I have not written a blog entry in forever but Neo has been doing so much and we have so many exciting projects and so much to say and celebrate that I felt it was time to write one, but as always I have a topic on my mind that I want to discuss first I want to look at the role and structures of community business and what they look like and what they are. This has become something I am looking at more and more, due to work Neo is doing with the Chamber of Commerce and also looking at strategic growth and sustainability of our project and Charity.
Community Business, structure and identity is something more and more organisations are talking about and more and more of the commissioning bodies and people in preserved power and relating to. We do recognise we are a community business but have to always be very aware of the responsibilities that holds too. We are as much a part of local economic growth and prosperity as any other sector.
A definition of a Community Business from https://mycommunity.org.uk/help-centre/resources/community-business/business-community-business/ is as follows;
A community business can be shops, farms, pubs or call centres, and many other types of business, but the difference is they are accountable to their community and that the profits they generate deliver positive local impact.
What they all have in common is that they are accountable to their community and that the profits they generate deliver positive local impact.
These are the four main aspects of a community business:
Locally rooted
Trading for the benefit of the local community
Accountable to the local community
Broad community impact
I am able to only talk from the experience I have of setting up and running a small community business, that was very organically set up and naturally became recognised as a community business with Charitable aims and objectives. I think it is very important to look at and continuously remember the main aspects of a community business especially when looking at growth and opportunities we may be offered or able to fund. We as an organisation always need to remember that unlike many other sectors within Business our aims and objectives must always be the first thing to be considered before the pound coins, although the pound coins can never be ignored and anyone who thinks that community businesses are not interested in profits would be misinformed. We need to always be looking for the income revenue and the next opportunity to reinvest within our communities, within our projects and delivery but always make sure that the needs of our communities are met.
Neo Community’s HQ, known as Beaconsfield Community House, is a home from home for many, a stop gap between crisis for others and a steppingstone to the next level for many, it is also so many other things; but what it is to us is a community house that serves its community and not one small division of our community but our community as a hole.
You can be a millionaire or live on the streets everyone has the same welcome and the same access to every service, but what our community house and organisation will always insure it does is listen to the voices and the needs within our community and always be led by the people and especially the people with the biggest needs the issues within our community and the economic position of the area that we proudly stand. The community house is an incubation lab for new ideas, new solutions to problems and new relationships between individuals with a common goal, and importantly also giving our local private businesses a voice and a chance to become and support those solutions.
The community House as it is known today started out as flats, and became a council office building for many years allowing 2 local residents to use there large room and kitchen to run a local youth club, in 2016 the building was ear marked for asset transfer and the youth clubs future seemed uncertain but with Neo community and some community activists the building was granted a new lease at life with the support of Wirral Borough of Council and Neo community moved in, with the support of a small group of local community members the one room was then used for youth club, a café, a social supermarket, social events etc until one room became 12 fully functional running rooms offering a platter of activity and services.
Along with the community House Neo Community also offers other services and space to both support the growth and sustainability of our service but also of others and supporting income generation to keep the community house open and the growth of projects and services ran. We have several units alongside the town hall in partnership with a local social landlord which we hope to see a ‘community street’ of support and services and one stop a collective of services and organisations, we also offer a catering service and very recently have begun to work in partnership with the Lauries Centre to run the Bistro within the central Birkenhead Community and Business Centre, to offer local employment opportunities, skills and training whilst being able to grow the catering we are able to do and recently also now being able to offer school dinners for an alternative education provider and increase our capacity in community cooking and free meals for children in school holidays.
We do also need to recognise the support we have been given to allow us to grow and offer more and more and the work of our amazing volunteers.
