[178] Small but mighty projects (and how to fund them!) with Misha Dhanak from Spacehive

A Sustainable Life with Jen Gale

In this week's episode I'm chatting to Misha Dhanak, CEO of Spacehive, the home of community fundraising. We're probably all familiar with the concept of crowdfunding and may have even funded products and projects on platforms like Kickstarter. Well Spacehive is a similar concept, it's a crowdfunding platform, but it's for community projects - so on there you will find things like a cricket club raising funds for new kit, or a town looking to create a rural arts hub. And as we will hear from Misha, there are a huge number of nature and climate projects too. Many of us might have ideas for projects that we would love to see happening in our local community - whether that's something like a regular repair cafe, solar panels on your kid's school, transforming a derelict bit of land into community garden, or something else entirely. But for most of us, those ideas stay in our heads as dreams, when the reality of trying to find the money to get it off the ground. This is where Spacehive comes in - they have helped to fund over 2000 projects, and raised over £30million for local projects, and they have they highest success rate of any crowdfunding platform with over 85% of their projects getting funded.
Misha talks in the podcast about 'small but mighty' projects and you will probably be able to tell from my reaction that I just love this! Many of the projects on Spacehive are small, they're not going to change the world, but they are going to change their local community. And with governments around the world failing to take the ambitious actions that we need to protect nature and the climate, community action is vital. And so many of the projects come with additional co-benefits, so the original intention might be supporting wildlife, or installing solar panels, but the ripple effects might be improved physical and mental health, or financial savings, and all of them will be bringing people in the local community together, to make where they live a little bit better.
I would love to hear if you have any ideas for local sustainable(ish) projects you'd love to get off the ground, and if this episode has made you feel a little bit braver about it, and possibly even launch your project on Spacehive!
Enjoy!

Misha Dhanak

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LISTEN...

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USEFUL LINKS:

• Spacehive
  - Website
  - Make your Commitment
  - Facebook
  - Instagram
  - Twitter/X
  - Linked In
• Loop Frome
• Knepp Estate
• Going Wild in Holtwhistle
• Active Travel Festival Chester
• The Flower Bank
• Cirencester Open Air Pool Solar Panels
• Solar Energy for Fulham Good Neighbours
• Margate Crab Museum
• The Commitment
• Carbon Literacy training
• The Sustainable(ish) Clubhouse
  

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What 'small but mighty' project would you love to see happening in your local community?
Could you make it happen with Spacehive?
Let me know in the comments!

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