How the Crowd Can Benefit Local Communities
Local authorities are hardly awash with cash these days which means that some community and urban renewal projects may get put on the back burner indefinitely.
But thanks to the crowd, community-minded crowdfunding platforms can pick up the slack and start, develop and complete projects without having to wait for government bodies to get their acts together.
One such platform is Brickstarter. Conceived in Finland, the site is modeled after the crowdfunding platform Kickstarter and could save buckets of tears of frustration by cutting through layers of red tape to get projects online in rapid time-frames.
As with Kickstarter users upload details of a pet project that could do with some funds and the amount of money that is required. They can use pictures, videos, text, graphics etc., to tell their story. And if the project reaches its funding target and is given the green light investors will be kept informed of progress.
These projects are not run in isolation; they are connected with civil service and bureaucracy.
The Big Conversations
Another key part of the platform is that it’s also a forum for residents to suggest what they would like to happen in their area. There is a real-time dashboard for these conversations which also maps those topics that are generating the most discussions.
Local authorities can also get involved and ultimately give their backing to projects.
At the moment the site is just a prototype, but the team behind it is working with the Finnish Innovation Fund to bring it to the public in the foreseeable future. There is a plan for an alpha launch later this year.
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