Council Looks To Crowdfunding To Help Pay For Local Projects

In the context of having to make tens of millions of pounds of cuts Wrexham Council is looking at Crowdfunding to help pay for some local projects.

The first ‘carefully chosen’ trial project is to raise funds to safeguard Wrexham’s local veteran standards and ceremonial flags.

Crowdfunding is an ‘alternative form of funding’ and is the process of raising money from a large group of people to fund a project or the like.

Councillors will be told at the forthcoming Executive Board meeting: “Crowdfunding is an alternative funding source, and it is considered to be a democratic funding option because it gives local people the opportunity to support the causes that mean the most to them”.

Crowdfunding for projects was explained by the Council as: “Heritage is not a responsibility but we also recognise that the public see these as parts of the councils work. This is about giving the community a choice on how they spend their money, rather than us taking it off them and spending it.”

Wrexham.com queried as residents often pay council tax, business rates, national taxation and fees for services so why should people pay more on top. We were told: “The Council have to cut £45m from our budgets in the next three years, that means our focus is on the most vulnerable in society. We will be left with virtually no money for projects we would like to do but have no money for.

Explaining the Crowdfunding may not be directly under the Council’s own ‘brand’ , and will be used to support community groups they said: “Together In Wrexham is to identify ways of funding community based projects. We are trying to enable and facilitate fundraising where we don’t have the money ourselves to spend on them.”

Like other local authorities in the UK Wrexham Council are proposing to use Spacehive.com, with a £4,000+vat subscription fee referenced which ought to cover several projects being run via the Council’s own subsection (or Hive) ever year. Additional fees of 5% per completed project are also mentioned which will be included in the target amount, along with per-donation costs in line with usual internet transactions.

Following the pilot launch project, a further report will be brought to the Executive Board which will include the budget implications of creating and maintaining a ‘Hive’ to collate all projects seeking crowdfunding in Wrexham.

One example given in the documentation is Cardiff Council’s ‘hive’, or sub section on Spacehive – you can see examples of their projects by clicking here. You can view various projects, and once inside a project you can click ‘backers’ to see the range of people funding it. Many have large amounts pledged from local companies, community groups and Police Commissioners (more familiar to the people of Wrexham as Crime Bosses and Crime Czars) with a smaller percentage being individuals donating with a range of £2 to £100 viewable.

Crowdfunding of this nature is all or nothing, so if the target is not raised the cash is not collected. Due to this we asked if targets on the trial project were not met would Wrexham Council underwrite or cover the shortfall. Wrexham Councillor and ‘Armed Forces Champion’ David Griffiths strongly and enthusiastically ignored the question stating clearly: “I will go begging to anybody on this. Wrexham has a history of fantastic support to its armed forces and veterans.”

Councillor Hugh Jones added: “We are working on the basis we are confident and not taken anything else into account apart from it being a success. We have carefully chosen this as a launch project that will be successful.”

The report to Councillors also explains the value of leveraging social media to get messages out to the locality, with a note stating: “Crowdfunding success is dependent to some extent upon a strong social network online. With over 4,000 ‘likes’ on Facebook, and more then 13,600 followers on Twitter, Wrexham Council is well placed to capitalise on its online following.”

The launch project is to safeguard the standards, or ceremonial flags, belonging to five veterans’ associations with a Wrexham connection specifically the Eighth Army Veterans, Normandy Veterans , Korean Veterans and Burma Star Veterans. Councillor Griffiths noted he was aware the Dunkirk Veterans standard is believed to be in St Giles and is appealing anyone who is in touch with connected veterans to get in touch with him.

Councillor Griffiths said of the initial crowdfunding project: “It is about individuals and groups giving the funding, to raise monies to put these (the standards and flags) in the council chamber for perpetuity. It is about creating the future, so when school children come into the Guildhall and ask ‘what is that?’ they then can read to find out the history.”

The project will be looking for around £3000 to £5000 per standard / flag, so around £15-20,000 in total. The report refers to crowdfunding for proportion of the figure, likely around £13,000.

The PDF of the report is readable here, and goes before next week’s Executive Board.

Without prejudging the Executive Board vote, Wrexham.com will of course give further details of the crowdfunding launch of the veteran standards and ceremonial flags fundraiser when it is launched in the future.