Community businesses were much more likely to have used reserves to invest in new activities such as buying property, developing a new service or employing a development worker (17%), when compared with general third sector organisations (10%).<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n <\/p>\n
Report author Professor Tony Chapman said: \u201cThe key finding of this report is that community businesses are resilient entities. It is their determination to be financially independent, at least in part, through self-generated trading activity that sets them apart from other third sector organisations when it comes to resilience.\u201d<\/p>\n
The research is based on the 3,158 responses to a survey conducted between June and December 2019. The data, therefore, does not reflect the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic and lockdown on community businesses and other third sector organisations.<\/p>\n
Of the impact of the coronavirus lockdown, Professor Chapman said: \u201cIt should not be taken as read that the future for all community businesses will be bleak. The pandemic may help to produce changes in the way communities think and act in future. Local people may feel a stronger sense of commitment to community and to the organisations which champion and service it, such as community businesses.\u201d<\/p>\n
The report reveals the power of community businesses to make a real difference in their local area particularly when it comes to pushing for policy changes that will make a longer difference.<\/p>\n
Ailbhe McNabola, Head of Research and Policy at Power to Change, said: \u201cCommunity businesses perform a unique balancing act, marrying enterprise and entrepreneurialism with a goal of making a real difference to places where they are based. These attributes will be important as places begin to recover from the social and economic impacts of the Covid pandemic. Community businesses can play an important role in the places where they work in the months and years ahead.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Community businesses are more financially independent, generate more income and are more invested in shaping social and public policy to improve their local area than other types of third sector organisations, according to new research published today.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":14348,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","inline_featured_image":false,"wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[339],"tags":[338,350,343,344,349],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.powertochange.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14351"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.powertochange.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.powertochange.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.powertochange.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.powertochange.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14351"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.powertochange.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14351\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.powertochange.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14348"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.powertochange.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14351"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.powertochange.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14351"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.powertochange.org.uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14351"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}