The population of European cities is becoming increasingly dens, young and superdivers. At the same time, public authorities are decreasing their social cohesion programs. Civic crowdfunding, focused on social and local impact, creates a financial and a social surplus. Growfunding brought all EU CF-platform together in Jan. ’18.We aim to create a learning network to exchange coaching programs for projects focused on urban placemaking, social inclusion, community development and circular economy.
Brussels, Belgium (Growfunding) / Paris, France (Co-city) / Bologna, Italy (Gingerideas) / ...
Civic crowdfunding focuses on social impact, rather than on financial success. Citizen can raise and finance own projects, independent from government. They can take up an active role in decision-making and allocation of funding while learning new skills if coached properly.
A year from now expertise around civic crowdfunding coaching trajectories will be implemented and shared across Europe. Through workshops, visits and publications we want to train new local platforms in other cities by sharing methodologies and models.
After building up a theoretical framework on how crowdfunding can help to improve everyday urban life, tackling societal challenges and boosting self-organisational skills in a 'learning by doing' way. The outcome of this research will provide hand-on, practical methodologies (publications, videos, guidelines, infographics, ...) to easily set up new civic crowdfunding platforms in other European urban areas and articulate recommendations to include local business communities and authorities.
A booming urban population brings societal, cultural and environmental challenges. An ongoing economic crisis asks for alternative financial instruments to provide unconventional solutions to tackle these challenges. A rising mistrust of citizens in top-down approaches encourages self-organisation.
Existing platforms will pass on their expertise how to set up a platform, how to train project holders, how to include local businesses and authorities in a matching fund, how to build up a social network in the 'crowd', ...
Any feedback is welcome! We will be happy to get in touch with civic platforms unknown for us and to include them in our research and networking activities. We would also like to learn how we can engage business community and local authorities in civic crowdfunding, through for example matching fund