Our Insight Manager discusses findings from our new Hyperlocal report, highlighting the importance of investing in community business for lasting change.
All Cerisse Goodhead
The delivery of the Community Wealth Fund should be through long-term, flexible funding that empowers communities and involves community businesses. Below we share our response to the Government's consultation.
From Westminster to the community frontline, Power to Change's Policy and Insight team reflect on the King's Speech and Locality Convention
Our Deputy Chief Executive responds to the King’s Speech
This year's Labour Party Conference reinforced the power of communities and community businesses, stressing on the significance of regional rebalancing as well as creating a more local political economy through devolution.
Power to Change has been on a journey with DEI, researching barriers to funding, recognising our role in contributing to exclusionary practices, and working out how we can start to tackle it. This is an open and detailed account of that journey and how we achieved the most diverse applicant and grantee pool for our most recent fund.
As we launch the Discovery Fund, meet some of the successful grantees and the challenges they are hoping to explore community tech-based solutions and ideas for.
Our new report, with IPPR North and Locality, explores how different community businesses models and actions are building resilient communities and the transition to a fairer, greener, future.
The Conservative party should deliver on levelling up and support community businesses which have the potential to drive change at a local level.
We are attending party conferences to advocate for policy changes that help create the conditions community businesses need to thrive.
With the right approach Community Improvement Districts (CIDs) can empower communities to lead regeneration in their town centres. Find out how to make it happen
A new report from Power to Change, in partnership with IPPR North and Locality, outlines the enormous and largely untapped potential of community businesses to create positive climate action
If you’ve been following our blog recently you’ll know already that Power to Change’s five year place-based ...
We asked, we listened, we acted: our chief executive discusses Power to Change's future direction and why we are staying around for the long term
As five community businesses launch a groundbreaking community energy collective, seeking to raise £2.5m to take ownership of seven solar farms, our climate action manager explores why Power to Change backed this initiative and what we hope our investment will achieve
The Empowering Places programme supported and seeded community businesses in underserved areas of England using a relational approach, leadership and reputation, unrestricted grants, and flexible yet targeted support over a five-year period. This blog reflects on the learnings from the programme.
As five community businesses launch a groundbreaking community energy collective, seeking to raise £2.5 million to take ownership of seven solar farms, our climate action manager explores why Power to Change backed this initiative and what we hope our investment will go onto achieve.
Whilst our role is to build the evidence base about the impact of community business on places and planet, it's crucial we measure our own impact and explore the impact we can have on community businesses
A new report shows that community businesses are more confident, diverse and optimistic than other third sector organisations.
Last week I travelled to the glorious seaside town of Bournemouth to attend the LGA's annual conference and share some of innovative approaches we are trialing with local government partners.
Our high streets and town centres have faced significant decline in recent years, but a new community-led ...
Between 2017 and 2022, Power to Change partnered with Crowdfunder UK to run Community Business Crowdmatch. We explore what we learned about crowdfunding and community businesses.
Rosie and Fergus lead our community tech programme team, and are currently recruiting for the new Discovery Fund. Here Rosie shares how they are adapting and iterating the application processes to remove barriers for underrepresented groups and mitigate unconscious bias
We know community business works to breathe new life into communities. With this insight, our mission is to help create the right conditions for them to thrive. And so it always inspiring when we spend time with the community businesses we seek to support. Get closer to their stories, their impacts and their incredible people who drive change from the ground up.
At Power to Change we recognise the importance of local and regional government backing to help grow local social economies. Our five lessons can support councils and combined authorities to intentionally and purposefully grow their social economy.
While there are many good practices we can adopt at programme level, there are sector gaps in the availability and accessibility of support for community businesses to develop their financial capabilities. We explore what it will take to address sector gaps and build a more supportive ecosystem.
Power to Change’s Financial Capabilities pilots – one delivered by The Women’s Organisation, and the other by Locality – aimed to strengthen community businesses’ financial management and decision making. Each project took a different approach, and we share below the initial learnings that have emerged from both pilots.
Community businesses are confident in the impact they are having in their local area, but they need further support in order to evidence it.
Since 2015, Power to Change has helped bring in an additional £210 million into the community business sector.
A new report from Power to Change looks at regions which have seen the biggest increase in rising and persistent vacancy rates.
A key element of our funding offer for community tech programmes is the 20% that grantees must spend on ‘working in the open'. So in the spirit of open working, here’s our learning from delivering the Makers and Maintainers round of funding
Power to Change visits some of the brilliant community businesses and social enterprises driving change in their communities in Liverpool and the Wirral.
Why incentivising community businesses to grow their trading income helps to create a more resilient and impactful sector
Ishita Ranjan-Churchill from Spark Insights shares the findings from their research into the experiences of community businesses led by and supporting people experiencing marginalisation.
At Power to Change we have been backing community businesses to become more resilient and financially sustainable to have greater impact on their communities in the long term.
Ishita Ranjan-Churchill from Spark Insights shares the findings from their research into the experiences of community businesses led by and supporting people experiencing marginalisation.
The Dulverton Trust joins Power to Change and School for Social Entrepreneurs, investing £100,000 into the Community Business Trade Up programme to fuel greater collaboration and support for community business leaders.
Local communities often have amazing ideas for town centre buildings, but struggle to get affordable, secure access. Here are some practical steps and free templates for reviving vacant buildings in partnership with asset owners.
Ishita Ranjan-Churchill from Spark Insights shares the findings from their research into the experiences of community businesses led by and supporting people experiencing marginalisation.
There's a growing movement to fix the town centre property system, and transform how communities access space. Introducing Platform Places...
When it comes to regenerating our town centres, Community Improvement Districts aim to amplify the voices of community led organisations and residents, bringing them into partnership with businesses, councils and property owners, says Chris Neath.
While Jeremy Hunt’s first Budget as Chancellor was less explosive than that of his predecessor, it was not without ...
Did you know more than half of community businesses are majority led by women?
We are exploring a number of ways in which we can better reach and serve community businesses. From our research, it is clear that our sector is still failing to serve marginalised communities and that for too long, decision-making power has been withheld by funders and change is inevitably slow, inadequate or both.
High street regeneration is a complex picture, but Back on the Map in Sunderland are piloting a Community Improvement District - convening a broad and inclusive local partnership to ensure regeneration efforts succeed.
Our Next Generation innovation programme has been supporting trials of alternative business models for community energy. Several models are now identified as near viable, generating considerable learnings for community businesses and wider stakeholders.
A £2.2 million investment into supporting community businesses has been announced, as a new report reveals that, to date, communities across the UK have themselves raised £210 million to save local assets and services.
The Community Tech: Makers and Maintainers fund focuses on building resilience of existing community tech already in use by community businesses across England. Meet the latest cohort and learn more about the programme.
Tony Burton joins Power to Change’s board of trustees as Chair and will take up the new role from January 2023.
New polling shows that the public favour empowering local people and communities over abolition of the House of Lords as a way of restoring trust in politics.
Ailbhe McNabola, director of Policy and Communications at Power to Change, responds to the Autumn Statement.
Lily O’Flynn from Renaisi summarises the latest findings from their evaluation of our Empowering Places programme.
Ed Whitelaw, Head of Enterprise and Regeneration at Real Ideas, writes about a recent trip to Danish neighbourhood Christiania and community power.
This week’s Labour Party Conference in Liverpool featured a buoyant party confidently setting out its progressive agenda. Where do communities fit in this, and how will community power and investment feature in a Labour government?
With each passing week the problems with our housing system become more apparent.
No matter your age, there is often a ‘back to school’ vibe to the start of September, perhaps even more so this year as the new Prime Minister – Liz Truss – enters Number 10.
The Empowering Places programme aims to build more resilient and prosperous communities by building the capacity of locally rooted ‘catalyst’ organisations in six areas to seed the growth of new community businesses, says our places officer Natalie White.
Several years after Power to Change’s investment, what has been the financial impact of the Community Business Fund, Trade Up and Bright Ideas programme on their grantees?
You can learn from things going wrong as well as things going right.
Power to Change commissioned Kantar to conduct a ‘hyperlocal’ version of the Community Life Survey, focused on six places in England participating in the Empowering Places programme. This blog outlines some initial findings on the relative impact of our work in each area.
Learnings from our first year on the VCSE Health and Wellbeing Alliance.
New report reveals a decade of accelerating shop closures and calls for a new fund to help local people secure property on the high street.
Sarah Gorman, Melissa Mean and Jess Steele OBE have all joined the board of Power to Change, the charitable trust strengthening community business to tackle some of society’s biggest challenges.
What is community organising? And what potential does it have to tackle local issues? Bonnie Hewson explores.
After seven years, Vidhya Alakeson is leaving her role as Chief Executive of Power to Change to take up a new position as Director of External Relations for Keir Starmer, Leader of the Labour Party, in March.
Real Ideas are a pioneering social enterprise supporting people to build better futures. In this blog, Ed Whitelaw reflects on the role of community business in parks and the importance of community climate heroes.
Carbon Co-op are a community energy organisation based in Greater Manchester. In this blog, Jonathon Atkinson discusses the importance of community climate action and reflects on what it all means at COP26.
Sandra Salazar D'eca, founder of Go Grow With Love & head grower at Black Rootz, has been named as an Everyday Climate Hero in a new campaign shot by renowned photographer, Rankin.
Ibe Hayter, founder of Cycle of Life, has been named as an Everyday Climate Hero in a new campaign shot by renowned photographer, Rankin.
Community pubs and shops demonstrate soaring confidence and sector growth despite the pandemic.
Locality, in partnership with Power to Change, has joined the VCSE Health and Wellbeing Alliance (HW Alliance), an initiative of the Department of Health and Social Care and NHS England and NHS Improvement.
As Labour Party members gather in Brighton this week for its first in-person annual conference since the start of the pandemic, Nick Plumb reports back on how the party is planning to empower local communities.
Power to Change recently commissioned a study on the value that volunteers contributed to community businesses. In this blog, Sarah Thelwall describes some of the findings that might be useful for community businesses.
With the launch of two reports calling on government to put communities in the lead and invest in social infrastructure in order to achieve levelling up, Ailbhe McNabola reflects on the findings and what needs to happen next.
Following on from the progress update of Empowering Places in January of this year, Bonnie Hewson shares a roundup of our learning to date.
This blog post is the third of three outlining the research that Promising Trouble has undertaken for Power to Change, answering the question, “How can Power to Change inspire greater uptake of community tech?”
This blog post is the second of three outlining the research that Promising Trouble has undertaken for Power to Change, answering the question, “How can Power to Change inspire greater uptake of community tech?”
This blog post is the first of three outlining the research that Promising Trouble has undertaken for Power to Change, answering the question: “How can Power to Change inspire greater uptake of community tech?”
Six years of cutting-edge research into the community business sector, from Power to Change, will now be hosted by our partners, the Institute for Community Studies.
At Power to Change, our mission is to strengthen community businesses to tackle some of society’s biggest challenges at a local level, including climate change.