Our impact
Our vision at People’s Economy is of economies that are democratic, equitable and liveable, and enable communities to meet their needs and priorities.
To achieve this, we:
-Build deep, long-term relationships with communities experiencing economic injustice and work together to achieve economic change
-Remove barriers and create routes into economic change work for communities experiencing injustice
-Invest in the sustainable development of People’s Economy to scale our impact and live our values.
Some of our recent impact highlights include:
Over 250 people have attended our events and workshops building economic skills, knowledge and confidence. 89% of people who attended our events and workshops felt that they increased their knowledge and 95% said they would recommend us to a friend or colleague.
23 changemakers across Birmingham – including a nursery manager, a housing campaigner and a community hub manager at a local college – went on a year-long journey with us to understand and reimagine the city’s economy. The second cohort of this course kicked off in January 2024.
Working in partnership with the University of East London we supported young people involved in the Youth Justice Service in the London Borough of Newham to explore how they want to shape the council’s flagship Community Wealth Building strategy.
We developed our new five-year strategy, in consultation with over one hundred individuals and organisations, including past participants in our programmes, old and new partners, our community ambassador board, staff and trustees. Ninety-two people attended our online strategy launch event at the start of 2023.
As part of a collaborative partnership, we have been supporting the development of a community research network in Gwynedd, Wales. This included training and supporting nine community researchers across the Slate valleys of Ogwen, Ffestiniog and Nantlle to explore what their communities feel they need to be able to understand, reimagine and ultimately shape tourism in the region.
Through sharing learning from the work we have done to support communities to build their knowledge, skills and confidence on the economy, we supported Barrow Cadbury Trust to set up a community and civil society Economic Justice Alliance in Birmingham which was launched in June 2023.
We worked in partnership with the Bank of England to deliver‘ The Economy Hub’, their digital community platform. We explored several in focus topics that relate to policy work across the Bank including the housing crisis, the climate crisis, cost-of-living and the digital world and money. In August 2022, People’s Economy chaired a public Q&A with Huw Pill, the Bank of England’s Chief Economist. He answered questions about the rising cost of living and what the Bank is doing about it.
Our news and entertainment platform ecnmy.org hit a new milestone, having reached over two million unique users to date. We have continued to explore and breakdown important news stories in our ‘What’s Just Happened’ newsletter. Respondents rated it an average of 8/10 for enjoyment and 9/10 on helping make the economy more understandable.
As part of our partnership with Luminate to build broader awareness, understanding and support of the need for audit reform, we produced a series of six case studies from a diverse range of people that demonstrated the human impact of the audit failure at BHS, Carillion, Patisserie Valerie and Thomas Cook. One of our case studies was picked up for further coverage in the Financial Times.
How we capture our impact
We aim to take a continuous learning approach to all of the activities that we undertake at People’s Economy. That means:
1
We collect data using a two-minute survey for all participants and collaborators in our education and co-production activities. This helps us get top-level feedback on our impact and to monitor the diversity of the participants that we are engaging with.
2
Whenever we’re delivering an extended piece of work or project we produce a monitoring and evaluation plan. This sets out the specific measurement tools and indicators that will be used and how the data collected will be analysed.
3
We collect data on engagement with our digital outputs and our overall organisational impact on a rolling basis, and review it regularly together as a whole staff team as part of a monthly discussion on what we have learned.
Our annual reports
As a registered charity, People’s Economy submits an annual report and accounts to our regulator the Charity Commission each year. The reports are all available for public viewing (note that pre-2023 reports will refer to us by our old name, Economy):
People’s Economy Annual Report and Accounts
Economy Annual Report and Accounts
Economy Annual Report and Accounts
Economy Annual Report and Accounts