Dreamstarter: corporate philanthropy meets the crowd

While both of these shifts have been fuelled to a certain extent by the ubiquity of social media, which allows us to share our corporate and personal values like never before, we’re yet to see the full impact of these movements in combination as they play out in our increasingly screen-oriented lives.

An interesting interface that StartSomeGood recently explored was between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and crowdfunding for social enterprise through our Dreamstarter collaboration with bank ING Direct (INGD).

The CSR concept has contributed a new vision of how corporations can impact society. Increasingly companies are assessing the triple bottom line (3BL) consisting of people, planet and profit, and considering the shared value of a healthy, secure planet for both economic growth and societal well-being.

Meanwhile, crowdfunding has made a major contribution to the democratisation of social change – its very nature demands funding be delivered to projects that have community support.

We believe that the intersection of corporate heft and community empowerment can offer a new future for corporate philanthropy. Enabled by social media-enhanced crowdfunding platforms, corporations can make genuine connections with stakeholders and defer accusations of tokenism and greenwashing.

So when INGD approached us to collaborate on a matching grants program to be run through our crowdfunding platform, we jumped at the chance to pilot a program that incorporated leveraging off a major, innovative and efficient corporation with the grass-roots, community-driven legitimacy of crowdfunding.

Sarah Harding

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