Q&A: Green crowdfunding

As budgets shrink, is crowdfunding the answer when it comes to paying for green projects in social housing? Kate Youde talks to Chris Gourlay, founder of Spacehive, a crowdfunding platform for civic projects

What makes Spacehive different to other crowdfunding platforms?
Our mission is to build an open marketplace for civic projects. We want to make it as easy as possible for people to create and fund projects that improve public and community spaces, so it’s really about getting that culture of innovation and private creativity to that space, which has traditionally been dominated by councils and developers.

How did you get involved in crowdfunding?
I used to be a journalist at The Sunday Times, and did all the architecture and planning stuff. At that time [March 2012], we were just falling off a big recession-shaped cliff and it became apparent to me that people didn’t have any answers for how civic infrastructure in this country - playgrounds, green spaces, wi-fi networks, community buildings - were going to be funded.

At the same time, ideas around localism were coming into currency, and all of that suggested to me there was going to be a much greater appetite for choice and influence over how stuff got done in that public realm.
And, across the pond, we had the rise of Kickstarter, which was the first platform to popularise crowdfunding.

Housing association Peabody has used Spacehive to fund a cage cricket scheme on its Tachbrook estate in Pimlico, London. So what does crowdfunding offer social landlords, or tenants?
Social landlords already spend money on maintaining and improving their estates and are looking for compelling ways to engage with tenants on those sorts of issues.

A lot of them have a bit of money knocking around and are interested in finding the most impactful way of spending that money to deliver results.

So, rather than handing out cash through a grant mechanism, doing what Peabody did and offering it as match funding for ideas, which are not initiated by them but are brought to the table by tenants and others, is a great way of increasing the bang you get for your buck and engaging tenants in the process of shaping their public spaces and creating a sense of ownership.

Are there other social landlords on board?
We’ve spoken to a number of social landlords but they’ve been slower to move than other parts of market. When you get widespread adoption by local authorities around the country, I think you know it’s probably the right time for social landlords to enter and take advantage of the opportunities as well.

Who would you expect to donate funding to social housing projects?
If you have a project, which is on a housing estate that’s accessible to the wider community and there’s a wider community benefit, you’d expect it to tap into a much wider pool of potential funders. If it’s very much tenants only who benefit, then it’s going to be tenants, it’s going to be other local businesses who’d like to be aligned with the project and derive marketing value from doing so and feel they’ve done a bit of corporate social responsibility.

The capacity of tenants to dig into their own pockets is going to be limited but what you can get from that is a strong sense of public engagement and a sense that it’s possible to make things happen really quite quickly.

Since March 2012, 32 projects totalling £1.5 million have reached their funding goals on Spacehive. But what is the success rate for projects getting funded?
At the moment it’s 60 per cent. We’d expect that to come closer to the industry average, which is around 40 per cent, as we mature as a platform.

How many times have you put your hand in your own pocket and contributed to crowdfunded projects?
I don’t know how many in total but I’d say a good 20 or so, including ones on Spacehive.

What kinds of schemes have won your backing?
There’s a project that a team of local people have come up with which involves not demolishing a flyover network in the city centre of Liverpool at a cost of £4 million, as the council was initially proposing, and instead turning it into a flying park - planting up trees, having cycle lanes, vegetable patches and cafes. I think it’s a wonderful example of what’s possible.

Are you particularly ‘green’ in your personal life?
We do recycle. I think the nature of my accommodation is quite green - I live [with six others, in London] in buildings that are about to be demolished. We inhabit them temporarily under a guardian-type scheme, protecting them from wolves, squatters or whatever it is they might be under threat from. For about five to 10 months we usually have free rein of what are typically office buildings, build ourselves a kitchen, walls, and then they get demolished. So, rather than having offices rattling around with nobody in them, we make use of the space.

What are your ambitions for Spacehive?
Spacehive is never going to be a replacement for much-needed strategic investment by the state and developers to open up new areas and opportunities - you’d never do Crossrail with it or be able to open up the Royal Docks, for example. But in relation to the day-to-day fabric of our communities, and even large,ambitious projects that catch the popular eye, this can become a mechanism that is normal.