Community projects are nurtured and maintained by passionate people who make the places they live in stronger, more resilient and at the same time contribute to a wider movement improving society and environment.

This is who you are. This is where you start. For a car club it can be very helpful to develop within an existing community organization. The existing organization will already have links into the community, as well as (ideally) be incorporated and have accounts going back 3 years so that insurers can see that there is a reliable entity involved.

In our case, it was a community energy organization (Nadder Community Energy)  - one of 285 in England https://communityenergyengland.org/ We are also working with community transport organisations interested in bringing car shares to the areas they already deliver transport services to. Our partners in Derwent Valley Car Clubs are part of their local community hub and volunteer service.

There are lots of other stakeholders in local transport that might be interested in facilitating, supporting, financing a community car share. Take the time to figure out who they might be. In our case we really benefitted from approaching:

• Our parish council – a proactive group of local residents with little funding, but local connections and able to grant permissions over land. In our area, some people spend 25% of their income just on transport and 25% do not have their own vehicle. Our parish council is also interested in combating climate change and improving the resilience of the local area. Having their support was helpful when approaching the county council about leasing land.
• The local council (Wiltshire) – like many, has declared a climate emergency meaning they have an understanding of the urgency and necessity of tackling climate change. They are running to catch up with the implications of the declaration and have been incredibly supportive and receptive. They have buildings where they allowed us to connect our chargers and park our cars. There may also be funds dedicated to supporting initiatives like this, though they are unlikely to be large.
• Local businesses – the financial support of local businesses is an important ingredient, but so are their connections and local recognition. If you can get a sponsored by sticker by a local business, it helps create the sense that this is by the community for the community. Local designers made our flyers, local mechanic helped install the hardware in the car and we knew we might be able to sneak a job in in a hurry.
• Other community organisations: we started this whole thing by talking to the local community transport organisation, recruited people to help us distribute flyers through the monthly “green drinks” meetup, advertise our services in the local parish magazine, at the village fete.
• Local charities – through our partnership with a local hardship charity, we are able to offer additional discounts to drivers who need support with membership and hourly fees.
• We are helping GPs planning the location for their EV chargers.

Most important though, is understanding the demand for the car club in your area. The sweet spot seems to be somewhere around 60 members using each car for 4 hours a day (assuming a 2-car club). At that stage you can almost completely stop depending on volunteers and start paying for the administration. (Note – we are nowhere near that, but thanks to the technology, the work once established is not too much to handle)

Demand can be hard to assess. Until it exists most people struggle to imagine using it. Outside of cities people have little experience of shared cars. It is still useful to carry out as wide a survey as possible, in various different parts of the village, at various different events. The process of surveying is also a way of getting the word out about the project and starting to educate people about how the car club will work and finding more enthusiastic people to join the core.

Do: Stakeholder mapping:

• https://www.thegrassrootscollective.org/_files/ugd/37a394_cd059eeb3f7e4d758adedc5679bc5ab4.pdf

Do: Transport Surveys:

• **https://docs.google.com/document/d/1YxpR-1nqxaej7PcscSIKiYh_LMuE_w4S8h2JKUn2HdA/edit?usp=sharing**

Do: Virtual Car Share

– once you feel you have a core of people who are interested, see if you can persuade them to log all their journeys in one week using a form like this one : https://docs.google.com/document/d/1YxpR-1nqxaej7PcscSIKiYh_LMuE_w4S8h2JKUn2HdA/edit?usp=sharing

Deal with EV naysayers

• : https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/electric-cars-better-for-climate-in-95-of-the-world