Skip to main content
Crowdfunding: a collective investment model that keeps growing
With over 800 platforms created worldwide in under a decade, crowdfunding has found a position in the economic landscape as an alternative or complement to the traditional investment system, a collective confidence-based tool, for both project leaders and contributors. Individuals, companies, associations, startups and groups - it is a model that benefits everyone and is applicable to any business sector that wishes to get involved in participatory funding.

 

According to the latest figures of the alternative finance barometer in France, crowdfunding still has the wind in its sails; the amount collected increased by 36 % between the 1st half of 2017 and that of 2018. During the first half of 2018 almost 1,300,000 contributions were made.

 

Among the success stories of crowdfunding there are many that aim to have a positive impact on society that resonates with contributors who are searching for meaning. Let’s take the example of the film “Demain” (“Tomorrow”), a documentary that surveys the initiatives and solutions of several countries in the face of the environmental and social challenges of the 21st century. To increase their budget and finish the project, the film launched a crowdfunding campaign. The hoped-for target was 200,000 euros, but the campaign raised 444,390 euros, over a quarter of the film’s budget.

 

Financing solidarity projects and being agents for change

Among contributors, an increasing number are drawn towards crowdfunding dedicated to the social and solidarity economy (SSE) and “crowd impacting”. In France, around fifteen platforms now propose and subsidise projects with a high social or environmental impact or with an international solidarity approach.

 

The first crowdfunding platform, Babeldoor with a “gift for a gift” format, appeared in 2010. In order to offer a large range of resources to project leaders, the platform then diversified and offered a project co-creation system, combining crowdfunding and crowdsourcing, to collect funds, but also assistance, skills, and all the resources necessary for the development of socially useful projects. This brought meaning to saving, a movement that is increasing in popularity, notably with young savers looking for “useful” investments.

 

Crowdfunding platforms are a lever that allow the SSE to develop and attain their objectives in an area where traditional finance would have slowed them down. It is also a way of obtaining a guarantee of confidence on the viability of a project and its public interest, a way of raising awareness with decision-makers and investors.

 

Crowdfunding to implicate citizens in public decisions and develop a territory

Since December 2015, in France, crowdfunding has been open to regional and local authorities. A way of funding that lets them commit, either as partners in campaigns led by citizens, or as collectors for funding projects that benefit the collective interest.

 

For regional and local authorities, crowdfunding represents the opportunity to give their actions a new dimension. They associate themselves with movements to engage citizens and business to encourage development of the proximity economy and mobilise local savings. Beyond the economic lever, local authorities see in crowdfunding a way of involving local actors - inhabitants, associations, and companies - with public decisions from which they will, directly or indirectly, benefit. By mobilising local citizen, association or entrepreneurial engagement, local communities undertake a positive constructive approach to consolidating social connections.

 

Regional and local authorities are not the only entities to use crowdfunding to develop a territory. Citizen-entrepreneurs are at the origin of crowdfunding platforms dedicated to projects that create value and employment on a regional scale. For example, GwennegVendée Up, or Move Corsica.

 

Another innovative project that will soon be opening its virtual doors is Babelcoop “the cooperative platform for pioneers and builders of a direct utopia”, at the initiative of Hortense Garand, the founder of Babeldoor. Using the platform, groups, professionals and individuals owning wasteland and project leaders looking to develop a collective living space, can pool their ideas and resources. BabelCoop acts as an intermediary introducing project leaders likely to work together to regenerate areas with potential and, consequently, enhance patrimony, territories and collective ways of life.