Pride in Place / Community
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Dimension 04 of 05

Crowd in capital

Treating Pride in Place's £20m as a floor, not a ceiling - drawing in private, public, and philanthropic investment.

Crowd in capitalOne central block attracts four smaller blocks around it.

In one sense £20m is a significant investment, and Pride in Place is one of the most ambitious programmes of its type since the New Deal for Communities. In another sense it is a small amount of money set against the scale of what many neighbourhoods need.

The most successful community-led regeneration projects have managed to crowd in more investment than they started with. This is helpful not just to boost the level of spending but because private, philanthropic, and state funding move in different ways and incentivise different behaviours.

Sometimes funding can be crowded in directly, such as by match-funding a community share offer so that residents' money goes further. At other times, the process is less direct and more relational - for example, you can use Pride in Place as a reason to bring funders together to forge a shared sense of purpose.

The goal, ultimately, is not just to secure one-off pledges, like a charity fundraiser. It is to deliver Pride in Place in a way that leaves behind a healthier and more resilient local financial ecosystem.

Case studies

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  • Community shares (opens in a new tab)

    Co-operatives UK · United Kingdom

    Residents buy shares in a community business - a pub, a shop, a building - and become its members. More than £245m has been raised this way since 2012, investing in over 1,000 businesses, 92% of which are still trading. A Booster Fund invested £1.22m in 2025 and unlocked a further £5.54m.

  • Bramley Baths (opens in a new tab)

    West Leeds Dispatch · Leeds

    A 120-year-old swimming pool, community-run since 2013, needed a new roof and better insulation. Its first community share offer in early 2025 raised £374,360 from 531 investors against a £350,000 target.

  • Plunkett UK (opens in a new tab)

    Plunkett UK Impact Report 2026 · United Kingdom

    869 rural community-owned businesses were trading in 2025, among them 467 shops and 215 pubs, with a combined turnover of £174m and around 22,000 volunteers. 98% are still trading at five years, against roughly 40% for conventional small businesses.

  • Power to Change (opens in a new tab)

    Power to Change · England

    Set up in 2015 with a £150m endowment to back community business, Power to Change has levered significant additional investment into the sector as well as helping to build the field.

  • Strategic Neighborhood Fund (opens in a new tab)

    Invest Detroit · Detroit, United States

    A city-led fund pooling philanthropic money with public investment across 10 neighbourhoods, each with a co-produced plan. $75m has been raised from 19 funders since 2016, levering in more than $110m of public investment and $262m in total. More than 70% of projects are led by developers of colour or local community development organisations.

Most relevant practical materials

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Other creative ways to explore this dimension

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