prospectus) in a meeting today. The turn around is fairly tight (end Aug) but could be of interest to co-ops to support education about democracy and participation.

Adding a [seminar](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O_x6Nz25omw)with more info. Could be particularly interesting to those working in co-op development and goveranance training?

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### Author: ![calummackervoy](https://forum.workers.coop/user_avatar/forum.workers.coop/calummackervoy/32/871_2.png) [@calummackervoy](https://forum.workers.coop/u/calummackervoy)
#### Post date: [6 July 2026 12:32 UTC](https://forum.workers.coop/t/democratic-engagement-fund-for-co-ops-in-england/1454/2 "2026-07-06T12:32:17Z")

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Thanks for sharing this! I had a look into it, primarily interested from a tech co-operative point of view. I thought I’d share my summary:

It’s £25-50k in grant funding and they are interested essentially in projects which engage citizens to local government. Many of the examples relate to in-real-life agitation around local politics, but one section stood out as potentially relevant to a tech co-op:

> Deliberative forums- creating safe, structured spaces for dialogue where citizens can discuss issues and share perspectives and engage place‑based decision‑makers on community perspectives.
> 
> This may include the use of digital deliberative democracy tools where appropriate.

I have some colleagues working on open-source deliberative democracy tools, which are very interesting, but they are based in the EU.

I wondered if this information may be of interest to other readers!