In order to keep track of how much our volunteers are contributing, the TFC has a system of 'beans'. One reason is so we can 'say thank you' at the end of the year and another is that we are matching some of the lottery funding we've received with volunteer effort.

If you're a member, then beans count towards a share of the profits.

It used to be that volunteers got a 5% discount at the market where they volunteered. But we wanted to make volunteering a more natural part of membership, rather than an optional add-on. So the scheme was changed such that every member is expected to do some sort of volunteering, within their ability. And rather than getting an immediate discount (hard to police, hard to account for, hard to allocate for non-market volunteers) we changed to counting beans for all volunteering work.

Then at the AGM we see what profit we've made and if there is some, we can allocate shopping discount vouchers to all members who qualify. And qualification depends on a certain level of beans and attendance (or apologies) at the AGM.

The other useful side effect is that we can actually see how much volunteer effort goes in to running the co-op.

There's a bean book at the markets for you to record your beans and it should tell you how to do it. It works out at 10 beans an hour. If you're a member, you make a sheet to record your beans and if you're not a member then you record them at the front somehow, with other non-member volunteers. Chris should be able to explain the details.