About Power to Change
Our vision is that more communities in England run businesses that give them power to change what matters to them. They create more resilient places that are better to live and work in for everyone. Our purpose, the reason Power to Change exists, is to shape the conditions for community business to thrive.
We know community business works to build stronger communities and better places to live. We’ve seen people create resilient and prosperous local economies when power remains in community hands. But we also know the barriers that stand in the way of their success. We use our experience to bring partners together to do, test and learn what works.
Through community business, we want to see a society where communities can fully utilise their power, where the economy works for people and planet, and where communities can achieve their aspirations whilst being resilient when faced with challenges.
Our Story
We were established in 2015 with an endowment from the National Lottery Community Fund – since then we’ve directly supported hundreds of community businesses across England. We’ve also developed a strong track record of using our funding and interventions to shape the conditions in which community businesses operate. We have worked to achieve policy change, partner with local and regional authorities and shape the funding and finance on offer to community businesses.
With a refreshed purpose focused on shaping the conditions for community businesses, we have built on that track record and continued our evolution to become the think-do organisation we are today.
This year and beyond, we will seek to have impact across three themes – finance the future economy, build community power and take back the high street. These exciting workstreams bring together our ‘doing’ and ‘thinking’ – on-the-ground interventions alongside community businesses and our work to shape the conditions in which community businesses operate.
How We Work
How we work at Power to Change is driven by our principles. We believe in backing innovative and exciting approaches, and we are committed to learning and a theory of change approach. We believe in openness and working with others, and this is demonstrated through our commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion. Most importantly, we believe in being grounded in community business, which helps us stay true to our purpose of shaping the conditions for community business to thrive.
We work together to live our values by applying them to everything we do. We are open by seeking partners and allies beyond the community business sector and through sharing our learnings to discover new approaches to community-led resilient places. We are bold through our ambitious plans and we will continue to enter markets where we see community businesses could thrive, and boldly speak to decision makers alongside community businesses.. We are informed by closely working with community businesses and take on new challenges with an evidence-led approach. We are collaborative through our work with partners and internally, ensuring to draw on each other’s skills to achieve what we couldn’t do alone. And we are authentic by our commitment of integrating the priorities that we have for community businesses int our own practices.
At Power to Change, we have created a culture, underpinned by our policies and benefits, to support the health, happiness and engagement of our staff. While we have offices in London and Bristol, the majority of our staff work remotely with travel for in-person meetings and events. As we are committed to improving the working lives of all our staff, we offer flexible working arrangements such as flexible hours and compressed hours. We also offer a range of benefits including a cashplan with Health Shield, enhanced family pay, life insurance with Canada Life, birthday leave and additional time off between Christmas and New Years.