Funding is the number one problem for many community groups. We often don’t need much, but it takes time to put in funding bids or organise fund raising events. Aggregators of micro-finance and social peer-to-peer lenders are another way of raising funds or getting donations.
The number of online alternatives to traditional banks and loan companies is growing. This helps channel funding to good projects and also gives us the power to take our savings and lending out of the traditional banking system which has caused so much chaos (http://bit.ly/rPR5SC).
Many of these online funding outfits aggregate donations and loans specifically for socially beneficial projects. This lets investors pool their money and donate or lend to projects they like and allows those with good ideas to get them funded more easily:
• SoLoCo http://www.soloco.co.uk/ is a coop that aggregates donations for projects which benefit the community.
• Buzzbnk https://www.buzzbnk.org/Home.aspx is a social enterprise crowdfunding http://bit.ly/9LvEbg ventures that deliver social or public benefit (both donations and loans). Backers pledge money, time or both and carry the message to their own social networks and communities.
• Civilised Money http://www.civilisedmoney.co.uk/ launched in Nov 2011 and offers charitable giving and peer-to-peer lending. It uses people-to-people networks to provide an ethical, transparent alternative to the existing financial services industry.
• Crowdfunder http://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/ will lend to any entrepreneurial or creative project.
• Quakle http://www.quakle.co.uk is a peer-to-peer lending website where borrowers’ trustworthiness is based on social reputation and relationship rather than on the credit grade. You can lend money to people you know, in a structured but friendly way, cutting out bank costs.
• Abundance is launching soon http://www.abundancegeneration.com to aggregate micro-finance for renewable energy
References:
• Academic: “Economic Lives: How Culture Shapes the Economy” Viviana Zelizer
• Practical info: Twitter @crowdfunduk #crowdfunding
