Our model
Citizen First turns lived experience into businesses that change lives. It pays people with lived experience of a social challenge a year's salary to build the business that solves it, and mobilises their place around them.
Two halves
People living a social challenge have the ideas and the drive to solve it, but rarely the time, the money or a way in. The institutions of their place have all three, but no reliable way to find them. Citizen First joins the two.
Activation, not consultation. Citizens aren't asked for their views; they're paid to build the solution, with their place mobilised behind them. In Liverpool, more than fifty organisations backed one cohort as customers, pilot partners, mentors and investors.
Five elements, designed to compound
The salary enables full-time commitment. Full-time commitment makes entrepreneurs credible partners for local institutions. Institutional engagement makes the ventures investable. And the accumulated relationships change what the place itself is able to do.
"It is this causal chain, not any single element, that defines the model."
Independent evaluation, 2026
A CV-less, open-call recruitment process that reaches deep into communities. We recruit for lived experience and entrepreneurial spirit, not qualifications or work history. In Liverpool, 87% of applicants had lived experience of economic disadvantage.
A year's Real Living Wage salary plus seed funding, so people can leave a job or come off benefits and build full time.
Small, tight-knit cohorts with a dedicated full-time business advisor on the ground.
Training, tools and expert mentoring in business experimentation, alongside tech development support.
Local institutions, public, private and civic, systematically mobilised around each entrepreneur, embedding their venture in the wider system from day one.
Track record
Developed with communities over seven years: trials with housing associations, a year in Essex, then the Liverpool City Region with the Metro Mayor, the Combined Authority and the University of Liverpool. Independently evaluated twice, in two places, by the same research team using the same method, with the return improving each time: £10.43 for every £1 invested in year one.
"Between them lies what enterprise policy calls the 'valley of death', the unpaid stretch between an idea and an investable business... Citizen First bridged it."
Independent evaluation, 2026
One year, one city region, £10.43 for every £1 invested.