Who we work with

For community businesses

We back community business from the ground up.

Community businesses are helping communities across England to build stronger local economies and better places to live. 

With the right conditions, community businesses can thrive. But they face the same challenges as other businesses, with growing demand and less funding support.  

We’re here to back community business from the ground up.  

How we’re backing your community business

Working in partnership

We’re bringing partners together to fund and develop projects that demonstrate what works for community business. 

Demonstrating what works

Help us test and learn what works for community business. Get involved in our current and upcoming opportunities for community businesses. 

Resources for you

Through our evidence and our work with partners, you can access a variety of resources to help your community business.

Shaping the conditions that affect your business

We use our experience to bring partners together to do, test and learn what works. We use this activity to inform the policy, practice and behaviour of those that have an impact on community business – policymakers at all levels, funders, social investors and mainstream financial institutions. 

We invest in research and evidence and share it openly so that all communities can learn what works (and what didn’t).  

Get inspired

There’s a growing network of 11,000 inspirational and energetic community businesses up and down the country.  

No matter your size, function or location, there’ll be other community businesses who have faced the same challenges. 

Read their stories and learn more about community businesses.

News and views

The future of business is community business

The future of business is community business

Tim Davies-Pugh, Chief Executive at Power to Change, launches our series of blogs and essays in our 10th anniversary year. This series will reflect on how the world has evolved since 2015 and what it might look like in 2035.
Sustainable regeneration: Looking back and moving forward

Sustainable regeneration: Looking back and moving forward

Labour's new Plan for Neighbourhoods draws a line under the levelling up agenda. Instead, it looks back to New Labour's New Deal for Communities for inspiration. What can this teach us about longevity in regeneration programmes?
Why communities need the power to own environmental assets

Why communities need the power to own environmental assets

Imagine if as well as pubs and village halls, communities could dream big and purchase beloved rivers, woods, and peat bogs. A tweak to Labour’s forthcoming Community Right to Buy could make this possible, but rumours are circulating that this change is at risk of being abandoned.