Empowering Places was a unique five-year programme designed by Power to Change to explore ways in which ‘locally rooted’ anchor organisations, operating in areas of high deprivation, could be supported to catalyse community businesses...
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A new report explores how community businesses compare to other third sector organisations across England and Wales.
Community Improvement Districts (CIDs) provide a new approach for community stakeholders to have more say on strategic direction of the high streets alongside local authorities, businesses and other local stakeholders. Power to Change has piloted this model in six places across England, with a learning process led by The Centre for Regional Economic and Social Research, and Shared Assets.
This report was written by Clear Impact Consulting and retrospectively evaluates Community Business Crowdmatch, which ran between 2017 and 2022 in partnership with Crowdfunder UK.
Insights and learnings from the Financial Capabilities pilots, delivered by The Women's Organisation and Locality.
Since 2015, Power to Change has made significant investments in research, evaluation, and data analysis to better understand whether community businesses improve places, and, if so, whether we have supported them to do so.
This report, produced by Spark Insights and Locality, and commissioned by Power to Change, explores the experiences of community businesses and organisations led by or supporting people experiencing marginalisation on the barriers and solutions to accessing funding and support.
The pilot programme for Community Improvement Districts (CIDs) has emerged from a continuing need to revitalise traditional high streets and town centres. We explore our learnings so far.
A new report by the British Academy and Power to Change explores how social infrastructure contributes to communities’ wellbeing, helps develop their resilience and tackles deepening geographic inequalities.
With a general election on the horizon, Power to Change has set out its key policy asks of the next government to create the conditions for community businesses to thrive.
This report takes a strategic look at the role community businesses can play in addressing the challenges of UK high streets. It considers how community businesses can succeed in high streets, what they can contribute, and what support they need to make a long-term difference to restore ‘pride in place’ in struggling town centres.
Scoping the opportunities, considerations and areas of focus for the design of a community business climate action programme.
Five ‘practical learning guides’ have been developed to share learning emerging from community energy innovation projects. These should be useful to community energy groups considering new approaches and also to other community businesses considering action on energy and climate issues.
Building our social infrastructure: why levelling up means creating a more socially connected Britain
This paper examines the role that community organisations can play in the government’s levelling up agenda.
With a new £20m injection of funding from TNLCF, we're outlining our plans for the next five years to be a catalyst for the community business sector, putting them at the heart of a fair recovery.
These Clubs are Ours: Putting football into community hands, calls for government to put a Community Club Ownership Trust at the heart of football reform.
This working paper, commissioned by Power to Change in March 2020, looks at examples of community businesses operating in high street or town centre locations across the UK and draws out lessons from their experience.
This paper presents interim evaluation findings about parts of the Next Generation programme, covering the processes used and early outcomes.
This paper explores the funding landscape for community businesses. In doing so, it also explores what is distinctive about Power to Change’s offering, so that it can plan for its eventual exit from the market.
Drawing on the views and experiences of more than 40 community businesses and 20 experts, Community Business in 2030 illustrates the transformative effect the sector could have on both local people’s lives and society as a whole.
At the end of 2016, the Bank of England’s Chief Economist warned that regional inequality was ‘among the most important issues that we face today as a country’. Then as now, local economies in different parts of the UK were growing at an uneven rate, and some were simply not growing at all. Can hyper-local, socially-responsible businesses help the economic performance of the place where they are based? As part of this work, this paper specifically asks which factors are associated with growth in the sort of start-up, entrepreneurial businesses which can power a local economy.
Power to Change is an independent trust, with a mission to increase the number and social impact of community businesses across England.
In 2016 we pledged to make available our grants data. We believe that anyone who wishes should be able to see the grants and investments made by Power to Change, where in the country we have spent our money, and the sort of enterprises in which we have invested.