Kent invests £500k in community crowdfunding platform

Crowdfund Kent is a Kent County Council initiative that will help community and voluntary organisations to raise money for projects that help their local area.

Kent County Council is injecting £500K into the programme, with up to a maximum of £20K available per project to boost fundraisers towards their funding target. The deadline to put forward your idea is 28^th of April 2021.

The initiative is in partnership with Spacehive, a funding platform for 'ideas that bring local places to life'. The platform has raised £20 for 1550 projects.

It claims to have the highest success rate of any crowdfunding platform in the UK and is already used by  a  number of councils and public sector bodies including the Mayor of London and The Arts Council.

Kent County Council will be holding a launch event in March, with follow-up workshops to review potential project ideas. 

“We’re absolutely delighted to be launching Crowdfund Kent and greatly looking forward to seeing the range of ideas that our community groups and organisations put forward,” said Leader of Kent County Council Roger Gough. “We have seen an incredible response from communities across Kent throughout the last year and this project puts them and their ideas in the driving seat. We hope this funding will help us to meet the challenges ahead as we emerge from the pandemic and celebrate local innovation and the importance of our local communities.”

Gough went on to note that many companies and organisations want to make a strong contribution to their local communities and that Crowdfund Kent was an opportunity to do so - through funding, promotion and volunteering.