Crowdfund London is open for pitches now. You could also get up to £50,000 match funding from the Mayor too. Innovative ideas are welcome e.g. reimagining an old coal line, making a new community hub or creating much needed new urban green spaces. The main proviso is that your community-led project aspires to improve your local area. Apply via Spacehive by 13 January 2020. Read more »
Listen to Robert speak on crowdfunding at the Portobello Business Centre You Tube channel. This two minute bite-size video touches on what crowdfunding us useful for, what to do to have a successful campaign and when other more traditional forms of fundraising are more appropriate. Read more »
If you’ve ever asked yourself this have a look at my piece for the Directory of Social Change when I discuss why you might want to use crowdfunding and what you can get from crowdfunding. I touch on benefits of the approach including access to funding, engagement with supporters and market testing and validation. I also explore the impact on your organisational fundraising – both strategy and implementation, using a social media foot print that is (almost certainly) underutilised and embracing social innovation in your daily practice. If you have any questions, comments or if you want to kick the idea around a bit Read more »
After being involved in numerous crowdfunding campaigns – both successful and unsuccessful – here are my top five things to be aware of. At its most basic crowdfunding is digital storytelling It’s not easy It’s not free Think about your investors How much money do you need from them? Why do you need it / what will you do with their money? When will you repay them? How will you repay them? Practice makes perfect Read more »
Congratulations to Shoot, a Red Ochre client we supported under the Innovating for Growth Programme at the British Library IP Centre. They have been successful in raising over £400,ooo to finance the growth of their online gardening portal. For more information see Crowdcube. Read more »
Friend of Red Ochre, Big Bang Labs, has asked us to share this video with to raise awareness of the Generation W campaign. GenW is a social innovation programme combining face to face experiential learning with a future online intelligent video platform to design, access and deliver a two way inter-generational knowledge transfer and in-work programme to break the barriers across ages and to provide integrated solutions to employment, well-being and community development. Sergio is pitching to Richard Branson and needs 500+ votes to get to the next stage. If you can please vote here. Read more »
Long time friend and client of Red Ochre, Stickyboard, is looking to raise £50,000 to support its growth. They’re almost half way there – and they need your help. To be a part of the growth story, help local communities and secure a solid investment look at their pitch on crowdcube or youtube. Read more »
Uday joined a number of fellow experts on the 14th of November to challenge, guide and assist a further cohort of RSA Fellows who are seeking to raise funding for their social enterprise projects through crowd funding. A challenge for many of the participants is to think beyond the specific event that they are seeking funds for and to demonstrate that they have thought about long term sustainability and that their intervention will have demonstrable social impact. Bryan Zheng Zhang who is researching crowd funding at Cambridge gave a summary of tips given by Indegogo’s CEO at the Disrupt Europe Read more »
Many thanks for Dianne Cornes of Youth Business International, an international initiative of the Princes Trust who reviewed our recent session on crowdfunding. Click here for her blog, and click here for Youth Business International’s website. Read more »
I had the good fortune to be able to speak on crowdfunding at the School of Social Development and Public Policy Beijing Normal (Teaching) University last week. The students and delegates were more sophisticated and better informed than I anticipated. Read more »
When: 20th November Where: City Business Library, Guildhall, London Cost: Free Read more »
Grand Designs host Kevin McCloud has successfully raised the largest investment ever on a UK crowdfunding platform. His Hab Housing business, which is looking to build affordable and environmentally-friendly housing and was set up in 2007, has secured £1.9 million through a round which was reportedly 90 per cent overfunded. Read more about the story here. Read more »
Last week I had a few hours spare while I was coming back from Utrecht, and I took the opportunity to stop in and meet Niels Jansen (you can follow him on Twitter @NieJa) from the 1% Club in Amsterdam. To say Niels is the communications manager of a crowdfunding platform is doing a disservice to both! The 1%Club only asks for one percent of what anyone has to offer, and is the largest crowdfunder in the Netherlands, and Niels is more of a digital story teller than a common or garden Comms Manager. What struck me about 1%, aside from Read more »
Red Ochre team attended an interesting RSA event that discussed the future of crowdfunding. Two topics highlighted at the event particularly resonated with us. The first is how crowdfunding finds itself at the intersection between a finance strategy, a market research tool and a social voice platform. Starting from the latter, during the discussion crowdfunding has been described as a modern patronage tool; backers use money to endorse projects they believe in. Other examples discussed included local governments match-funding projects located in their area and successfully backed by citizens. Crowdfunding represents indeed a great market research tool that can reveal Read more »
