Crowdpolicy at the 1st Annual Assembly of the Blue Growth Community in Montpellier on 4–5 February 2020

In the context of the Blue Crowdfunding project, Crowdpolicy participated in the 1st annual Blue Growth ecosystem assembly, which took place on 4–5 February 2020 in Montpellier, France.

This two-day event represented the first occasion for the new community to meet. The first day represented the annual assembly of the members of the community: the core members belonging to the Med Blue Growth projects and the associated partners and the enlarged members represented by the relevant stakeholders that have brought contents and knowledge and will continue to do it. The second day was dedicated to the setup of the advisory board(s): the body that supports the transferring process of the project allowing the matching of results’ “givers” and “receivers”.

Crowdpolicy participated in the annual assembly as a special technology provider and representative for the Blue Crowdfunding project. Crowdpolicy was represented by Mr. Georgios Karamanolis, Co-founder, CTO/CIO and Mr. Michael Phallidas, Managing Director.

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 develop the operational capacity of the Regions to use participatory funding.

Crowdpolicy will participate as a technology provider in the “European Territorial Cooperation Program Interreg MED 2014–2020”, entitled “Developing the skills of blue economy players to effectively use participatory funding”.

Mr. Georgios Karamanolis briefly outlined the digital transformation solutions of Crowdpolicy, the goals and vision of the Blue Crowdfunding program as well as the usefulness and importance of Crowdfunding as an alternative funding and investment policy. He also participated as an expert in panel 4 on Rational Use of Funds and Durable Financial Instruments.

Watch the video:

The Crowdfunding platform is part of the CrowdApps e-government cloud suite.

Crowd Apps is an integrated suite of cloud applications for cities, municipalities, regions and local communities. They enable participation, communication, transparency, accountability, e-Government, local development and volunteering and they are contemporary governance best practices. All the applications work in a cloud environment. Crowdpolicy provides continuous operational and technical support with their proper use. You can check out their use, useful apps and related articles by selecting the application you are interested in.

The Crowdfunding platform promotes participatory donations and the active support of the Municipality by individuals and other stakeholders through the public display of their donations.

The platform provides monitoring of the actions carried out by the Municipality to support and fund its activity.

Specifically, the Crowdfunding platform supports the following:

• Display of approval and acceptance of donations
• Display of the financial data and results of the donations (e.g. photos of the projects being implemented etc.)
• Provision of services and donations in kind by citizens / municipalities / private entities
• Publication of calls for expression of interest for sponsorships, by the Municipality or bodies of the Municipality.

The donations are mainly used to fund public benefit and charity causes, or to fund art, the Public Sector or Public Bodies whose role is to perform tasks of public interest. The investors-donors fund projects or efforts/actions of their choice for moral satisfaction reasons without exchange. However, sometimes they receive a non-monetary item that might be offered by a Body, such as a note of thanks or a gift of symbolic/commemorative value. Open calls for supporting projects concerning culture, infrastructures, projects and actions of the civil society etc. are published through the platform.

The platform incorporates good practices already developed in the field of crowdfunding by other stakeholders to inform citizens and showcase relevant experiences.

Related Links:

Crowdpolicy: www.crowdpolicy.com

Interreg Meditarenian Blue Growth: https://blue-growth.interreg-med.eu

CrowdApps: hello.crowdapps.net