Crowdfunding – it’s not all about the money

At the forefront of an alternative finance revolution, crowdfunding is changing business for the better, writes Jess Ratty of Crowdfunder.

There are some pretty big stats and data out there talking about future finance, with one of biggest laying claim to the fact that the UK alternative finance market will grow to £1.6 billion in 2014. Wow. That’s great, we are living in a financial revolution.

What’s not measured yet is the legacy crowdfunding is creating. The education and training that comes with alternative finance and what that means for future generations. Crowdfunding is the home of great ideas and it’s not just about the money you raise.

When launching a campaign, crowdfunding encourages big business thinking, planning and forecasting. It’s all there, marketing, PR and networking.

Project owners need to think beyond their great idea and into the reality and the future of what they want to achieve. It’s not just about raising funds and spinning ideas into existence. 

For example, Crowdfunder take entrepreneurial education a step further and their coaches train future thought processes about how great ideas become great legacies that will make an impact for years to come.

A recent Crowdfunder project with a long legacy ahead and an excellently executed campaign belongs to Tracey Edwards MBE – skipper of the first all female crew to complete the 1990 Whitbread Round the World Race.

Tracey achieved incredible international press coverage, built a crowd and successfully fundraised £44,000 to restore her famous yacht, which will now be used to support young people from the Princes Trust and Regenerate to get them out on the water and learning about sailing.

Crowdfunding gives people the opportunity to not only expand their audiences, their customer base and their contacts, but to build lasting connections throughout their communities – changing how people fund the things they want to make happen.  

Campaigns across the UK are connecting businesses to grass roots communities, entrepreneurs to future clients and charities, and social projects to the people who want to see change in the world and are prepared to back it to create new realities.

A not so quiet revolution perhaps, but how we raise money and what we do with it is changing fast, the future is bright – the future is crowdfunded. 

The legacy is growing. In ten, twenty, thirty years, the next generation won’t have to rely on computers in banks to tell them they can’t achieve their dreams. They can rely on the crowd to support them and make it happen. Armed with knowledge and supported by the crowd, great things can happen.

Jess Ratty is communications manager at Crowdfunder, the leading UK crowdfunding platform. 

Photo: Crowdfunder

Further reading:

Crowdfunding services Trillion Fund and Buzzbnk announce merger

Seven steps: essential tips for successful crowdfunding

‘Alternative’ finance no more: Crowdfunder on why it’s eyeing up the mainstream

Crowdfunder meets £500,000 equity crowdfunding target in under four hours

Peer-to-peer lending doubles in size to £843m in 2013