Supporting community-led ideas

Lots of innovations are led by people in communities.

It starts when people see a gap or opportunity in the world as it affects them – not always the way official policies and big services see the world. People have ideas, or have heard of a good thing somewhere else and want to try it in their community. We help people check out what is needed and possible, and get things going.

People also lead innovations when they are working in partnership with other organisations – when there is real co-production using the strengths, skills, resources, positions and ideas of everyone involved.

Supporting your idea

We can help you at each stage:

Check out and develop your ideas, so you know it is what other people need, is feasible and will make a difference.
Choose a legal model for incorporating your project or organisation.
Make co-production and partnerships work well.
Find the allies who will help you and resources to make it happen.
Recruit, train and support a board of trustees.
Understand where the likely difficulties will be, so you can plan how to reduce or deal with them.
Keep people in your group or community involved - including the folk who are cautious or don’t support the idea - to make the idea even better and the change easier.
Adapt to new circumstances, or change how you work.
Share what you have developed with other places, so more people can benefit.

Finding ways to fund the work

We can help you find funding to help your idea get started or adapt.

You can get in touch by emailing Louise@otbds.org or using our contact form to talk about what support you’d like.

For in-depth support, we charge an affordable fee to cover our staff time. If we don’t have availability, we’ll try to connect you with people working on similar aims.

Stories of community-led success

We've helped community organisations like Support Choices, Mind Waves and Central Wellbeing get started and become sustainable, from business development to building community connections.

Explore our project library to learn about our work supporting different communities’ ideas.