We work with our partners to build better places.
We know community business works to build stronger communities and better places to live. We back them to grow and thrive. But we don’t do it alone, we work in partnership with a range of organisations to shape the conditions for community businesses to thrive. This includes:
- Funders and foundations
- Investors, from social investors to private investors
- Government at all levels, including regional and local authorities
- Think tanks and advocacy organisations
- Community businesses.
Partners can work with us by:
- Supporting research and evidence on the impact of community business
- Co-funding place-based programmes that test new models
- Investing in community asset development and locally rooted enterprise
- Collaborating to unlock new forms of finance for community businesses.
Want to work with us?
Our areas of focus
News and views
Our thinking and latest updates on how we’re backing community business.
Unlocking doors on the civic high street: barriers to space and how to fix them
A thriving civic high street brings people together and supports a vibrant local economy. Communities are already showing what’s possible, but access to space remains a major barrier. By learning alongside community businesses seeking to unlock high street premises, we’ve identified what needs to change to bring a lively, inclusive civic high street to life.
Pride in place means councils sharing control
One of our five community-led high street innovators – The Arcade Group – is working in Dewsbury to bring a Victorian shopping arcade back to life, and into community ownership. Development Director, Chris Hill, reflects on what community-led regeneration looks like in practice, and why sharing power locally between councils, community businesses and wider high street stakeholders is essential to make the most of Pride in Place.
Making the civic high street a reality
What if the future of the high street lies not in retail alone but in community ownership, civic participation, and long-term local stewardship? Drawing on a year of learning from our community-led high street innovators programme, Practice and Innovation Manager Kate McKenzie explores how communities across the country are creating a new model of high street renewal – and sets out six recommendations for government to help make the civic high street a reality.
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Learning what works
Explore our evidence and research. Our partnerships help us do, test, and learn what works for community business to thrive.
The new high street playbook: Community-led innovation in action
The 'new high street playbook' shares lessons from our Community-Led High Street Innovators programme, and why they matter now. Connecting real world practice to the current policy window, this report reflects a growing focus on the conditions needed for longer-term stewardship, particularly the role of community influence, governance and ownership in shaping the future of our high streets.
Returning power to the people: What community empowerment can do for the public and for politics
At a time when the government faces enormous pressure to mount a response to the sense of discontent and decline that the public is feeling, giving communities more local control is emerging as a solution that is both effective and popular. This research demonstrates the need to put communities at the heart of the political debate to unlock a path to national renewal.
The economic contribution of community business
There have long been gaps in quantitative evidence around the unique economic contribution that community business makes. This new research provides an estimate of the total economic contribution made by community businesses to the national economy. It highlights the different ways, to whom, and where community businesses drive economic benefits locally.
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