Alice Thornton

Valuing the contribution of volunteers to community businesses supported by the Community Business Fund

Repository entry 1 September 2021

This research seeks to understand the value of volunteers to community businesses supported by the Power to Change Community Business Fund (CBF). To do this, the report looks at:

the types of roles that volunteers fulfil;
why community businesses decide to engage with volunteers and why some roles are fulfilled by volunteers;
the type…

Empowering Places: The programme model and emerging impact

Repository entry 1 August 2021

The Empowering Places programme funds locally rooted ‘catalyst’ organisations in six places, over five years to empower communities to develop community businesses. Through the development of new community businesses, the programme aims to provide benefits and opportunities to local people and create more resilient places.

The program…

Enablers and barriers to delivering place-based change through the Empowering Places programme

Repository entry 1 August 2021

The Empowering Places programme funds locally rooted ‘catalyst’ organisations in six places, over five years to empower communities to develop community businesses. Through the development of new community businesses, the programme aims to provide benefits and opportunities to local people and create more resilient places.

The programme, d…

Bright Ideas, Trade Up, and Community Business Fund: Year 2 Evaluation Report

Repository entry 1 May 2021

This report outlines evaluation findings from Renaisi’s evaluation of Power to Change’s Bright Ideas and Trade Up programmes, and its Community Business Fund. Each of these is different from the others and specifically targets different stages and support needs in the community business life cycle. However, they were all designed to supp…

Evaluation of Bright Ideas, Trade Up and the Community Business Fund: Impact on people and place learning paper

Repository entry 1 April 2021

This report builds on Renaisi’s interim evaluation report of Power to Change’s Bright Ideas and Trade Up programmes,  and its Community Business Fund, as well as contributing additional evidence to existing research around the impact of community businesses on people and place.

Amongst other things, it finds that:

Communi…

Empowering Places – Interim Evaluation Report

Repository entry 1 August 2020

The Empowering Places programme aims to build more resilient communities by catalysing and nurturing community businesses to provide benefits and opportunities for local people. The programme funds locally rooted ‘catalyst’ organisations in six places – Wigan; Leicester; Bradford; Plymouth; Grimsby; Hartlepool – to help empower communit…

More Than a Pub programme evaluation – Interim Report

Repository entry 1 September 2019

The main aims of the evaluation were to develop a better understanding of the economic, social and environmental impacts of community controlled pubs, and to identify the key conditions for success of community owned pubs. The evaluation was developmental, designed to respond to the evolving needs and interests of both the More than a Pub progr…

Community Business Fund evaluation – Interim Report

Repository entry 1 March 2019

Power to Change commissioned Renaisi in October 2016 to evaluate the Community Business Fund. This is the first interim evaluation of the programme. The Community Business Fund is aimed at community businesses who need funding for a business development project that will make them more sustainable, making grant awards of between £50,000 and £…