Joyce Chan

Five years of Empowering Places: Evaluation report

Repository entry 1 July 2023

Empowering Places was designed by Power to Change as an experiment to explore what happens when local anchor organisations are supported to catalyse community businesses in deprived communities in England.

This evaluation report is the final in a series of six reports and several short
ethnographic films. The interim reports took a formative a…

Understanding impact for community businesses – Challenges and good practices for community businesses and funders

Repository entry 1 July 2022

This paper explores what community businesses can do to understand their social impact, reflecting on the challenges and building on some of the good practices identified through three Power to Change-funded programmes (Bright Ideas, Trade Up and the Community Business Fund). This is presented following the three main elements that community bu…

People shaping places, places shaping people: Community asset ownership

Repository entry 1 June 2022

More than 6,300 assets are in community ownership in England today. This model plays an essential role in ensuring places are built on resilient entities and benefit those living locally. As well as improving service delivery and financial sustainability, community asset ownership has been found to reduce vacancy rates, enable ‘bottom-up’ r…

How can funders support established community businesses? Lessons learnt from the Community Business Fund programme

Repository entry 1 April 2022

Power to Change funded the Community Business Fund (CBF) programme between 2016 and 2021 to support existing community businesses to progress towards greater self-sufficiency by increasing their trading income, securing an asset and / or significantly reducing revenue costs. This short evaluation report outlines the impact that the programme ha…

Thematic Paper: Assets & Community Businesses

Repository entry 1 January 2022

Community assets – buildings or land which are used for the social interest or wellbeing of the wider community – can be essential to a community business’ service delivery and financial sustainability, and can contribute to greater community empowerment and pride. Power to Change supported communit…