Hundreds of members of the public walk down a residential street looking hopeful

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Unlocking our nation's hidden entrepreneurs

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The people closest to social challenges often have the best business ideas to solve them — but the least ability to act. They are our country's biggest untapped resource.

We find and back these hidden entrepreneurs , providing a year's salary, seed funding and specialist support, and mobilising local businesses and institutions around them.

The result: communities with genuine agency over change - with local people turning their lived experience into businesses with real impact, generating millions in social value in the process.

Citizen first

A new type of civic infrastructure

£6.26 of social return for every £1 invested in the first year alone - independent evaluation.

The UK has built infrastructure for business, and infrastructure for the public sector. What’s missing is infrastructure for communities. Our Citizen First model is that missing activation layer — enabling local people to turn lived experience of social challenges into innovative businesses backed by local institutions.

An independent evaluation by the University of Essex of our approach found the model creates substantial economic and social value by backing people with lived experience to build real businesses and mobilising people and organisations around them.

"The principles should be taken as transformational trends for the future of community development.”
University of Essex

Our portfolio

Citizen first LCR

Citizen First is currently transforming lives in the Liverpool City Region

Hidden entrepreneurs were recruited from local communities through our CV-less process. Backed by the Mayor of Liverpool, University of Liverpool, Fusion21 Foundation and local businesses, each is paid a year's salary to build a business rooted in their lived experience of health and care challenges.

20x oversubscribed

90% of applicants had experience of economic disadvantage

50+ organisations actively engaged

finding, suppporting and backing the entrepreneurs

33% of entrepeneurs secured funding in first 6 months

through investment or commercial partnership

Citizen First LCR

Our team

partner with us

Bring Citizen First to your community

We're ready to scale Citizen First to communities across the country. Whether you're an anchor institution, combined authority, university, local business, or place-based funder, we'd welcome a conversation about how we can work together.‍

Partner with us

Our portfolio

I believe Public Life has the potential to change the way we tackle our country's most pressing social problems.

Dave Allan

Founder, ?WhatIf! Innovation

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Where James leads brave people follow and they and their communities reap the rewards.

Karen Badenoch

Hidden entrepreneur participant and Founder of Trusted Money Confidence

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