Welcome!

The Cinnamon Network is a relational network of nearly 100 leaders of Denominations and Chief Executives of Christian organisations developing responses to the Big Society.

Market Research completed by The Cinnamon Network shows that local churches across the UK contribute over 72M hours of voluntary work per annum to their communities through social initiatives. This effort, along with church funding, staff time and facilities has been valued at over £1bn per annum.

The broad objectives of the network are to rapidly increase community involvement by the Church without reinventing the wheel and to increase Church understanding of Big Society and Government and public understanding of the great work that the Church is already doing in the community.

To that end, The Cinnamon Network wishes to encourage replication of social initiatives that work and we have completed extensive research regarding Community Franchising.

Franchising is about taking a good idea and replicating it; it’s about developing a model that can be replicated.

Community franchising is about taking a model of Christian social action and replicating it for use by churches so that they can serve the needs of their local communities.

Why is Community Franchising important?
•It enables the local church to make a tried and tested response to local problems
•It promotes the role of the church as an agent of community transformation
•The nature of a franchise avoids the ‘re invention of the wheel’. This means that resources are not being used to develop a model that has already been developed elsewhere.
•The franchise model can be adopted easily by a church as one of its community programmes rather than a church having to develop a separate legal structure to deliver it.

Please register with us and if you are a church and currently run a Community Franchise, please let us know about it – by sending a story and/or giving some feedback on your franchise and rating it on various aspects. This will help others as they seek to identify a franchise they can take on.

If you are a church thinking of increasing social action in your community, please look at Community Franchises that could match your needs. We also have resources and potentially funding to help you.

If you are a potential Franchisor – a proven local ministry that could become a franchise that churches could take on, please look at our resources that could help you and also consider applying for funding to help you become a franchisor.

We do hope this site helps you as you seek to serve your  communities.

Thanks

The Cinnamon Network team