BLUE CROWDFUNDING
Blue economy innovation in Mediterranean could be significantly improved, if more investment funds would be available. One possible solution is the use of crowdfunding, but knowledge and capacities for crowdfunding are still low in the Mediterranean area if compared to Northern Europe.
The project general objective is to improve innovation capacities in blue growth sector by mainstreaming the use of crowdfunding. The project will address the following blue economy sectors: blue energy, maritime safety, maritime transport, maritime tourism, fisheries and aquaculture.
Type of tool
Theme
End-User
Geographical scale
Year
Keywords
Pilot Areas
Italy, Greece, Croatia, Spain, Portugal, Albania, Cyprus, Slovenia and France
What problems would this tool solve?
This Crowdfunding training tool will enable business support institutions to include crowdfunding capacity building into their mainstream business support agenda. Crowdfunding is a valuable alternative funding source and can replace bank loans, act as a seed money and test the selling potential of products before they enter the market. It can also be used for general public interest or as an addition to public funding. Blue economy could be based more on crowdfunding in future, if the knowledge of crowdfunding would be improved. The adopted crowdfunding training tool aims at increasing competences of the blue economy SMEs and regions and thus enable them to run crowdfunding campaigns in order to produce blue economy related products, provide blue economy related services and run blue economy related projects.
What is needed for its implementation?
Technological infrastructure
PC/Tablet and an internet connection to access crowdfunding platforms.
Training
This tool provides material initially used in the “CROWD-FUND-PORT” project, Interreg Central Europe. It was updated with new regional data, integrating additional target groups, including information about civic crowdfunding.
Investment
Costs related to the set up and delivery of modules of this tool will be incurred.
How to use it?
This tool provides knowledge and capacity to launch a crowdfunding initiative. In terms of content, it focuses on giving a Crowdfunding definition, defining types & actors, providing insights into the origins, history, evolution & relevance as well as information about Civic Crowdfunding, Benefits /Risks, Terminology and Framework.
This tools is aimed at:
- SMEs seeking funding for innovative products and services. They can use crowdfunding to reach new customers and engage with the media. SMEs with no previous experience of crowdfunding can use this material to familiarise themselves with the subject. SMEs with previous experience of crowdfunding can use this material to gain inspiration for a new crowdfunding campaign.
- Consultants who want to expand the scope of their consultancy can use the material to get a better understanding of Crowdfunding and Alternative Finance.
- Incubators and Public Institutions supporting SMEs can use this material to identify ways to use Crowdfunding together with public finance.
- Non-profit organizations using crowdfunding for supporting their social and public projects
- Public organizations and public authorities using crowdfunding for implementation of community projects
What are the expected results?
Quantitative
- 13 Business support institutions using the tool and becoming part of the Blue Crowdfunding cluster
- 230 SMEs trained with the tool
- 13 SMEs concluded crowdfunding campaign in the field of blue economy
Transfer potential
- The tool is supported by scientific literature as well as capitalized knowledge from INTERREG Central CROWD-FUND-PORT project
- This methodology can be used for any kind of crowdfunding
- The tool is available online and ready to be used
- It doesn’t need a specific legal/ institutional framework or additional resources for implementation
- There is a great interest among SMEs as stated in the different SMEs trainings successfully implemented in the blue economy sector