Crowdpolicy at the Blue Crowdfunding kick off meeting in Slovenia
On January 22, 2020, Slovenia hosted the Kick Off Meeting for the Blue Crowdfunding project, which was attended by 14 stakeholders from 9 Mediterranean countries, including 5 chambers of the blue economy, 3 participatory funding organizations, 2 universities and 4 regions.
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. Michael Psallidas, Managing Director of Crowdpolicy, presented Social Crowdfunding as well as open innovation and e-government solutions with the CrowdApps application suite.
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.
“Blue Growth” is the long-term strategy to support the sustainable growth of the maritime sector. This strategy recognizes that the seas and oceans are drivers of the European economy and have a great potential for innovation and growth. It is the contribution of the Integrated Maritime Policy to the achievement of the “Europe 2020” strategy goals for smart, sustainable and inclusive growth.
Innovative actions within the context of blue economy in the Mediterranean region have not been developed as in other regions of Europe (e.g. Northern Europe), thus negatively affecting access to innovative solutions in the market. The lack of adequate funding is one of the main reasons for this situation. It should be noted that the EU Member States in the Mediterranean are having difficulty attracting funding and investments for innovation in the context of blue economy and growth.
Crowdfunding can bridge the gap between developing an innovative idea through research and accessing it as a commercial product or service.
It can be an appropriate lever for the commercial testing of innovative solutions on the market, thus reducing the need for government funding or loans. It should be noted that the amount of participatory funding globally is more than € 30 billion per year while this amount is expected to increase to € 300 billion per year by 2025.
The project aims to develop the skills of SMEs active in the blue economy sector, by focusing its actions on the use of participatory funding tools, and create a transnational cluster with participatory funding services, implement training programs targeted at entrepreneurship-supporting organizations and support the adoption of new policies that recognize the importance of participatory funding in Regions.
The long-term goal of the project is to support innovation mainly through participatory funding resources by fostering the development of innovative products and services in the blue economy sector. In this way, the blue economy SMEs will gain better access to funding, which will enable them to develop better and more competitive innovative solutions.
The partnership consists of 13 entities from Slovenia, Greece (Region of Central Macedonia, the Network of the Insular Chambers of Commerce and Industry of the European Union in Chios island, Crowdpolicy in Athens), Spain, Cyprus, Portugal, Belgium, Albania, Italy and Croatia.
More information about the project is available at https://blue-growth.interreg-med.eu/
In the context of the Blue Crowdfunding project, Crowdpolicy will be participating in the 1st annual Blue Growth ecosystem assembly, which will take place on 4–5 February 2020 in Montpellier, France.
This two-day event represents the first occasion for the new community to meet. The first day represents 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 is 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”.
More information is available at https://blue-growth.interreg-med.eu/news-events/events/detail/actualites/first-annual-assembly-of-the-blue-growth-community/
Videos
What is Blue Growth? — Introduction to the Blue Growth Community
The Cluster approach for a sustainable Blue Growth in the Mediterranean (Athens | 20–21 June 2018)
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