How to crowd-fund community projects | Voluntary Sector Network | Guardian Professional A radical new solution to funding community regeneration projects is being piloted in the ex-mining town of Glyncoch, South Wales. While most donors will never even visit, the reach of Twitter allows popular projects to tap into new funding sources. Can Twitter build a community centre? Stephen Fry seems to think so. Fry called on his 4 million Twitter followers to pledge "the price of a cucumber sandwich" to rescue the project that already has 96% of its funding from grants. The community is using Spacehive.com to raise the money. With the Spacehive model, funders only pay if the project actually goes ahead. The ideal result will be a collaboration of the private and public sector, with individuals, businesses and councils all chipping in to get projects funded. Can the model work? The open funding system Spacehive uses was co-developed by Deloitte and a team of planning experts, and is backed by the Royal Institute of British Architects and British Property Federation.
Give a Minute! 15 ways to crowdfund your startup or project Have you considered asking the community to support your new enterprise? Target audience: Social enterprises, nonprofits, volunteer groups, sustainable businesses, community organizations. Guest post by Kerry GivenGreen Marketing TV Finding funding can be one of the biggest challenges for social entrepreneurs. One non-traditional funding opportunity that has seen exponential growth in recent years is the phenomenon of “crowdfunding.” Thanks to social media and other forms of modern technology, entrepreneurs are able to build networks of friends, colleagues and like-minded individuals more easily and effectively than ever before. Typically, entrepreneurs post a request for funding on a crowdfunding site with a detailed project description. Crowdfunding is not for everyone. The following is a list of crowdfunding websites that can help your social enterprise, sustainable business or nonprofit organization get off the ground: 33 Needs: Connecting microinvestors & social enterpreneurs Related
O.System - The future of personal electronics - RCA IDE “In 2025, consumer electronics will no longer be the same.” Purchased through the O.System they will allow each and every one of us to customise our electronic products online, adding personal touches. This is a project by Peter Krige, Alexander du Preez and Hannes Harms, students of Innovation Design Engineering at the Royal College of Art. Using printable electronics and rapid manufacturing, the project proposes a local consumer electronics industry addressing the obsolescence of electronic goods and the subsequent problem of e-waste. It is an exciting future scenario where consumers are involved in the making of their electronic goods thanks to flexible, low cost, printable electronic components. The O.system works by having a database of designs online that can be accessed by customers. The sound system prototype pictured here has been made using selective laser sintering in nylon and its design has been optimized to minimize material and also allow for updating.
Microfinance: Why Open Source Means Bigger Impact The World at Work is powered by GE. This new series highlights the people, projects and startups that are driving innovation and making the world a better place. Name: Mifos Big Idea: Mifos is an open-source, back-end operating system — built and backed by a community — to track the many loans and payments involved in microfinance. Why It's Working: Mifos is a platform used by more than 30 microfinance institutions, which offer small loans to nearly 825,000 clients. Mifos was born out of a project at the Grameen Technology Center back in 2004 — James Dailey realized that the software being used by most microfinance institutions (MFIs) was outdated, expensive or otherwise fell short. Mifos is "mission-critical" software — a Java-based web application running on top of a MySQL database — to help MFIs keep records of the thousands of tiny transactions made each day and analyze performance metrics. Mifos is a destination for several kinds of users. Series presented by GE
PICNIC ’08: The Visible City session Wednesday Sept. 24 I went to one of the sessions at PICNIC ’08 called “The Visible City”. This session was about ways of visualizing mobility patterns in the city. From the announcement: What if an entire city could be visible from above, like we see it from an airplane? Not simply buildings and squares, but also the aggregation of people who populate it, outdoor as well as indoor. Assaf Biderman, assistant director of the Senseable City Lab of MIT Boston, showed a number of projects. The second talk by host Euro Beinat – Director Sensible Future Foundation & University of Salzburg – was about the project currentcity.org. (img source: currentcity.org) After this presentation I posed the question “where are the people?” The third talk by Bart Schermer – Partner Considerati & University of Leiden – was about the privacy aspects that occur in the increasingly sentient city. The final talk by Lorenzo de Rita – Founder and Chief Scientist of The Soon Institute (what, no website?)
The Network For Social Change - Funding principles We fund a variety of charitable and non-charitable projects, each sponsored by a member. We look for projects that promote social change (broadly defined) and tend to favour projects which are innovative, highly leveraged, and/or difficult to fund (a category which may include core funding for an organisation). We like addressing the root causes of a problem, not the symptoms. We do not fund responses to one-off disasters, most types of building, or direct contributions to political parties. We do not accept unsolicited funding applications, but if you have a project that you think a member might be interested in sponsoring for funding, go to our Project Noticeboard
From M2M to The Internet of Things: Viewpoints From Europe As I mentioned a few weeks ago, Rogers CEO Nadir Mohamed was featured in The National Post and believes in a future of machine-to-machine technology as a massive revenue generator over the next three to five years, much like the rest of the telecom industry. M2M is loosely defined in my opinion as just one aspect of the Internet of Things as it is computers communicating with one another to perform tasks at hand, just as we use computers to communicate socially with one another, while another side is “smart objects” communicating with various forms of mobile media to devices and with each other. I touched on this some months ago that mobile media was enabling product or object media to occur. IBM, in a 2009 video, shortly after they announced their ambitious vision to create a smarter planet said that 66% of products developed in the last year included embedded information technology. Kroes continues in saying: “The IoT requires a new way of thinking about technology. Dr.
National Lottery Fund - National Lottery The National Lottery's mission is to operate a world class lottery raising funds for good causes on behalf of the Government and we are proud to have delivered on this again in 2012, raising €225.3 million. This brings the total amount raised since the establishment of the National Lottery to over €4.2 billion which is a very significant milestone in the history of the National Lottery. Over 24 years this fund has been allocated to worthwhile projects in the areas of Youth, Sports and Amenities; Health & Welfare; Arts, Culture & National Heritage, and the Irish Language. Click here to see the ways in which the National Lottery has helped good causes across Ireland. Funded Projects The National Lottery generates funds for good causes in the areas of Youth, Sport, Recreation and Amenities; Health & Welfare; Arts, Culture & National Heritage and the Irish Language. National Lottery funding is distributed through the following Government Departments and Bodies: Further sources of information