The Heart of Community Funding
The terms “community funding” and “community capital” describe a continuum of tools that support communities in gathering resources and focusing them toward a specific goal.
When individuals come together and vote with their wallets, they reclaim their power to choose what gets made, who makes it, and who benefits. Decision-making is recentered with people rather than with institutions. Sounds pretty democratic, right?
Community at the Center
Why look exclusively to institutions located outside our communities for financial resources?
How might money and resources be circulated within communities rather than moving out through large financial institutions and national chains?
What kinds of community funding tools are available?
Crowdfund Better® is in our 15th year of working with these community funding tools, continually learning and growing with the ecosystem. What was once an outlier funding tool is now becoming mainstream. We partnered with the National Coalition for Community Capital to create this Community Capital Ecosystem Map to identify the community capital tools being used by individuals and communities across the U.S. and the world. We hope it inspires you to see new possibilities for funding with community and to join the movement.
Take some time to explore the map below. It’s interactive, so when you click on any of the ovals, they’ll expand to show you examples and more details about that tool. What speaks to you? What tools might have the potential to support your project? Learn more about the broader categories below.
Want to make our day? Book a consulting call so we can explore the community funding possibilities for your project.
Or take a tour of our online resources and live trainings in our Learning Center.
Community Capital Categories
The Community Capital Ecosystem Map is divided into three broad categories: contributions, investments, and investment funds.
Contributions
This is how we got things done (think barn raising) before we began relying on financial institutions for funding. In crowdfunding, this means gathering small amounts of money from a large number of people to fund a project, business, or initiative.
Investments
In community funding terms, investments often have more than financial goals. For example, an individual might invest because of a personal belief in an entrepreneur, to support the growth of a local business, or to bring a new life-saving technology into the world.
Investment Funds
These funds allow an individual or organization to make one single investment and have it invested in a range of projects and businesses based on the mission of that fund creating diversification. A fund could be used to help revitalize a neighborhood through the creation of real estate developments that provide housing, retail, and gathering spaces in response to community needs.
Kathleen is a pro with deep roots in all kinds of community funding,
a deep commitment to the “community” part of that basket of funding approaches, and long experience as an educator. In other words, she breaks it down into plain language and knows which approaches might apply best for your situation. And examples? Tons and tons of real-world, here’s-how-it-works examples.
– Michele Archie
Principal, The Harbinger Consultancy
How does community funding work?
The Crowdfunding Opportunity is an online, self-paced course to help you understand how you can use crowdfunding to fund your project.
No matter what type of community funding you are considering, you’ll get the fundamentals you need to improve your chances of success.
Will community funding work for my project?
Looking for help building a community funding strategy?
We’ve worked with entrepreneurs, small businesses, social enterprises, artists and communities. Our assessment-based approach helps us identify the focus areas your team can work on before you launch a campaign to improve your chances of success.
