Empowering Social Enterprises in Oxfordshire through New Funding Models
Owned by Oxford partner Co-operative Futures has just launched an exciting new feasibility study that explores a roadmap for a local social investment fund in Oxfordshire aimed at social enterprises.
Social enterprises can play an important role in creating more resilient local economies, by creating dignified jobs, strengthening local supply chains, and ensuring that wealth circulates within the local community. They can also address challenges that traditional businesses overlook, such as providing essential services in underserved areas.
Yet locally and nationally, the social enterprise sector has been held back by a lack of suitable financing options to support these businesses to start up and scale up.
The feasibility study offers a vision for a local social investment fund that could address this issue: a fund that prioritises social return and helps local, purpose-driven enterprises thrive.
Community Consultation event on a new social investment fund for Oxfordshire led by Alice Hemming of Cooperative Futures.
It delves into mechanisms for making the finance more accessible, for example by offering low-interest loans or grants that can be converted to loans, and providing business development support to enable businesses to become investment ready.
The study points to successful community-led social investment funds who centred local residents in the design and delivery of the fund, such as Barking & Dagenham Giving and Kindred. The idea of “participatory investment” – also known as “democratic money” has become widespread in the social investment sector. The notion behind this is that investment should not happen to communities, but with them and that local people should be at the heart of decisions that shape the places in which they live.
In the words of Barking and Dagenham Giving,
“for too long the people who are most affected by funding decisions have been excluded from the decision-making process”.
They sought to address this by making sure to have strong leadership from those who have been traditionally excluded from the mainstream economy, such as BME and working-class communities.
Infographic from Barking and Dagenham Giving’s website, illustration by Julia Bakay
Barking and Dagenham Giving have a Community Steering Group made up of local residents, who have been involved with designing the fund and deciding how funds are allocated. As a result of this participatory approach, their programmes have attracted a wide range of applicants – such as their GROW programme, in which 60% of the fund recipients were Black-led businesses and 70% were led by women.
Owned by Oxford is a strategic partnership between grassroots community organisations, infrastructure organisations, and the Local Authority.
We came together in 2021 because we were concerned about the stark inequality in our city. There’s no shortage of money in our city, it’s just not fairly distributed: Oxford is the second most unequal urban area in the UK in terms of income, housing affordability, and life expectancy.
Our vision is for a fair, democratic and sustainable economy in Oxford, an economy owned and controlled by its community, and that puts people, planet and wellbeing before profit.
We’re using an approach to local economic development called Community Wealth Building. We are working to:
Shift power and financial resources to people on lower incomes and Black and Minoritised communities that have been marginalised by the mainstream economy.
Shift perceptions. Communities experiencing structural disadvantage are experts by experience in their own circumstances. They should play a leading role in shaping interventions aimed at alleviating poverty and inequality.
“Nothing about us, without us”
Give communities more control over the local economy, by bringing wealth, buildings and assets into community ownership.
Support the emergence and resilience of Social Enterprises that prioritise delivering social and environmental value over maximising profits for shareholders.
Since completing our pilot in April 2023 and launching our Impact Report, we were delighted to secure a further £320,000 from the Esmée Fairbairn Foundation and the Friends Provident Foundation. Here’s a glimpse into what we’ve been doing since then…
Centering the Voices of Marginalised Communities in Local Economic Development
We have been participating in local economic forums aiming to address inequality, such as the Oxfordshire Inclusive Economy Partnership (OIEP). We are encouraging them to have greater leadership from the marginalised communities they are seeking to benefit.
Firstly, by building in mechanisms for participatory governance, transparency and accountability to underserved communities.
Secondly, by building relationships with community organisations who are doing Community Wealth Building at the grassroots, and using their institutional wealth and influence to build capacity in these organisations.
Late last year, our partners African Families in the UK and CAG Oxfordshire attended an event convened by Oxford University Hospitals (OUH). They delivered a presentation to key decision makers from a number of local anchor institutions sharing recommendations for how anchor institutions can work with marginalised communities in a dialogue of equals.
Distributing leadership within our partnership
Owned by Oxford started out as a partnership led by organisations that were primarily white-led and relatively well-resourced. We’re on a journey to address this, and have been working to shift the balance of power and funding in our partnership towards organisations embedded within Black and Minoritised communities.
Our recent funding has enabled us to trial a more distributed leadership model, by funding Partnership Co-coordination posts in two Black-led community organisations: Oxford Community Action and African Families in the UK (AFiUK), to work alongside our CAG Coordinator.
Building Capacity in Community Anchor Organisations
Community Anchors are community-led organisations that are embedded within and trusted by communities and play a pivotal role in shaping outcomes for those communities. Local examples include African Families in the UK (AFiUK) and Oxford Community Action (OCA) who are working to incubate new community projects and Social Enterprises that build economic resilience and meet local needs, support emerging community leaders, and act as bridges between community members and local organizations and services.
For Black and Minoritised communities, the growth and resilience of Community Anchors and Social Enterprises has been limited due to structural inequalities in access to support, training, resources and funding.
Owned by Oxford has worked to address this by funding four part-time Development Worker positions within AFiUK and OCA to help them formalize and develop in their activities. Development Workers focus on internal organizational development, and provide training and support to emerging community leaders – Community Ambassadors – to develop their own community projects and Social Enterprises. These Ambassadors receive stipends, enabling them to have the time and freedom to focus on their projects.
Examples of Social Enterprises and Community Projects Supported
AFiUK has been providing support and business coaching to Bee Empowered, a child inclusive exercise group for mothers, and Taiwil Fashion, a Social Enterprise selling African fashion, beauty accessories and house decor. The enterprise generates income for its community project, the African Caribbean Autism Family Support Group (ACAFSG) that bridges the gap between migrant families living with autism and essential services in Education, Health and Social Care, as well as running a family support group.
OCA has continued to operate and expand the OCA Kitchen, which delivers a café and catering service run by a community of multi-ethnic chefs.
This summer, the OCA Kitchen celebrated opening their new community café in the new NHS Keystone Hub, in a prime location on Cowley Road in East Oxford. All profits from the OCA Kitchen support their wider community work with Black and Minoritised communities, which include nature hikes, camping retreats, cycling activities, surplus food redistribution to hundreds of families each week, and holiday activities for children and young people. OCA has also been incubating a new enterprise offering security services for events.
Widening Access to Grant Funding
OCA has worked with two local funders, OCVA and Community First Oxfordshire, to support six community groups in their network to apply to the ‘Well Together’ grants programme, to deliver community-based projects supporting health and wellbeing and addressing health inequalities. All six groups were successful in their applications. Among them are Nigerian Community Oxford, Proud To Be Me and Oxford Swahili Women’s Community.
Developing Community-Informed Interventions through Community Research
Research designing interventions to address inequalities has often been done on communities rather than with communities. OCA has been working to disrupt this dynamic, training up Community Researchers in Community Participatory Action Research (CPAR) methods, so as to enable communities to become equal partners in research initiatives.
OCA are working towards training a further 20 Community Researchers, and are playing an active role in supporting the development of the Oxfordshire Community Research Network (CRN). The Oxfordshire CRN has brought together Community Researchers, local councils, academic institutions and health services to work together to address health and other structural inequalities.
Their Community Researchers Hassan Sabrie and Mujahid Hamidi recently supported the delivery of a research project with 166 residents, aiming to shine light on the challenges their communities face in terms of the impact of the cost of living and to identify solutions to help improve support, the findings of which are summarised in this report. Hassan and Mujahid also worked with local film-maker Nicola Josse to produce this short film about their work:
Development Worker Nigel Carter recently contributed to a Healthwatch Oxfordshire report outlining the importance of community-led research, which OCA and Healthwatch Oxfordshire co-presented at the recent launch of the Local Policy Lab.
Thanks for Reading – Subscribe for Further Updates
Thank you for reading and sharing in our journey as we enter an exciting new phase of the project. We’ll be in touch with more updates soon about the activities of our other partners soon. Do subscribe to our blog for future updates in our mission to create a fairer, more inclusive economy for Oxford.
Building Community Wealth from the Ground Up: The Owned by Oxford Report
Oxford has a wealth problem. There’s no shortage of money in our city, it’s just not fairly distributed. And that’s a problem for everyone. Owned by Oxford is using community wealth building to address this problem. We’re a partnership of grassroots community enterprises and infrastructure projects working with larger Oxford institutions, to test out and innovate new ideas. Our long-term vision is for a fair, democratic, and sustainable economy in Oxford, an economy owned and controlled by its community that puts people, planet and wellbeing before profit. This report explores the journey and learning of the partnership so far.
Oxford is a famously affluent and well-resourced city, but these resources are not fairly distributed, making Oxford one of the most unequal urban areas in the UK.
The Owned by Oxford project launched in April 2021 with the aim of addressing this inequality in the city through community wealth building. Funded by the Friends Provident Foundation, the pilot was set up by a small group of Oxford infrastructure organisations with the intention of developing a “top down meets bottom up” approach, creating an interface between council-led Preston-style models of community wealth building and grassroots community development.
At an early stage, issues of class, race, and economic power emerged, and work was done to ensure ownership of the project by Black, minoritised, and economically marginalised communities – those who are most affected by Oxford’s particular inequalities.
Owned by Oxford is now a diverse partnership of organisations and individuals. Together, we have been testing out and creating new routes for the considerable resources held by Oxford anchor institutions – Oxfordshire County Council, Oxford City Council, Universities, and larger businesses – to support authentically community-owned and run enterprises as part of the journey to a new economy for the city, one that puts people, planet, and wellbeing before profit.
The project work has been led by Community Action Groups Oxfordshire and delivered by a small, part-time team employed across a number of organisations, and focussing on:
supporting and incubating grassroots enterprises,
raising awareness of community wealth building,
influencing policy and practice,
and mapping the community-led economy network across Oxford.
Community wealth building is still a new and unfamiliar economic practice for many stakeholders in the city. Owned by Oxford has facilitated important discussions as well as providing opportunities to test out and innovate and raising awareness of progressive economic approaches across a range of organisations.
Our project has raised the profile of the rich and dynamic ecosystem of grassroots enterprises, community research, and knowledge that already exists within the city. But there are significant gaps in appropriate support, training, and resourcing for this ecosystem, and the structural inequalities around access to funding and assets remain barriers to growth and sustainability.
We are thrilled to have been awarded funding from Transtion Together via The National Lottery Community Fund to further develop the Barton Retrofit Cooperative. This project aims to upskill local tradespeople and residents in Barton to improve the energy efficiency of their homes, saving money, saving energy, improving health and regenerating the existing housing stock.
Why Retrofit?
Much of Barton’s existing housing stock is 1950s pre-fabs. Retrofitting will help to improve the property’s energy efficiency through the addition of new technology or features, futureproofing these homes for the next generation and saving residents money on their energy bills.
There are different ways to retrofit a house, varying from single-room improvements to whole house retrofits. From simple draught proofing and improving ventilation to new renewable technologies such as solar panels and heat pumps.
Well retrofitted homes are also healthier environments that can reduce the risk of poor internal air quality related illness. This reduces pressure on the health service. Retrofitted homes are comfortable, use less energy and put less pressure on the power grid.
Retrofitting the UK’s housing stock is essential, especially if the UK is to reach net zero by 2050. The Barton project will create a community owned and community led enterprise that will meet the needs of the local people and their homes.
The project is being run by local Councillor and activist Jabu Nala-Hartley as part of her work with Owned by Oxford and Community Action Groups Oxfordshire. Jabu lives in, and represents Barton Residents, and is keen to hear from anyone interested in getting involved in the project.
Want to Get Involved?
The project is looking for local tradespeople that are interested in gaining new skills in retrofitting. On the job taining will be provided by local retrofitting experts. They are also looking for residents interested in learning about energy saving measures to help spread the message to Barton residents.
Funding from The National Lottery Community Fund, distributed by Transition Together, has helped us to deliver this project. Thanks to National Lottery players for making this possible. Look for more information about Transition Together at https://transitiontogether.org.uk/
Thank you to everyone who came to the Your Story event on Wednesday 23rd November in Blackbird Leys at the Owned by Oxford Dome – a pop-up space for conversations about Community Wealth Building.
The event provided a space to share stories about the life in Blackbird Leys, people’s relationships with community spaces, and explore what appetite and commitment there might be for greater community involvement in the use and control of spaces within the community.
We heard a fantastic range of stories, which all really demonstrated the deep sense of belonging that already exists in relation to the community assets in the neighbourhood.
One thing that came through clearly was how much people valued the community centre and the vital role it has played in community life over a number of decades.
We heard how its use had changed and how different groups influenced and shaped the activities on offer over time.
We heard how the organisations currently using the centre are constantly evolving the uses, introducing new ways for the spaces to be used, including clothes swaps, bingo nights, and community meetings.
And we found an appetite to be more involved in the running of community spaces, but that this was tempered with a feeling that people could only afford to contribute their time where it would be genuinely meaningful. They felt they couldn’t afford to spend precious evenings or afternoons to hear about the plans of others, but this might be different if they saw a chance to take part in the planning: whether that was developing ideas around a new community centre, organising to take on a new community asset, or developing new uses for the current spaces.
“This place carries a lot of memories for me. Four of my children [now grown up] are on the mural in the Glow Hall so it means a lot and I’ll feel the loss when it goes. Finding new spaces that could be community owned would be great but I’d like to see us make full use of the spaces we currently have. The uncertainty around it isn’t helping.”
Ever wondered what the economy would look like if it made equality and equity it’s driving goal?
The Basque town of Arrasate, home of the Mondragon Cooperative Corporation, offers a hugely impressive living example:
A globally-competitive, worker owned company where the wage ratio between the lowest and highest paid member never exceeds 1:7
35,000 member owners benefitting directly from the capital growth of the company
Responsible for 25% of all patents in the Basque region
Lowest unemployment rates in Spain
And a comparable Gini coefficient (measure of inequality) to Finland and Norway – without the high taxes
All made possible by embedding its social purpose deeply into the fabric of the company. As our guide Ander Etxeberria put it “This is not utopia. It’s a machine for making good jobs.”
The Cooperative Councils Innovation Network recently sponsored a visit to Mondragon for a delegation of local government councillors, including Owned by Oxford’s, Simon Grove-White. More about the trip here:
To find out more about the Mondragon model and explore how we can help these ideas take root in the UK context, sign up for the CCIN’s 10th Annual Conference in Telford on November 24th
One of the biggest challenges for new community enterprises in Oxford is finding an affordable place to trade. High rents and business rates create a very high ‘cost of entry’ to the local economy.
So the Owned by Oxford by Oxford project is really excited by the potential for markets to provide low cost, temporary spaces that can catalyse new initiatives, whilst also creating a social space that brings together different parts of the community. If those spaces are owned and managed by those communities, even better!
We’re delighted to be helping Transition Lighthouse CIC to set up a new community owned market in Blackbird Leys. The market will be open to all but will put an emphasis on providing Oxford’s African-Caribbean community with products and services that might otherwise be difficult to find in the city, as well as offering local social and community organisations a way to connect with local people.
Expect to hear more on this exciting initiative very soon!…
The markets team meet at Blackbird Leys Communtity Cemtre to discuss the project
Why Community Markets?
The potential for markets to support Community Wealth Building has been highlighted in recent reports by Markets 4 People – a collaboration between researchers at University College London, the University of Leeds, the New Economic Foundation, and the Centre for Local Economic Studies (CLES), as well as the National Market Traders Federation (NMTF) and the National Association of British Market Authorities (NABMA).
Their work helps evidence our belief that markets are a fantastic tool for supporting the emergence of community led economic activity, along with many other positive social outcomes, including:
Access to good quality, healthy and affordable fresh food.
Opportunities for social and cultural interaction.
Relatively low-cost and accessible trading spaces.
Serving low-income groups; black and minority ethnic groups; migrants and refugees; elderly people; socially isolated and other vulnerable groups.
They’ll soon be publishing a new toolkit aimed at community market operators, helping them to navigate some of the challenges in setting up and running a market.
Have ideas? Get in touch
If you’re a community organisation that’s interested in setting up or being part of a new market, and would like to know more about what’s involved, why not get in touch with us to discuss through info@ownedbyoxford.org.uk
Residents can now by power from solar panels installed on the roof of their Roupell Park flats at a fraction of the current price cap, thanks to a local Energy Buying club.
Set up a power station; retrofit a neighbourhood – Communities tackling the energy crisis
We were delighted to be featured in the latest blog from the Transition Together. In a round up of brilliant community driven and owned initiatives to respond to the energy crisis. The Barton Retrofit Coop was hifghlighted as a case study.
The blog written by Chris McCartney says:
In Oxford, the Barton Retrofit Coop is being set up to offer new skills and jobs for local people, focusing on effective fabric-first insulation for the 1950s prefab council houses which make up most homes in the area. “Our aim is to start small and build one community retrofit team, then expand and create new teams, and then replicate the model in other communities,” said project lead Jabu Nala-Hartley from CAG Oxfordshire (another Transition group).
This approach will bring major energy-saving home improvements into the reach of many more people and spread the skills needed to accelerate community-led insulation. Often neighbours live in similar houses, with the almost identical layout, materials and retrofitting challenges. It would be faster, cheaper, easier and more accessible to find solutions together rather than each household doing their own legwork and research.
The blog gives other examples of community lead inititaives such as generating their own energy and buying energy together to sharing energy saving tips.
Transition Together supports the Transition movement across Britain to develop and grow. We do this through helping groups to connect and learn from one another, amplifying inspiring stories, giving out seed funding grants and running workshops and events. We will also support the emergence of a democratically representative structure that can coordinate the movement across England and Wales.
Building community wealth from the ground up: Owned by Oxford at the Playground for the New Economy
On a beautiful sunny day in July, Owned by Oxford’s Jabu, Simon and Dianne headed down to Selgars Mill in Devon to attend a festival with a difference.
Hosted by Stir to Action, the Playground for the New Economy festival programme includes panel discussions, workshops, sustainable food, and live music, all centred around the theme of what a different type of economy could look like – and how we can get there.
The three-day residential setting creates the space for people with an interest in a more regenerative and democratic economy – community builders, activists, entrepreneurs – to build and form relationships, make connections, and challenge each other as a sector.
As Stir to Action founder Jonny Gordon-Farliegh says, “It’s about having big conversations in small rooms.”
Owned by Oxford came to learn and contribute to those conversations, but also to share and celebrate the work of our project so far with a workshop on the theme of “building community wealth from the grassroots up”.
Following an introduction to the project we split into groups to explore three areas:
Redirecting power and resources to grassroots enterprises
Empowering community: our plans for the Barton Community Retrofit Coop
Participatory place making: approach, authenticity, engagement.
Our team were blown away by the interest and enthusiasm generated. Luckily we were in The Barn, rather than a “small room”, with more than 50 delegates joining in the conversations over the course of the session. The discussions highlighted a lot of shared experience across the networks and many new connections made – we’re looking forward to following up and collaborating over the next few months.
Our takeaway? Wow – such solidarity and positivity! We came away energised and even more convinced of the importance of the Owned by Oxford grass-roots-led model. Next year we’ll bring a minibus and stay for the full three days!
Calling all Barton Tradespeople and Residents: WE NEED YOU
Owned by Oxford (ObO) are piloting a community energy saving project in Barton.
This will promote simple, home energy saving actions to residents and help them to reduce their energy bills.This is the first step to setting up a community-owned Retrofit Cooperative for Barton. We are looking for local people to get upskilled in retrofit techniques to help us deliver this project.
Calling local builders and tradespeople
Do you want to get FREE, on the job training in retrofit and energy saving building techniques?” Whatever your trade – carpentry, plumbing, electrician or general handy person – we’d like to hear from you.
We are setting up a Retrofit enterprise in Barton and need local people to get involved. Once set up, this will offer paid on-the-job training mentored by experts in the field of retrofit.
Calling local residents!
We are looking for local people who’d like to work with us on promoting simple home energy saving action. This will be paid work, £10.50/hour, with flexible hours available and training given.
This is a great opportunity to learn about and promote energy saving in your local community. You’ll be working with a supportive team of local and national experts, gaining exposure to cutting edge ideas on energy efficient building methods, as well as simple and cost effective ways to reduce bills and keep homes warm.
Owned by Oxford 
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