CiviShares: building shared infrastructure for community shares

Community shares form an important part of the UK’s co-operative economy. Since 2012, more than £200 million has been invested in co-operatives and community businesses by more than 126,000 people. Community share offers help communities take ownership of everything from renewable energy projects to pubs, shops and community buildings.

But running a community share offer can be complicated. There are legal and financial requirements to understand, investments to process, shareholder records to maintain, interest and withdrawals to manage, and an ongoing relationship to build with members.

CiviShares began when Sharenergy approached Third Sector Design about improving the CiviCRM based system they were already using to do this work. We spent a lot of time early on learning about Sharenergy and the community shares sector, and getting to grips with what happens behind the scenes when an organisation runs a share offer. That understanding shaped CiviShares: an open-source CiviCRM extension that provides the specialist tools needed to manage community shares.

As the project developed, Repowering London became a major partner alongside Sharenergy, bringing its own experience and helping to shape the next stages of the software. In late 2025, Repowering London and Sharenergy secured two years of Energy Redress funding to further develop CiviShares, improve the end-user experience and support wider adoption.

Low Carbon Hub and Glasgow Community Energy are now also using CiviShares, and more organisations are getting started.

Building CiviShares on CiviCRM meant we could concentrate on the parts specific to community shares, while building on the wealth of functionality and infrastructure already provided by CiviCRM. Organisations can use the same system for mailings, events, membership and wider community engagement, while also benefiting from everything else the CiviCRM community provides: expertise, training, meet-ups, conferences and more.

It also means CiviShares is part of an open-source community where organisations and developers share what they build rather than solving the same problems again and again. That collaborative approach is very much how we work at Third Sector Design. As Jon Hallé, CEO of Sharenergy, puts it:

“Third Sector Design understand open source and share our approach to ‘lifting all boats’. Their understanding of the core technologies and CiviCRM is second to none, but they also speak human!”

CiviShares shows what can happen when organisations with shared needs and the CiviCRM community work together. Instead of each organisation commissioning its own bespoke system, they pool their knowledge, build something better together, and make it available to others. We’d love to see more organisations working this way. If you’re interested in taking a similar approach, we’d be very happy to talk.

Third Sector Design worked with Sharenergy, Repowering London and others to build CiviShares, an open-source CiviCRM extension for managing community shares and supporting wider collaboration across the sector.