Discussion
Currently trying to do some crowdfunding for a community interest company that I'm setting up.
The current platform is US based and all it's doing is generating spammy offers to "make a great campaign even better" from parasites who will post on Facebook, Twitter etc. for a fee.
Two questions - does anyone have any tips for making the campaign actually generate some capital
and does anyone know of a UK or European based platform which would be suitable to raise initial capital for a CIC ?
There's no product involved, just a service.
The current platform is US based and all it's doing is generating spammy offers to "make a great campaign even better" from parasites who will post on Facebook, Twitter etc. for a fee.
Two questions - does anyone have any tips for making the campaign actually generate some capital
and does anyone know of a UK or European based platform which would be suitable to raise initial capital for a CIC ?
There's no product involved, just a service.
It's a long and complicated story, but in a nutshell - most digital evidence units are struggling to cope with the rate of change of technology and need an additional resource to do little bits of R&D for them. Currently, they can try to outsource to private sector or universities, but finding the right people to do the work, and getting it approved at the right price is causing delays and some work just isn't being done, or is being replicated - thus wasting time, effort and money. The projects are too small for normal funding, and applying for funding introduces extra delays (sometimes we need to know the answers within a week or two because of court requirements).
So, the plan is to set up a community interest company to act as the co-ordinator and to provide the funds for the bits of work that need to be done. We need some capital to set things up and then it will move to an annual subscription model until such time as we can eliminate that through IP licensing and product sales. It's a CIC to provide a guarantee that all profits go back into activities which benefit the community.
Ultimately, we'd like to see a network of these CICs (or equivalents) around the globe.
I've had many, many, meetings with the community, from law enforcement, private sector, academia etc. and had nothing but support from them. They agree that the problems are there and are keen to use this as a way to overcome them and improve the situation. We're actually running our first small proof-of-concept R&D project now (and that is being done on consultancy basis so we will get some cash in from it).
Cash needed is a bit of a guess, but I've set an initial target of around £10k as a sensible sum to let us get things up and running. Restricted as to which platform I can use due to the lack of an obvious end-product, but Indiegogo accepts projects of this type. Now I'm being spammed by parasitic "social media experts".
So, the plan is to set up a community interest company to act as the co-ordinator and to provide the funds for the bits of work that need to be done. We need some capital to set things up and then it will move to an annual subscription model until such time as we can eliminate that through IP licensing and product sales. It's a CIC to provide a guarantee that all profits go back into activities which benefit the community.
Ultimately, we'd like to see a network of these CICs (or equivalents) around the globe.
I've had many, many, meetings with the community, from law enforcement, private sector, academia etc. and had nothing but support from them. They agree that the problems are there and are keen to use this as a way to overcome them and improve the situation. We're actually running our first small proof-of-concept R&D project now (and that is being done on consultancy basis so we will get some cash in from it).
Cash needed is a bit of a guess, but I've set an initial target of around £10k as a sensible sum to let us get things up and running. Restricted as to which platform I can use due to the lack of an obvious end-product, but Indiegogo accepts projects of this type. Now I'm being spammed by parasitic "social media experts".
TooLateForAName said:
This does sound like something that would be best done as a collaborative effort from the likely service users.
How about running a small conference to get people together and try to thrash out details/requirements?
Already done that. We're at a stage now where we need a little cash to be able to run a "loss leader"/proof of concept to demonstrate the model works so that the service users can get the budget controllers to authorise expenditure. (chicken, egg, egg, chicken).How about running a small conference to get people together and try to thrash out details/requirements?
Gassing Station | Business | Top of Page | What's New | My Stuff