In the case of a community interest company in the U.K., if its purpose is charitable as well as being public benefit, foundations can make contributions or donations to it because it's achieving its mission. The investor is putting money into an organization that definitely has a business model. It's selling services or products, or something, and through the sale of those products and services it's going to be able to service the dividend needs of the shares they've sold.
In fact to ensure there wouldn't be some kind of undue private benefit, in the U.K. the shares aren't allowed to appreciate. The shares are issued at a price, and they can never increase beyond that price. They can drop, but they can't go above their issuing price.
We're talking about a very specialized hybrid instrument that's trying to meet the needs of the social mission together with using the business model. There are about 3,200 such corporations in the U.K. Several hundred a month are being registered right now. There's been a bit of a flurry of them in the wake of the recession. One example might be a company that is partnering with co-ops. West Africa produces cocoa and they're creating fairly traded chocolate products. They create a community interest company as the corporate entity to house that activity inside of the U.K.