Now more than ever, Power to Change’s mission to support community businesses in England has renewed importance. We are aware that community businesses need emergency funding to respond to the crisis, be that to secure their premises, create online revenue streams, or provide vital support to vulnerable people in their neighbourhood. Read our CEO Vidhya Alakeson’s statement.
We are working closely with community businesses, delivery partners, the wider sector and Government to understand where our support is most needed at this time.
What is Power to Change doing to support the community business sector?
In the first instance, we are focusing on getting support to our current grantees across England. That’s why we have paused our current programmes – so we can turn our attention and funding towards the support and advice they need now, to get through the crisis. Power To Change is committed to supporting all existing grantees through the crisis as most appropriate.
We are in constant communication with our partners who deliver our programmes, to make sure we really understand the challenges community businesses are facing right now as well as the funding and advice they’re asking for. This means we can work with our delivery partners to respond to our grantees needs as quickly as possible, bearing in mind the need to be able to offer them support in the immediate, medium and longer term. It also means we can identify any support our delivery partners need – without them we wouldn’t be able to support our grantees.
We are working to understand the wider community business sector needs, beyond our current grantees, so that we can offer support and advice beyond just our current grantees. As part of this work we are advocating for community business’ needs to national and local government.
With our delivery partners, Locality, we hosted a webinar: Managing your community business during the Covid-19 crisis.
You can see the presentation slides here with information correct as of 1 April 2020.
