3rd Blue Crowdfunding meeting: Crowdpolicy assigned to provide expert support to regional co-creation workshops
Crowdpolicy’s contribution in the Blue Crowdfunding project now extends to include support for civic crowdfunding co-creation workshops by regional partners, as decided in the 3rd project meeting.
The 3rd Blue Crowdfunding project meeting
The 3rd online meeting of the Blue Crowdfunding project was held online on the 20th and 21st of October 2020, with the participation of Crowdpolicy as an expert partner. The Blue Crowdfunding project aims to improve the skills of stakeholders in the blue growth economy sector in the Mediterranean region, by boosting innovation through participatory funding. In particular, it seeks to improve the competitiveness of blue economy SMEs through participatory funding and to develop the operational capacity of the Regions to use participatory funding.
The meeting agenda focused on progress reporting and next steps planning. Special attention was given to capacity building through regional training for SMEs, to showcasing successful pilots and lessons learned, and also to the series of civic crowdfunding co-creation workshops in progress within the project. It was in this context that Crowdpolicy was assigned to provide support for regional workshops organized by fellow partners, in its function as an expert partner of the Blue Crowdfunding project.
Civic crowdfunding co-creation workshops
Civic crowdfunding differs from other crowdfunding types in pursuing an objective of general interest and also in its focus on local projects instigated by citizens and civil society organizations. These usually belong to the public goods category of “urban commons”. The “co-creation” approach applied at the civic crowdfunding workshops is based on the idea that the presence of end-users provides insight into what is valuable to them, which is essential to the creative process. Moreover, co-creation relies on participants to provide feedback, generate new ideas and actively participate in the development of products and solutions collaboratively. All participants gain a greater sense of meaning and value from this process, while they feel more empowered and connected to the process goal. These offer greater opportunities for citizen input to influence policy decisions, and make co-creation an especially well-suited format for community, citizen organization and local government crowdsourcing workshops.
Crowdpolicy contributions and expertise
In this context, Crowdpolicy supported with expert input the online co-creation workshops of the Central Macedonia Region of Greece (24/11) and of the Albanian Vlora Region (3/12). At Central Macedonia, the company’s co-founder and technology & innovation coordinator, George Karamanolis, explained relevant concepts, available tools and application opportunities. Also, Crowdpolicy’s chief legal consultant Andreas Kyriakopoulos presented the institutional and legal framework that presently governs crowdfunding. Contrarily, the contribution to the Vlora Region workshop focused on participatory financing tools for civic works.
Crowdpolicy is the first Greek organization accepted as a member of the European Crowdfunding Network (ECN). It participates in the BCF project as an expert partner alongside ECN, E-zavod from Slovenia and Goteo Foundation from Spain.
The expertise collected by Crowdpolicy was utilized in the development of its own Crowdfunding platform, now a part of the company’s “CrowdApps” cloud suite of e-government and crowdsourcing apps.
The platform actively supports the participatory funding campaigns organized by Municipalities and third parties, by promoting the contributing individuals and stakeholders through the public display of their donations. Other platform features include:
- Display of approval and acceptance of donations
- Display of financial data and of donations’ results(photos of projects being implemented etc.)
- Provision of services and donations in kind by citizens, municipalities and private entities
- Publication of calls for expression of interest related to sponsorships.
Crowdpolicy’s crowdfunding platform enjoys several high-profile applications in Greece, among which at the Act4Greece crowdfunding campaign of the National Bank of Greece.
The Blue Crowdfunding project is supported by the INTERREG MED Programme of the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF).
