Community businesses offered up to £6k extra funding through Crowdfunder Crowdmatch
Melanie May | 19 November 2019 | News
Community businesses can apply for up to £6,000 of extra funding if they use the Crowdmatch function on Crowdfunder to raise cash for their projects before Saturday 30 November.
This is a result of Community Business Crowdmatch, a partnership between Crowdfunder and Power to Change, which offers extra funding for successful crowdfunding campaigns that are run for the benefit of their communities.
So far, for every £1 pledged by Power to Change, £2.15 has been matched by the local community, increasing the amount of capital raised for community businesses using the programme by 115%. In total nearly £100,000 from 1,019 supporters has been raised for seven community businesses, with an average pledge of £60.53.
These include Norwich Mustard, and Equal Care Co-op in Halifax. Norwich Mustard saw more than 180 people donate to a Crowdfunder campaign to start Norwich’s own cooperative, community-owned company to produce mustard in the region after Colman’s announced it was moving out of the town, raising £14,000, £6,000 of which was crowdmatched by Power to Change.
Equal Care Co-op, which offers fairly paid social care services, raised £22,050 with 198 supporters, £6,000 of which was matched by Power to Change.
To be eligible for the extra funds, organisations must meet the four criteria of a community business:
- Locally rooted
- Accountable to the local community
- Trading for the benefit of the local community
- Have a broad community impact
Eligible community businesses can seek extra funding from Power to Change on a first-come, first-served basis and funding will be allocated by the end of November 2019.
To apply, community businesses need to set up their project on the Crowdfunder site and tick the ‘Extra funding’ box.
Naomi Sampson, Programme Manager at Power to Change, added:
“This partnership with Crowdfunder has allowed community businesses to raise much needed funds, but at the same time it has presented people in their local communities with an opportunity to engage with these businesses where they traditionally might not have before.
“We encourage any existing community businesses or those with an idea for a community business to consider starting a Crowdfunding application to appeal to their local community, with the incentive of having funds matched by Power to Change.”Advertisement
Jason Nuttall, Programme Director at Crowdfunder, said:
“Community businesses have many of the ingredients which help to make crowdfunding a success, they have strong community support and are usually able to offer some great products or services as rewards to backers. Coupling that with match funding from Power to Change all goes to help projects run successful crowdfunding campaigns.”
About Melanie May
Melanie May is a journalist and copywriter specialising in writing both for and about the charity and marketing services sectors since 2001. She can be reached via thepurplepim.com.