When people are trusted and supported, they can build businesses that serve their communities and shape better futures.
Through my work with social enterprises, funders and changemakers across the UK, I’ve seen how alive and quietly powerful the community business movement is, rooted in care, action, and a determination to do things differently.
Community businesses help rebuild trust, keep wealth local, create jobs, and tackle social and environmental challenges, all while connecting people more deeply to the places they live. Not quite charity, not quite traditional business, but something unique, where enterprise is driven by community purpose.
Who owns a building, a service, or a green space shapes not just how it runs, but who benefits. When communities have ownership, decisions are more likely to focus on long-term wellbeing rather than short-term gain.
This isn’t just theory for me. I co-founded a community business nearly ten years ago, and it continues to shape how I think about change. That experience showed me that the local people have the deepest insight into what their place truly needs. And when they’re supported to lead, what they build is not only resilient but deeply rooted in local life.
At Power to Change’s 10th birthday celebration, retail expert and campaigner Mary Portas encouraged even more:
“Community businesses can’t afford to sit quietly at the edges. If you want to change the system, you have to be visible, confident and creatively disruptive.”
That applies not only to individual organisations but to the movement as a whole. Community business is no longer a fringe idea. There is a growing body of evidence, lived experience and momentum behind it.
We know this works. We’ve seen it. If we want an economy that is fairer, more inclusive and more sustainable, we need to keep backing the people already doing the work, support new community businesses to emerge, and help them become more visible.
