Raising £1.9 million
The fundraising film behind Great Western Credit Union’s first-ever Bond Offer — a community bond raise on Ethex that closed at more than £1.9 million.
Great Western Credit Union is the South West’s largest credit union, serving more than 18,000 members across Bristol, Bath, Somerset, Dorset, Wiltshire and South Gloucestershire. In April 2023 they launched their first Bond Offer on the Ethex ethical investment platform, to fund fair, affordable lending for people the high-street banks overlook.
The brief: explain who GWCU is, how a community bond works, and why it matters — in a way a first-time investor would watch to the end. We built the film around a scripted voice-over spine, portraits of the GWCU team, interviews captured at their AGM, and simple animation to make people-powered finance legible.
Surpassing the target in weeks
The offer set out to raise £800,000. It passed that inside weeks of opening, with Fair4All Finance matching investments pound for pound. Ethex featured the film on the campaign page, credited to Here Now Films by name, as the official explainer for prospective investors.
Reopened, and closed at £1.9 million
Demand was strong enough that GWCU reopened the offer in September 2023 with a raised target of £2 million. By close, more than 300 investors from across the UK had backed the raise to over £1.9 million — described by Fair4All Finance as the first major raise of its kind by a credit union. The funding is going into expanding membership, the Money@Work payroll scheme, and GWCU’s digital platform.
