Origin of ACBBA

The Community Based Business Advice Model

We emerged from a European funded project called Reflex, which piloted a new approach to promoting enterprise in disadvantaged communities. This approach is referred to as the Reflex or Community Based Business Advice Model. Community Based Business Advice is simply business support services being provided directly by a community organisation as an in-house, core service area.
The central plank of community based business advice is the business advisers working within community groups:

• They have the skills to assess business proposals, advice clients and develop business plans
• They are part of the communities they serve and know their clients well, not just via the business support function but other types of support as well as cultural activities
• In this sense they already have an ongoing, longer-term, relationship with clients, which is something so difficult for mainstream business support organisations to establish
• They are the link between mainstream service providers and BME businesses