Decision details

Civic crowdfunding enables communities to pitch ideas to the public, or ‘crowd’, and to leverage money towards projects that benefit their local area. In the case of match funding schemes, whereby government agrees to add to funds raised by the public, crowdfunding has the additional advantage of helping the council make smarter spending decisions through crowd-selection, and increasing community ownership and participation in civic projects. In addition, the opportunity to pitch ideas to the crowd could help increase the diversity and potential for innovation in public projects by reaching a wider section of the community than would ordinarily be involved in community-led projects.

Discussions around Barnet adopting a more formal approach to crowdfunding began within the council in July 2015. At the same time, Barnet’s joint venture with Capita for development and regulatory services, Re, expressed an interest in enhancing the borough’s regeneration offer to communities through crowdfunding. This project now brings these strands of activity together through the Barnet Innovation Lab (BIL), a new ‘capability’ developed by the council and Capita aiming to create sustainable innovation in order to deliver better outcomes for residents and reduce costs to the council and partners at a time when funding is being decreased.

The challenge that this project seeks to address is set out in the Corporate Plan: how to support more resilient communities by working with residents to increase self-sufficiency,

reduce reliance on statutory services and tailor services to their needs.

Spacehive is a crowdfunding platform for civic projects that allows anyone to propose and fund ideas for changing the spaces they live in. To date, the platform has supported the successful funding of 234 projects with a value of £6.1m across the country. Through the BIL, the council will work closely with colleagues in different service areas and Capita to create a funding pledge pot to be put forward for the soft launch of this project.

Spacehive will work with a wide range of council, community, business and other partners to promote the initiative, build capacity, and support the development of successful civic projects. Following the soft launch, the aim is to draw on the learning to scale the project up and roll it out across the borough.

In keeping with the Barnet Innovation Lab’s methodology, this is a soft launch of the project and all learning will be used to inform development of LBB’s future crowdfunding activity.

At an early stage, the project team will develop evaluation criteria and success measures, which will be used to determine whether and how the project will be continued in the future.