Turning Kids Away Didn't Feel Right — So We Changed the Business

When we first started Training Cave, we set it up as a limited company. We didn't have a business plan. We didn't really know what we were doing — we just thought we were opening a boxing gym. People would pay for sessions and memberships, and that income would keep the doors open. It was a simple model, and on paper, it made sense.

But after about 18 months, we started to notice something.

Young people were regularly turning up without any money. Some couldn't afford a membership. Some didn't have the right equipment. Others came from families facing challenges far bigger than whether they could pay for a boxing session. They'd hang around the door, unsure whether to come in, unsure whether they were even allowed to.

We kept letting them train anyway, because turning them away didn't feel right. These were often the young people who could benefit most from what a good boxing gym provides: structure, discipline, positive relationships, a sense of belonging, and adults who genuinely believed in them. For a lot of them, the gym wasn't really about boxing at all. It was somewhere to go. Somewhere they were noticed, held to a standard, and taken seriously.

But there was a problem

If we kept letting people train for free while operating entirely as a commercial gym, we'd eventually struggle to pay the bills. Coaches still needed paying. Rent still needed covering. Equipment doesn't last forever. And if Training Cave didn't survive, we couldn't help anybody — not the kids paying full price, and not the ones who couldn't pay at all.

That's when we realised we needed a different way.

Finding a Different Way

If we genuinely wanted to reach young people facing financial barriers, exclusion or a lack of opportunity, we couldn't rely on their families being able to pay. But we also couldn't build an organisation that depended entirely on goodwill, because goodwill doesn't pay wages and it doesn't scale.

We had to find a middle ground — a model that let us stay true to why we started this in the first place, while making sure the whole thing didn't collapse under its own good intentions.

So in 2019, Training Cave became a not-for-profit social enterprise.

That decision opened new doors. It gave us access to funding specifically intended to create social impact — funding that simply isn't available to a standard commercial gym. It helped us build partnerships with schools, local authorities, businesses and other community organisations, all of whom were far more willing to work with an organisation whose purpose was written into its structure, not just its marketing. Most importantly, it meant that any profit we generated could be reinvested straight back into our purpose — better programmes, better coaches, better facilities, and more opportunities for young people.

On paper, it was just a change in structure. In reality, it changed everything about how we operated, who we could work with, and who we could reach.

Purpose Isn't Enough on Its Own

Becoming a social enterprise meant we had to start thinking like a business, properly — more than we ever had before.

I've learned that a social enterprise needs to be run well. Good intentions don't cover payroll. We still need to generate income, manage costs, measure our impact and build reserves. We need a surplus so we can survive difficult months, invest in our team, and keep improving what we offer. Having a strong purpose doesn't automatically create a sustainable organisation — you still have to build one, brick by brick, the same as any other business.

This was probably the hardest lesson of the whole journey. It's tempting to think that if your intentions are good enough, everything else will fall into place. It won't. Missed targets, cash flow gaps and burnt-out staff don't care how good your cause is. A social enterprise that isn't run properly doesn't just fail as a business — it fails the people who were relying on it.

For us, social enterprise means using business as a way to solve a social problem. Every part of what we do now plays a different role in that:

• The commercial side contributes to our sustainability, generating income that isn't dependent on grants or goodwill
• Our education work allows us to provide more intensive, structured support to young people who need it most
• Funding and partnerships help us reach young people who might otherwise miss out entirely
• And the boxing gym creates the culture, relationships and sense of belonging that hold everything else together

None of these elements works particularly well on its own. It's the combination that makes Training Cave what it is.

What's Next

We're now working towards becoming a Charitable Incorporated Organisation — the next stage of our journey. It's a structure that protects our purpose and helps us create greater impact over the long term, beyond me or anyone else at Training Cave right now. That last part matters to me. This was never supposed to be about one person, and the structure we choose should make sure it never becomes that.

There's still a lot for us to learn and build. We want to become less reliant on any single source of income, create stronger partnerships, and develop assets that make Training Cave sustainable for future generations — not just something that survives while I'm around to keep pushing it forward, but something that outlasts any one individual involved.

The biggest lesson I've learned is that doing good and building a sustainable organisation shouldn't be competing ambitions. For a long time, it felt like we had to choose — either stay true to why we started, or make the numbers work. The right social enterprise model brings them together, and once we found that balance, everything else started to make a lot more sense.

The young people we support aren't customers, and they aren't statistics on a funding report. They're not a line in an impact measurement spreadsheet, and they're not a story we tell to win the next grant. They are the reason Training Cave exists — and every decision we make about structure, income and sustainability ultimately comes back to that one, simple fact.