Creating better places through community business

• 28th Jul 2022

Power to Change was established in January 2015 with a £150 million endowment from the Big Lottery Fund. Its vision is “better places through community business”. This is based on the belief that when local people come together to tackle problems, through a commercial model built around trading, the results are both more powerful and more sustainable than traditional approaches taken by the public, private or third sector. Community businesses not only breathe life back into isolated and deprived neighbourhoods, they can also give local people a new sense of power and purpose.

What is community business? There is huge variation in the type, stage, age and scope of community businesses but they all share four key, central characteristics:
1. Locally rooted: They are rooted in a particular geographical place and respond to its needs. For example, that could be high levels of urban deprivation or rural isolation.
2. Trading for the benefit of the local community: They are businesses. Their income comes from activities such as renting out space in their buildings, trading as cafés, selling produce they grow or generating energy.
3. Accountable to the local community: They are accountable to local people. For example, a community share offer can create members who have a voice in the business’s direction, or a membership-based organisation may have local people who are active in decision-making.
4. Broad community impact: They benefit and impact their local community as a whole. They often morph into the hub of a neighbourhood, where all types of local groups gather.

• Creating better places through community business

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