Website and Twitter account monitoring ongoing crowdfunding campaigns for coops across different crowdfunding platforms
I am writing an article titled "Crowdfunding coops - 10 Biggest campaigns in biggest US crowdfunding platforms".
I have went through crowdfunding websites looking for ongoing and past crowdfunding campaigns. Across the largest crowdfunding platforms, theres maybe few dozen active crowdfunding campaigns by coops in the English speaking world.
It wouldnt be a platform for cooperative crowdfunding, but a website compiling all the ongoing crowdfunding campaigns in a single website. Later on, especially with the cool things happening with Open Collective, we could also expand to hosting crowdfunding campaigns. But we could start such a website more easily first.
I could list and update all the campaigns. I wonder if there would be interest for Platform6 to include the list in its website?
This would be a website similar to democraticjobs that would include and categorize all the ongoing crowdfunding campaigns for coops across different crowdfunding platforms. Might also attract visitors to our website.
We could also tweet everytime theres a new coop crowdfunding campaign added - this way people might find following our Twitter account useful if they would like to know about new coop crowdfunding campaigns.
Started a Twitter account called "Coop Crowdfunding Alerts". I will tweet every time there is a new coop seeking crowdfunding, with the tweet including a link to the crowdfunding campaign. Platform6 could do outreach by having a website compiling all the campaigns, with each of the Coop Crowdfunding Alert tweet linking to the Platform6 website that collects all the campaigns (from kickstarter to gofundme), also tagging platform6 twitter account. This rather messy explanation is perhaps more easily understandable by looking at the bottom image in this post:
The site would be similar to Democratic Jobs, a website listing jobs open in worker coops that is embedded in the Platform6 homepage.
Theres two pictures: one about what the Twitter account looks like now, and one on how the tweets could look like and how it could be used to promote platform6 twitter account and the platform6 "coop monitor" website.
Leo Sammallahti Fri 31 May 2019 8:29AM
I limited my scope for an article that will be published later today to US coops using the largest crowdfunding platforms simply because it was easiest to search through.
My plan is however to take a more detailed, routine and systematic look into online crowdfunding and cooperatives to better understand it and be able to write about it regularly. All relevant information is more than welcome, at leo.sammallahti(at)coop.exchange.
I will be publishing one article about online crowdfunding coops later today, and a longer document on January. I will be in touch regarding the latter one.
Hopefully this could include making regular reports about how much coops received crowdfunding in the last week/month/year, what sort of coops, how much is investment and how much is "no string attached" donations, etc.
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Mark Simmonds (Co-op Culture) Sat 1 Jun 2019 9:48AM
Have you thought of widening the scope to include crowdsourcing @leosammallahti ?
Leo Sammallahti Sat 1 Jun 2019 10:45PM
Absolutely, but it is bit trickier because crowdfunding campaigns are easy to detect and measure in their size - crowdsourcing is more tricky. How do we define what is and isnt crowdsourcing, how do we measure the amount of crowdsourcing done, etc?
I do not yet have a satisfactory answer to either questions, so I find it harder to write a sort of systematic and regular update about as I plan to do with crowdfunding.
I also want to list and write about cooperatives that enable everyone from anywhere in the world to join such as Resonate and Platform6. This is not exactly the same as crowdsourcing, but it overlaps with it, and it allows easier definition of what coops are included.
I am not the right person to do it, but there could also be someone monitoring and reporting on different open source software cooperatives are producing. This might help open source developers interested in coops to do so by reading reports of new coop projects. You could even have a list of coop open source projects by programming language in the website so that developers could more easily find projects across the coop sector that would interest them. This could be one project related to coop crowdsourcing that could be considered.
These are bit similar ideas to democraticjobs - but not just to job market but for crowdfunding and crowdsourcing opportunities.
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Mark Simmonds (Co-op Culture) Fri 31 May 2019 6:51AM
Great idea @leosammallahti P6 should certainly list. I've followed the Twitter account.
Will need to off-load all the work to populate it onto the coops themselves in the longer term. The platform would just retain a moderator role.
I'd love a lower cost coops only crowdfunding platform for share offers - I've been proposing it for a while now, but lack the tech. knowledge to push it forward.
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Peter Harris Fri 31 May 2019 7:27AM
Isnt this what Stephen Gill is already building?
Leo Sammallahti Fri 31 May 2019 7:46AM
Thanks Mark!
Coop Exchange is a crowdfunding platform coop for share offers, but I am not sure what lower cost coops only means. Would be interested to read you describe your vision for share offer platform more.
When there are coops listed in Coop Exchange or other similar platforms, they should be also added to the Platform6 website of ongoing crowdfunding campaigns and tweeted about from the Crowdfunding Coops Alerts Twitter account.
Few individuals have time to check all the crowdfunding websites for new coop projects everyday - but Platform6 could make it very easy to do that, by simply following a Twitter account that would do that for them.
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Mark Simmonds (Co-op Culture) Fri 31 May 2019 8:10AM
In my experience, there aren't many co-op investors who are looking for investment (yet). The crowdfunding through withdrawable share capital tends to target an audience with empathy and connection to the project (or sector) being financed. Those investors are often investing for the first time. The projects looking at this type of investor will generally use Crowdfunder, which will typically cost them 5% of their raise. It may be that this is the minimum cut to run a viable platform, but if not it would be good to create a coop focussed platform that took less of a cut.
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Mark Simmonds (Co-op Culture) Fri 31 May 2019 8:11AM
I'm not sure what Stephen Gill is up to - others may know more.
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Graham Fri 31 May 2019 8:46AM
We could fairly easily provide this through the P6 website and our existing infrastructure.
James de le Vingne · Fri 31 May 2019 6:37AM
Hey @leosammallaht, like the sound of this. On a related note, and perhaps a useful source of info, CUK are currently working with a number of partners on a data gathering exercise to better understand the social investment landscape across the UK. CUK's primary role is collating and maintaining a data set for all past and ongoing Community Share Issues. It's a work in progress, but the data standards have been agreed and will be open for others to access later in the year. Happy to share more info via email if helpful.