Trading for Good: Community Business

Develop your community business through a specialist programme of support.

With a group of others like you, you will learn from the experts, and each other, to grow your community business. You will also receive a Match Trading™ Grant that combined with the learning programme will support you to develop trading income streams and build a resilient community business.

The programme:

• Learning and development programme
• Match Trading™ Grant of up to £4,000.
• Ready-made network of others like you.
• Expert insights.
• Peer-to-peer learning.
• Join our community of 3k+ SSE fellows.

You develop skills to:

• Generate income to be invested in your community through trading.
• Create a resilient, growing community business.
• Adapt to changes in external environments.
• Develop emotional resourcefulness.
• Build and benefit from new networks.
• Positively impact your community.

Who it’s for

Your organisation must be committed to and working towards being a community business. A community business is run by and for a local community for a social or environmental purpose. Its profits are reinvested for the benefit of that community. It must be aiming to be: 

• Locally rooted. It should be based within a defined geographical area (e.g. a village or town, or a ward, or borough). If you are working with a specific community of benefit, e.g. ex-service personnel or disabled people, then you may be working with a larger geographical area, such as across several boroughs, or a region. The programme prioritises organisations with a strong, local, geographic tie. Applications from organisations serving a dispersed community of interest will still be considered, but they should be able to demonstrate the reason why their work spans a wider geographic area.
• Accountable to the local community. It must demonstrate that the local community is involved in planning and supporting the community business, as well as simply using its services. 
• Trading for the benefit of the local community. It must be trading or planning to trade with profits reinvested in the community or to support activity in the community. 
• Making a broad community impact. It must either be working with a broad section of the community or have a specific focus on a particular group, e.g. people from minoritized ethnicities or disabled people, in the local community. 

Your organisation must:

• Be based in England.
• Plan on starting or growing the income it makes from trading.
• Be at an earlier stage

What does earlier stage mean?

When “early stage” businesses is assessed, the following indicators are looked for:  

Your organisation has been registered for less than 5 years and you need help to develop your business model and grow your trading.  
You are likely to currently have few or no paid staff.   
You are likely to have an income of less than £100,000 per year.