Crowdfunding for urban greening - Ghent

The city of Ghent in the Netherlands launched a crowdfunding platform in 2015 to stimulate bottom-up projects with a societal benefit for their city, including urban greening initiatives. A dedicated website (crowdfunding.gent) can be used by citizens to initiate and share their ideas and generate funding. Through this approach, citizens are heavily involved with the identification of innovative and sustainable initiatives in their city and able to contribute to their realization. While the platform is more regularly used for cultural and social initiatives, multiple green initiatives have been successfully funded over the years, such as an initiative stimulating urban farming and an initiative encouraging edible streets.

Overview

Type of instrument:

Agreement-based or cooperative instrument›Public-community agreement

Challenges addressed

Ecologic connectivity
Soil quality
Green space management (e.g. accessibility)
Drought and fire risk
Flood risk: pluvial and fluvial / soil permeability
Heat stress and heat island effect
Air quality
Social cohesion
Nature appropriation / stewardship
Human health, comfort and well-being

Challenges addressed depend per crowdfunding initiative

Consideration of nature-based solutions:

Challenges addressed by this instrument depend on the citizen initiatives on the crowdfunding platform. Two initiatives submitted through the platform in the first year of the platforms existence (2015) contributed to Ghent's climate adaptation goals, i.e. to reduce CO2 by 40% and make Ghent climate proof by 2030 to cope with the consequences of climate change such as drought, heat and flooding. Other crowdfunding initiatives focus on local and sustainable food production and creating green elements in the city. The first project 'Nice and close!' stimulates the construction of vegetable gardens on balconies of social housing. The initiative is said to contribute to deal with heat stress through the little urban farms and reduce CO2 emissions from locally grown food rather than long distance transport of food. The project also enhances social cohesion by stimulating cooperation between residents (from various backgrounds) to maintain the vegetable garden. The second project 'The edible street' focuses on the transformation of gray facades into vertical edible gardens and increases green elements, stimulates local food production, addresses heat stress and reduces CO2 emissions. Besides preserving biodiversity, initiatives also aim to preserve high soil quality and capacities for water infiltration, flood prevention, carbon capture, biodiversity conservation and social cohesion.

Targeted (peri-)urban areas:

Parks and (semi)natural urban green areas

Allotments, community gardens or agricultural areas

Blue areas

Green areas for water management

Derelict areas

External building greens

Urban green space connected to grey infrastructure

Good practice characteristics:

Locally appropriate

Potential to be replicated / upscaled

Innovative

Governance

Government body/bodies

Initiating body:

City of Ghent, Department of Political Participation

Instrument design:

Details about how the instrument was designed:

The platform was created by the city of Ghent in collaboration with a crowdfunding platform developer (Koalect) for the specific IT know-how as well as the design and maintenance of the platform. The city has a contract with the developer until 2026 to keep the platform running and will decide in the coming years whether or not to extend the contract.

Involvement of non-governmental actors:

Private sector, corporate, business

Type of actor involvement:

Co-planning or co-design of instrument (e.g. boards, advisory role)

Instrument implementation:

Type of involvement:

Any citizen or organization with a project idea located in Ghent can submit the idea on the platform if it meets a set of conditions (e.g. no commercial, religious or political initiatives). To do so, the initiator is required to fill out a form, set a funding goal and write a short description of the initiative. A platform manager acting on behalf of the city can provide feedback and ideas on how to improve the project, and also provide the final approval to publish the project after any necessary changes are made. From that point onwards, supporters of the idea are able to donate funds within a predefined period of time.

Type of non-governmental actors involved:

Implementation of NBS (e.g. with government funds)

Targeted actors:

Citizens or community groups (CBOs), NGOs

Financing

Sources of funding:

Crowd-sourcing

Local public budget

Budget:

Unknown

Details about instrument financing:

The costs of development of the platform was covered by the city. The investments made were lower than the total collected funds made in the first year. During the first years of the platform (2015 - 2019), the city of Ghent provided a yearly fund of €55,000 for non-profit initiatives to be co-funded. Applicants could choose to apply for municipal funding for 25%, 50% or 75% of the total costs. In order to qualify for funding, a predefined amount of co-funding needed to be raised. Through this condition the city is ensured that the project has enough support from the public. When a request for municipal funding was made, it was reviewed by a jury composed of city officials and local experts. The maximum amount of funds an initiative could obtain was €5,000. An external contractor handled the €55,000 municipal fund and currently still handles all the transactions concerning the donations. The initiators who successfully raised sufficient funds to implement their initiative need to be able to account for the spent money. They are required to share their invoices, a report that demonstrates the funding was used for the agreed purposes and an overview of revenues and expenses. Furthermore, the city has the right to investigate if the funding is spent appropriately by visiting the project site. In case of misuse of funds, the city can place sanctions on the initiator such as the recovery of the assigned amount of funding.

Monitoring, evaluation and impacts

Is a monitoring framework in place?:

Did an evaluation take place?:

Yes

The instrument is evaluated every two years. Relevant parties such as relevant municipal departments and crowdfunding initiators are included in the evaluation process.

Achieved outcomes and impacts:

In the first year (2015), initiatives collected a total of €70,000 and 80% of the submitted projects raised enough money for implementation. During the first period of the platform (2015 - 2019), 75 initiatives were launched on the platform and collectively collected more than €175,000. This amount was donated by more than 3,500 donors. 27 of the 75 initiatives reached their funding targets. From 2015 through 2022, close to €500,000 was collected from almost 10,000 people. A total of 140 initiatives have been put on the crowdfunding website. However, most initiatives have a cultural focus compared to (socio-)ecological projects. The proposed initiatives may be relatively small in size. However, as the crowdfunding platform is running for a long period and accumulating funded initiatives, these can be combined to generate a larger ripple effect. Successful initiatives can inspire other citizens for similar initiatives or be upscaled. For example, other cities started similar initiatives that were successfully implemented in Ghent.

Success factors and lessons learned:

The instrument stimulates bottom-up initiatives and the involvement of local stakeholders to create a more sustainable and livable city and offers a new financing mechanism for citizens and local organizations to implement their ideas in the city. The platform is easy to find, accessible, collects all initiatives in one place and is promoted by the city, which combined contributes to the increased exposure of local initiatives. To ensure that people with limited computer skills can also submit proposals, the platform manager can also be reached via phone or mail and has allocated time to fill in applications in person. Furthermore, successfully funded initiatives have local ownership and proven public support. The city did offer co-funding during the platform’s first years and did support the attractiveness of the instrument for interested parties to propose initiatives. Moreover, to increase attractiveness for private investors, they can become eligible for fiscal benefits. Companies, organizations, foundations, associations, etc. who make a donation are able to bring the expenses in as tax deduction. Citizens or “regular” donors cannot enjoy this benefit. A learned lesson about the crowdfunding platform is that the city cannot control the platform's outcome or topics that get suggested, assuming they meet the minimum requirements. For example, there are more cultural initiatives than environmental initiatives. Also, the implementation of initiatives are not always successful as the initiators are not necessarily experienced with project management. Past cases have shown that communication is extremely important for initiators to reach their funding goals and successfully implement their project. Besides offering the platform which initiators can use for their communication, the city also provides tip and tricks for communications campaigns.

Sources and further information

References

List of references:

Climate-ADAPT (2016). Ghent crowdfunding platform realising climate change adaptation through urban greening. Available at: https://climate-adapt.eea.europa.eu/en/metadata/case-studies/ghent-crowdfunding-platform-realising-climate-change-adaptation-through-urban-greening (Accessed on 12-10-2022)

Stad Gent (2021). Crowdfunding.gent in nieuw kleedje na bijna 100 gerealiseerde initiatieven. Available at: https://stad.gent/nl/samenleven-welzijn-gezondheid/nieuws-evenementen/crowdfundinggent-nieuw-kleedje-na-bijna-100-gerealiseerde-initiatieven (Accessed on 12-10-2022)

Crowdfunding.Gent (2022). Main website. Available at: https://crowdfunding.gent/ (Accessed on 12-10-2022)

Interview(s):

City of Ghent

Further documents

Weblinks:

https://crowdfunding.gent/

Photos

@B.Willaer (Vilda)