Now more than ever, Power to Change are here to support community businesses in England as they face this unprecedented global crisis at a local level.
On average, community businesses get 57% of their income from trading. More importantly given social distancing, we estimate that on average 43% of community businesses’ income comes from venue-based activities such as cafés, shops, hiring out meeting space. Much of this income is drying up as people stay home. We know some of you are rethinking your business models to provide delivery services. Others are moving your community activities like exercise classes, and wellbeing support, online.
But for all this creativity and innovation, we understand that in many cases COVID-19 has brought a huge financial shock to community business like yours.
We have launched a £12 million crisis support package to support community businesses.
The new emergency support includes:
- £7 million in rescue funding for community businesses, offering grants up to £25,000 to contribute towards trading income losses incurred between April and June 2020. This support scheme was available to Power to Change grantees, and to community businesses which are members of Power to Change’s strategic partners – Co-operatives UK, Locality and the Plunkett Foundation – all of whom played a key role in designing this response.
- £5 million in recovery funding, to be made available later this year, based on learning from the first pot to help community businesses rebuild and recover strongly from the crisis.
We aim to update our COVID-19 webpages regularly, to signpost community businesses to sector support, including funding, information, and a breakdown of Government support.
