P2P Crowdfunding – P2P Foundation

Project Of The Day: Community Shares

Nathan Slater — Thu, 26 May 2016 02:01:33 +0000

When I lived in Kenya, my friend, Kamau, needed to raise funds to purchase the storefront where he operated his grocery business. Even with a distant relative in the local bank, he could only borrow half the funds he needed.

I offered to help some, but my contribution wouldn’t come close to covering the other half.

Kamau shook his head. “Save it for the Harambee.”

“The what?”

Harambee means “all pull together” in Swahili. The first Kenyan president adopted it as the national motto.

Kamau explained it this way, ” I need to purchase the storefront so that I may continue providing for my family. I cannot afford the purchase price, so I will appeal to the public for help.”

Over a hundred people showed up for the event. There was plenty of food and chai. One by one people walked up and donated. Kamau acknowledged them by name. He came close to his goal. And some relatives helped him with the remainder.

They don’t legally own equity in his business, but they probably won’t go hungry.

This sort of all pulling together is catching on in Western countries. Its a bit more formal, but groups like Community Shares are leading the way.

Extracted from: http://www.communityshares.org.uk/find-out-more/what-are-community-shares

What are Community Shares?

Community shares can save local shops and pubs, finance renewable energy schemes, transform community facilities, support local food growing, fund new football clubs, restore heritage buildings, and above all, build stronger, more vibrant, and independent communities.

Extracted from: http://communityshares.org.uk/resources/handbook/equity-social-enterprises

1.1 Equity for social enterprises

The term “community shares” refers to non-transferable, withdrawable share capital; a form of equity unique to co-operative and community benefit society legislation. This body of corporate law provides many of the same features as company legislation, such as corporate body and limited liability status, but it also has some unique features, especially in its provisions for members and share capital.

Community shares are an ideal way for communities to invest in enterprises serving a community purpose. The remainder of this section explains how community shares work and why co-operative and community benefit society legislation is the preferred legal form for community shares, the business model underpinning community shares, and the many starting points for community share initiatives.

Extracted from: http://www.communityshares.org.uk/standard-mark-0

The Community Shares Standard Mark is awarded by the Community Shares Unit to offers that meet national standards of good practice.

These standards ensure that:

The offer document and application form are easy to understand
You are provided with all the facts you need to make an informed decision
The facts are supported by the annual accounts and/or business plan for the society
Nothing in the documents is purposefully incorrect, confusing or misleading

Societies are asked to sign a Code of Practice requiring them, among other things, to give the public a right of complaint to the Community Shares Unit.

Photo by khym54

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Free The Sun – Crowdfunding Campaign

Guy James — Sun, 31 May 2015 19:00:25 +0000

This looks like a project well worth supporting:

We are crowdfunding to connect communities, entrepreneurs & makers
with the world’s most powerful energy source, by releasing free construction methods and guides.

Free the Sun!

The energy from the sun is free, with free construction guides to build high-powered solar concentrators, anyone, anywhere could tap into that free energy.

Imagine if a technology was developed that cut by over two thirds the cost of tapping solar? That made building a solar powered business anywhere straightforward, easy, affordable and low risk? And if communities could use solar power from morning to night for multiple purposes? Could this change everything?

The project’s website is here.

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Goteo: Cloudfunding the Commons

Stacco Troncoso — Fri, 11 Jul 2014 10:32:32 +0000

Here’s a short article written by Jeffrey “Bezdomby” Andreoni, originally published by our friends at Shareable. It provides a brief overview of Goteo, our go-to P2P Commons-oriented crowdfunding platform. Please read and share!

Ever wanted to contribute to a crowdfunding campaign but didn’t have money to spare? Goteo, a now mature crowdfunding website for social and open source projects out of Spain, allows campaigners to crowdsource their outstanding balance through non-financial means, resulting in what the founders call “cloudfunding.”

Cloudfunding is a way of drawing on a larger, more diverse bank of capital that you may require to complete your task, but didn’t know you had at your disposal. These contributions can include timebank hours, skillsharing, alternative currencies, and more.

When you browse projects on Goteo, you can respond to calls for “non-economic needs.” In many cases, your skills are worth more than money! Responses for non-financial help are all done publicly so you can join the conversation at any time. To date there have been over 2,000 responses for non-financial help.

In addition, Goteo partners with local authorities who will directly benefit from these commons-based projects and in certain cases they co-finance the projects, matching dollar-for-dollar the donations people give, up to €50.

The Basque government has co-financed about €10,000 in health related projects and are continuing to invest.

The Goteo philosophy is unique amoung crowdfunding sites because the projects they choose are all commons based:

We need individuals, civic organizations, and public and private entities of all stripes, whose common focus is an interest in the development of a collective, open source, knowledge-based society. Goteo differs from other models of crowdfunding by positioning itself as a social network composed of promoters, co-financers, and collaborators. -From Goteo.org “About” page.

Goteo isn’t just a crowdfunding platform but also a social network for innovators that support projects through the various aforementioned channels or simply by connecting people with others in their network. It is managed by the Spanish non-profit “Open Source Foundation” which guides the initiative.

Goteo has already established itself fairly well within the free and open source software community worldwide and also with many local authorities throughout Spain and in Latin America. Now they are looking to expand their model a bit further and, considering that the site’s interface is already in five languages, it looks like it will work

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