Frequently asked questions

We accept monthly instalments and annual payment via most card payment facilities online via Stripe, our online secure payment facility or by invoice via the membership dashboard.

Our platforms encourage local, ethical, and sustainable behaviour. As we track, measure, and reward your sustainable activity, it’s important to ensure green points generated for local activity, reflect local. Of course, you are welcome to join multiple counties beyond your own, and connect nationally, but some green rewards are only applicable within your own region.

Members can enjoy a range of memberships by county, region, or nationally depending on their business needs. Some sustainable rewards will only be allocated where you have a physical presence in a particular county.

Yes. Your first county is full price (£399), but beyond that discounts of £100 are offered for each additional county. Regional or national membership can yield greater savings. Registered charities qualify for a 50% discount on our annual membership fees.

Anyone can connect with a business listed on GB Shared, simply find their page and click ‘email’ and we’ll ensure your communication gets to them. For GDPR purposes, we do not share member emails. Only paid members can access our facilitated introduction feature. Simply login and visit the marketplace, click on businesses. Our system will default to your own county, should you wish to connect with members in other UK counties, simply change the location at the top of the page to the county you’d like to visit. Doing so will change your location and the businesses you see, click on any business and, presuming they’ve opted into introductions, you will see the introduction button visible on their page heading. Click introduction and enter your reasons, and the GB Team will facilitate your introduction for you.

Only the super user of each organisation can add or amend users. The super user has (on the organisation tab of their dashboard) the ability to add additional users from their organisation. This helps to maximise membership. Simply login, visit your dashboard, click on your organisation tab and ‘add users’. You’ll be asked to enter their name and email, this is the only personal data we capture.

Green points are uniquely embedded within the structure of our platforms and mapped to sustainable accreditation. Each member who joins is at a different stage on their sustainable journey. Our customer journey naturally encourages sustainable behaviour which can be rewarded with green points. These points are intended to reward you and help you recognise your sustainable activity and are delivered with educational messages to help raise awareness and understanding of sustainability. To find out more about which areas of your customer journey, help to earn you green points, visit our sustainable points page.

Our unique partnership with CSR-A, a global sustainable accreditor means you can apply for sustainable accreditation at any time. We recommend a year of membership to help you embed local and sustainable activity, which generates green points which are stored on your dashboard. Taking our interactive quiz and continuing sustainable activity, can give you a head start in your sustainable application, reducing time and cost to you. Your green reports can be downloaded and used in evidence when using our partnered accreditor. Find out more about our sustainable partnership here.

We showcase members who have achieved our CSR-A global sustainable accreditation or global equivalent. Members do not have to use our recommended sustainable accreditor or may already have an existing accreditation. Our UK sustainable register is for members who are globally accredited, this ensures consistent quality of across our sustainable supply chains. We recognise some global accreditations alongside CSR-A such as BCorp, please talk to us if you are already a member and accredited at global level. Alternatively, login if you think you qualify for a space in the register, visit your dashboard to opt in.

Each membership comes complete with personalised dashboards, returns snapshots and a full return-on-investment report for your organisation and your users. Everything you share is shared for you, and your activity tracked and measured in your personalised return on investment report.  This includes any returns, introductions, tender opportunities, and other returns, as well as recording your shared content and its digital reach and impact.

Each member is promoted through fully SEO optimised pages, listings, media and more. We cleverly share to generate your visibility, brand awareness and to generate traffic to you via backlinks on our site to yours. Backlinks are important for SEO, because they signal to Google that another resource finds your content valuable enough to link to it within their own content, besides we get tonnes of visitors to our site for you. We invest heavily in our SEO with high level experts, so you don’t have to, another benefit of sharing.

Firstly, our interactive quiz is free to all and will help you understand where you are currently on your sustainable journey. Results are instant but we’ll share them on your dashboard whether you’re a free or paid user.

For our paid users, when you start sharing you start earning rewards and returns and the more local and sustainable your sharing is, the more likely you are to earn green points. We’ll reach out when you do and to help you to better understand sustainable activity, you just need to keep sharing.

As well as your sustainable quiz results, we’ll save your points to your dashboard and start populating your sustainable report, also available on your dashboard, just login to access it.

Recruiting locally can help to reduce deprivation and unemployment. You don’t have to be a paid member to sign up for job alerts, they’re free. In-fact, we encourage as many of you as possible to sign up for our job alerts and talent pools, it’s a great way to ensure local jobs go to local people. To sign up for jobs alerts, login and visit your profile, then select job alerts. Don’t forget to tell us which industry you’re looking for. As vacancies are shared for your sector, we’ll share them directly to your inbox.

If you are looking for a more tailored match, our talent pool option (found on our job alerts screen), is easy to use and requires the answer to a few additional questions. Simply login and visit your profile. When you turn job alerts on, there’s the option to enter our talent pool. Don’t worry, we don’t capture personal data to help match you, just a few simple questions on salary level, management level, qualification level, we’ll use these fields to see if there are any specific vacancy matches and we will recommend them to you by email if there are any.

Our sector groups are national and only enabled by first having a sponsor. Group sponsors help to lead on, and moderate content with us. Once a sector sponsor is secured the sector group will be created and topics shared. Some conversations are open to free users who can contribute and find shared opportunities, some remain specifically closed to members only.

Sector groups operate nationally, allowing for a richer contribution and sharing of best practice. For a look at our current sector groups open, visit our sector groups page.Some features are disabled for visitors to our platforms; therefore, you must be logged in to opt into sector group alerts (your profile) or to engage in the groups.

Only paid members can host our competitions and must offer a minimum prize value of £100 or more. There is no additional charge to a member to host our competition and they will receive an enhanced coverage and visibility. Competition hosts are further able to set the competition question, and those entering give permission for their name and email to be submitted on entry to the host. Entry is optional.

To enter the competition, you must have a registered account. The decision as to whether the competition is open to free or paid users or both, is at the discretion of the competition host. All those entering the competition will be asked to complete the current weeks’ survey question. Survey results are shared on our data and intelligence pages.

Winners agree to sharing of their win for promotional purposes.

We will share (discreetly if necessary) details of prize winners on our competition pages and announce on our media channels. Should you win, we (or the host) will contact you with prize exchange details. Please use our contact us page if you have any further questions or check out our competition page.

Our national youth platform was created in 2021 and is powered by our member businesses across the UK. This helps us to empower businesses to share opportunities with future generations. The Gen, our national youth platform is aimed at 16-24’s and is further used by education and parents.

Our youth platform is NOT monetised in any way and is our social value pendulum to ensure a legacy for future generations. Our youth platform can be accessed via the homepage of the GB Shared website.

Only paid members can share content to our national youth platform, all content is validated for safeguarding purposes.

Just by using our platforms you can help yourself and support your community in the process. Our share sites operate by county, meaning you have free access to local resources shared by local businesses. As it’s their content, that means they get every click, backlink, brand impression and more. Sharing offers you a great way to stay in the know, understand, and support your local area as well as find opportunities for yourself.

Our platforms all everyone in the UK to get involved. They operate by county to enable countywide collaboration, connectivity, and to encourage local eco systems. By sharing locally, we support local services, recruit local people, create local supply chains, support local charities and young people and so much more. Sharing is a great way to benefit yourself, your business, your region, and the planet. Our sustainable messaging encourages sustainable activity and behaviour, and our rewards encourage accreditation, standardising the way the UK builds its sustainable supply chain and helps towards climate change.