Member Article

Patricia Alexander, Managing Director of Shared Interest, takes bdaily behind the business

Based in Newcastle, with branches in Peru and Kenya, Shared Interest is an ethical investment organisation. Shared Interest makes loans to fair trade businesses in the developing world via investments made by supporters in the UK.

Established in 1990, Shared Interest is the world’s only 100% fair trade lender and with the support of over 8,000 members the organisation was able to lend £40million over the last 12 months.

With National Ethical Investment Week taking place in October (16 - 22) Patricia Alexander, managing director of Shared Interest takes us behind the business.

What key challenges has your company recently faced?

Being a fair trade finance organisation, we have been affected by the current financial climate as people don’t necessarily have the resources at the moment and are looking for the best return on investment. We have been able to maintain the number of investors we have working with us, but the main challenge has been growing our membership.

What is your biggest achievement over the past 12 months?

Shared Interest is continuing to grow as a business and more fair trade businesses in the developing world have received our help over the last 12 months than ever before. We are now working in 36 countries across the globe and in July we were given approval to open a second office in Ghana, this is a real achievement for the team.

What is your biggest focus for the coming year?

Our biggest focus is to increase investment so that we can continue to lend to even the most remote communities and enable them to access the credit needed to take goods to market. We also want to change our investor profile and make the younger generation more aware of where they can invest and the options available to them. Many people don’t realise that they can open an account for £100 either as an individual or as a group and help a fair trade business to double their output or move to larger premises.

If you had to choose one top piece of advice for someone just starting out in business, or is currently operating within your industry sector, what would it be?

My advice to someone in an ethical organisation is to ‘never forget the social mission of the organisation’.

You can’t always make decisions commercially the way you would in a normal business situation as the work you are doing impacts people and you have to think about what is going to benefit them in the long term. It’s the farmer in Peru that the business is there to help; it’s their needs that you need to listen to and address.

It is easy to make decisions in the UK and think of it from our perspective but the lives of the people we’re working with are very different and that’s what we should always remember.

Can you share with us your view of the current landscape of business, in this region or generally and where your organisation sits within it?

It is a difficult time in the financial sector as it has lost a lot of support and we’re operating in times of uncertainty from a regulations point of view with the loss of the CSA.

However, we fit very much with the Big Society idea the Government – although we’re doing Big Society worldwide - with our volunteers working with us to help spread the word about Shared Interest and how the work we do is changing the lives of hundreds of thousands of people.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Stacey Toth .