This week Spacehive celebrated its 500th successful campaign!
The project that took us to the magical milestone is a cafe-on-a-bike, MarketBeans, set up to support people with autism or a learning disability to gain new skills by selling ethically sourced coffee on the move. Roger and the team ran an amazing campaign, raising over £13,000 from 63 backers, including a £3,000 pledge from West Sussex County Council. But this milestone is not just a celebration of the fantastic Market Beans project, it’s of all 500 inspirational project creators and teams, who have had such amazing impact in their local area.
Alongside the incredible people behind those first 500 successful projects are the local communities who have been with them every step of the way – not only due to their financial support, but also as believers in someone’s idea to improve their local community. Over the past 5 years we’ve seen communities respond to projects in ever increasing numbers. An incredibly diverse mix of people and organisations have now pledged a combined value of £10.2M to these projects. I’m sure we speak on behalf of all 500 project creators when we say a massive thank you to every single person who has supported them to make their projects happen.
These 500 projects represent an amazing range of ideas. They start from a £90 plan to brighten up a wall, to over £450,000 to restore part of Brighton’s Victorian waterfront. Each unique project tackles a local issue or a challenge in a new and exciting way.
Also, whilst civic crowdfunding took off largely in London (where Spacehive is based) we are delighted that most projects now come from outside the M25: to date 199 distinctive towns, cities and villages have been made even better places to live, work, or relax by someone creating a project in them.
Our project numbers are now increasing rapidly. So while we are taking this time to celebrate our first 500 amazing community leaders and change makers, we are already looking forward to the next 500.
If you have an idea to improve your local area why not join us, we’d love to support you to make it happen!