Community Finance Solutions
Located within the University of Salford, Community Finance Solutions (CFS) is an award winning independent research and development unit engaged in promoting and developing integrated solutions for financial and social inclusion, and community asset ownership.
Founded in 1999 by Dr. Karl Dayson and Bob Paterson, CFS seeks to empower communities to solve local problems relating to land and financial exclusion. We have developed solutions for securing community ownership of land and models for the provision of loans to low income, excluded households in more than a dozen communities across the UK.
Drawing on the broad expertise and experience of the CFS team and our associates we can offer high-quality and independent research and advisory services to our clients.
Our research & evaluation services include:
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Feasibility studies
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Financial & operational viability and sustainability studies
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Impact studies
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Project & programme evaluations
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Capacity building
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Strategy development
Our advisory & support services include:
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Technical advice: we can offer legal, financial, organisational advice to community organisations to start up or to improve existing initiatives
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Policy advice: we can advise authorities on legislative issues relating to community ownership of land, and we can help funders to get the most out of their investment in community finance or community ownership of land initiatives
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Project management: we are currently managing Face-to-Face debt advisory services with six partner organisations for the Department of Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform (formerly DTI)