The charity sector has seen dramatic funding cuts which is making service delivery increasingly difficult. According to the NCVO, the government grants for public services were halved between 2004 and 2014 and has continued to drop ever since. In response to this, charities have started to look for new innovative ways to sustain their services.

To build a more sustainable income stream, some organisations have transformed into social enterprises by reviewing their resources, legal and business structure. One of these organisations is 1 Love Community. We’ve spoken to Natalie Dinsmore, the Project Manager of 1 Love Community, to hear how she turns empty spaces near Canary Wharf into thriving community spaces through furniture renovation and sale, health and well-being sessions, local healthy food growing, cycle repair and maintenance, a cafe and anything else the community may need.

How does 1 Love Community work?
In simple terms, we work work with property developers, landowners to be able to obtain meanwhile leases at buildings that are due for renovation, demolition or land which is due for new construction. We go in and offer community projects. What that means, we go into an area and see what the community needs, it could be new mums for example in need of space. We create community projects that essentially address issues of space according to immediate community needs.

Do you have any inspirational moments?
I have inspiring moments absolutely, every single day. We are very busy with our work – constantly optimising. What makes us do it is the engagement with local people. We want to be able to give the community the tools they need to make a difference in their own life.

Last week a mother walked in to our shop on Pepper street and I got chatting to her. Her son walked in and was behaving in an ‘unorthodox’ manner. He was seven years old but wouldn’t engage with me, started climbing on the furniture. The mother said he’s got severe autism and she explained that so did her other son. She told me that in September, the funding had been cut for children with autism in the Tower Hamlets area so now parents with children with disabilities are struggling to find spaces and support groups. We had a 20 minute chat and I told her ‘Look, we’ve got spaces – we can offer you room, what is it you want to do? Maybe we can get that going, raise some awareness.’

Parents of autistic children often have issues being in public spaces and their behaviour is misunderstood – we need to give them a space where they can just feel ‘normal’ and not have to worry about being judged. Within two days, she came back with a business plan to the best of her ability, untrained in this. She said these are all the ideas I have: ‘this group and that activity.’ She looked me in the eye and said ‘I really want to bring awareness back to this area of people with children with learning difficulties and disabilities. Now, within the space of a week, we are arranging space for her and time for her programme.

For me, what is inspiring is having the space and time to create opportunity out of local people, with support that allows them to support their community according to their needs. Their funding was cut, but to be able to say to her: ‘here is a space for free that you can use twice a week for your service’ is rewarding. She is gonna feel all the love and encouragement for her own life, her children and likeminded parents in the community.

What are the challenges you are facing?
The main challenges we are facing are a lack of permanency in spaces, we do what we can in the spaces that we have, and as quickly as we can. What we need is an agreement about the space for 3 years as opposed to now, where we are hoping every 6 months that our lease will be extended, which makes it difficult for us to deliver a programme for the community.

1 Love Community is one of many charities that have alternative income streams to sustain themselves. Increasingly, ELBA has seen charities incorporate cafes, consultancy, training and other income-generating aspects into their work.

1Love Community is currently looking for a more permanent space to carry out its services in.

Furthermore, they are currently advertising for legal, HR and business process skills consultants to build capacity in their organisation in order to meet the high demand for its services.

If you would like to hear more about these opportunities, you can contact Henriette Johansen, henriette.johansen@elba-1.org.uk.