Community-powered startups
Creating ventures that are designed, governed and owned with the communities they serve
CommunityPower is not an alternative to a well-funded welfare state. It is a radical reform of a well-funded welfare state that makes that state more humane, democratic and impactful (Adam Lent, Chief Executive New Local via Twitter)
Change in the public sector should be led by people and communities. As a not-for-profit social enterprise, we (Impossible Ideas Inc.) are on a mission to build public service ventures that provide services that listen to people, that are non-paternalistic, tackle root-causes and build on people’s strengths. We ran a session at New Local’s fantastic Stronger Things event to test our ideas around how to place community power at the heart of the next generation of public services.
Our hypothesis:
We believe that the next generation of public services should be designed, governed and owned with the communities they serve.
Imagine a community powered fostering agency where community-groups, organisations and peer networks are involved in supporting a young person in care to learn, stay healthy, find a sense of community and build meaningful relationships. Imagine we’d partner with local businesses to provide internships and job opportunities for young people who are about to leave care. Imagine the community, carers and care leavers owning the fostering agency and helping to make decisions about where money is spent best, where innovation needs to happen and who to partner with — all in the best interest of young people and foster carers.
This community-powered approach can work for many of the public service ventures we’re currently working on; it just requires genuine community involvement from start to end — from designing through launching, steering and running a venture.
A community-powered venture design process
Phase 1: Identify
We will reach out to community representatives to understand the local context and identify opportunities for creating public sector ventures that would benefit communities. We will validate our venture concepts with community representatives to understand potential concerns and blockers early on and build the feedback into our design process.
Phase 2: Design
We will treat community representatives and people with lived experience as equal partners into our design process to unlock their creative potential and understand how local support networks, service providers and businesses can be integrated in delivering a public service venture. We will also discuss with them what co-ownership models will create the right incentives for community benefit.
Phase 3: Test
We will start building capabilities around leadership and governance among community representatives early on and will test this throughout our prototyping and pilot phase. We will share and discuss the results of our testing activities with community representatives to provide maximum transparency throughout the test.
Phase 4: Launch
We will bring in members of the community to be involved in venture leadership and governance. They will be actively involved in making decisions on how to scale the venture and who to partner with to provide the services of the venture. Community representatives will also help us to refine and test the co-ownership model as we’re scaling.
What we heard at Stronger Things
We loved having the chance to share our approach and get insight and feedback from the brilliant Stronger Things community. You can find the raw comments here, but we’ve summarised what stood out for us below.
“Please don’t come up with a decision and then ask
people if they are ok with it.” (Stronger Things Participant)
- Stay away from tokenistic involvement of community representatives. Many community groups had the experience that it often feels more like a box ticking exercise when they get involved rather than treating them as an equal stakeholder in a design process.
- Distinguish between the ‘real’ community and those who are believed to represent it. There is a danger that elected officials or leaders of local organisations put themselves forward as representatives although they are often not authentically connected to the people they serve.
- Treat people with lived experience as you would treat professionals. People with lived experience are experts in their field and provide valuable insights that you wouldn’t get anywhere else. Make sure that you reward that expertise when involving them in the design process.
Become part of the impossible movement
We love conversation and feedback, so please drop your thoughts into the comments or reach out for a coffee. Please also get in touch if you have an impossible idea for a venture or if you identified an area that urgently needs reinventing.
We’re currently working on a pipeline of ventures, including VILLAGE — a 21st Century fostering Agency and THRIVE — integrated temporary accommodation for families, and we’re still looking for delivery and funding partners to make them a reality — so please drop us a line if you want to have a chat.
