Power To Change Trust

The Trust uses grants, recoverable grants, and social investments to support community businesses — enterprises that are locally rooted, trade for the benefit of the community, and are accountable to local people. It prioritizes asset-locked structures such as community land trusts, cooperatives, and community benefit societies. Deployment typically targets seed and growth-stage community enterprises rather than startups or large-scale infrastructure. The Trust's Community Business Renewal Fund is an example of flexible recovery capital.

The Trust was established in 2015 with an endowment from the Big Lottery Fund (now The National Lottery Community Fund), created as part of a broader UK strategy to build a more resilient community-business sector. It received an initial £150 million commitment to operate over a multi-year period, functioning as a spend-down endowment rather than a perpetual foundation. The Trust's legal structure anchors it as a charitable trust overseen by independent trustees.

No. The Trust almost never takes equity positions that would allow extraction of value. Its instruments are designed to leave ownership and control with communities. Where it uses social investment, structures include patient revenue-participation agreements or unsecured loans, but the Trust does not seek shareholder returns. The emphasis is on creating asset-locked community wealth that cannot be sold into private hands.

While the Trust deploys across England, its explicit geographic focus has tilted toward areas of high deprivation and weak community infrastructure. The North of England and the Midlands have received significant allocations, with notable clusters in Greater Manchester, West Yorkshire, and the West Midlands. The Trust's 2023 impact data highlighted urban and coastal communities as priority zones.

Its criteria require that the enterprise is locally rooted, trades primarily for community benefit, has broad community accountability, and reinvests surpluses in the enterprise or community. The Trust looks for democratic governance — typically through multi-stakeholder boards or community shareholder bases — and a clear impact locked into governing documents. These features distinguish its grantees from conventional small businesses or charities.

Yes, collaborative deployment is central to its model. It has co-funded alongside Access — The Foundation for Social Investment, The National Lottery Community Fund, local authorities, and the Archipelago network of community-business consortia. However, its capital does not blend with commercially motivated investors seeking market-rate returns. All partnership capital aligns with the Trust's community-ownership and asset-lock principles.

The Trust is itself a registered charity and does not operate a separate philanthropic arm. Its governance is overseen by a board of trustees, and all assets are held for public-benefit purposes. The Trust does not have a private-family connection, making its structure distinct from a family office or founder-led foundation.