The wait is over… we are excited to be launching the crowdfunding campaign to set up the Customer Union for Co-op Bank customers today!

We’ve been preparing for this moment for a while, so hopefully you know what this is all about and are itching to get involved already. (If so, go ahead and check out the crowdfunder page here.)

But to sum up the plan - the Customer Union will turn the Save Our Bank campaign into a formally constituted co-operative organisation, owned by its members, to keep up the pressure on the bank and to build a new co-operative shareholding on behalf of all of us. It’s going to be called the Customer Union for Ethical Banking.

Based on the feedback we got from supporters, we’ve set annual membership of the union at £12. So, pledge £12 and if the crowdfunder is successful you will have paid for your membership of the union for the first year. Remember, your pledge will only be taken out of your account if we reach the £15,000 target. This is the minimum we need to set up the union, so if we don’t make it, it doesn’t happen.

Don’t forget, we have 10,000 supporters on this email list, all Co-operative Bank customers. And we worked together to save the bank’s ethical policy, so we know when we work together we can get stuff done!

If you have questions, hopefully we have answered them already on the FAQ here. But if your question isn’t answered, just drop us an email by replying to this message.

Although there are 10,000 of us, the bank has plenty more customers, and we can do a better job if more of them join. So please pledge, and then tell the world about it.

We’ll be in touch with updates frequently over the next six weeks.

With best wishes,

The Save Our Bank team.