entrepreneurs manage community centres

Something which is totally firing me up, in a positive way, at work right now is our new entrepreneurial approach to managing community centres.

This has come about because of a decreasing interest from residents to get involved in running their centres, or, a desire to run them, but not make them inclusive or have them operating at anything even approaching capacity. Sometimes residents go rogue and begin to operate them as personal fiefdoms.  Some of them have taken no rental income in a systematic way.  There has been zero interest in any attempt at a business model.

Considering many of our centres are located on pieces of prime real estate and cost thousands to maintain a year, operating for 7 hours a week is desultory. We started our wake-up call last year by asking for a minimum of 20 hours a week to include at least one activity open to 6-16 year olds.  This could be something as basic as a music tutor operating on site.

Not all the centres are the most modern, most easily accessible of venues and we are limited to how long we can stay open because they are in residential areas, but they are still amazing resources and I am convinced that if we don’t sharpen up our act, at some point in the future, someone in the firm will come along and decide they can build a block of flats on the site and as they have not been effectively used, we are not going to have an argument to stand on.

 

The premise for our new way of working, is to look for an entrepreneur and allow them to work from the site in return for managing our community centre. We have upped this further by saying that if they take £x in rental income per year they can take a management fee up to £x.  So far we have two resident led and one young person led.  Peabody have a policy to support entrepreneurs.

In the early stages of our pilots the issues have been

Levels of leftover ‘stuff’ in our centres

Poor state of decoration

Set up costs (we have no budget – only the rental income)

 

However, I am enthused and they are enthused, even if to an extent it is finance driven. I think the long-term measure of success will be whether the local community rate the new model any better than the old cliques they also moaned about.  There can be resentment that A.N.Other is benefitting, even if they are not remotely interested in doing it themselves and that greater activity can lead to an increase in noise, cars dropping off etc.

https://www.communitycentresuk.com/

 

Watch this space.