Introducing Crowdbound
The Arkbound Foundation supports people from the most marginalised and underrepresented backgrounds to get their voices heard through writing, focusing on publishing books that cover important social and environmental themes. They received £100,000 of social investment from Postcode Innovation Trust, thanks to Players of People's Postcode Lottery, and part of this funding was used for their crowd publishing platform, 'Crowdbound'. Here they tell us more about it...
We have developed a new crowdfunding platform that opens up publishing to a wider range of people, whilst being able to support projects by other organisations that need funding.
The website, Crowdbound, was launched on 21st June 2022 – in line with World Localisation Day – and it represents the only UK-based crowdfunding site with a focus on social inclusion and environmental sustainability.
For those looking to create campaigns, it offers a range of benefits: no fees, achievable targets, 1-1 support, eligibility for Gift Aid to increase amounts raised, and even match funding opportunities.
For those looking to back campaigns, it offers a secure payment facility with Paypal, Swipe or bank transfer – together with transparency in being able to support carefully assessed campaigns, overseen by a registered charity.
Up until this point, we had been largely dependent on grants to support the production of books, which often run into the thousands of pounds. Now, money raised from crowdfunding can enable us to support a larger group of authors, whose work covers important social or environmental themes.
Scarcely into two weeks of opening, Crowdbound has achieved its very first success story – raising over £1,100 for John McGlade’s book, ‘Invisible Schemes’. The book, set in Glasgow, explores themes around poverty, social inequality and gentrification through a satirical narrative. John notes of the process:
“Before the campaign launch, we had a Zoom meeting to discuss how we’d go ahead, and I was given a very good intro guide to the process. This was particularly handy because I’d never run a crowdfunding campaign before, so I didn’t have much of a clue about how they work.
Initially we looked at the possibility of running my campaign on some of the other platforms, but none quite suited this campaign, which aims to support two charities – Arkbound and the Clutha Trust’s ‘Power Over Poverty’ initiative. I also noticed that some of the established crowdfunding platforms take a fair bit of your backers’ money in commissions.”
The money raised by John will be used exclusively for his book and the Clutha Trust’s initiative, with only 1% deducted to support the costs of running Crowdbound.
We are looking forward to supporting further brilliant books and projects!
For more information, contact info@crowdbound.org