#artsandculture

Crowd4Culture

In June 2018, Fondazione Cariplo and Intesa Sanpaolo signed an agreement for the promotion of ForFunding, the Intesa Sanpaolo crowdfunding platform, through the involvement of Community Foundations, which are capable of drawing in a large number of donors in fundraising campaigns.

On the back of the initial fundraising experiences with Community Foundations under the aforesaid agreement, in 2020 Fondazione Cariplo and Community Foundations decided to launch Crowd4Culture, an initiative to support local projects for the conservation of, and capitalization on, tangible and intangible arts and culture assets via crowdfunding campaigns. Those local projects would then be co-funded with a matching grant by Fondazione Cariplo.  

The initiative engages Community Foundations and their local stakeholders and its ultimate goals are to encourage the use of innovative fund-raising methods, bring the population closer to arts and culture and breed even more close-knit communities of people ready to help one another.

The initiative entails several steps:

  • Step 1: publication of the Crowd4Culture open-deadline call for proposals of Community Foundations in partnership with local organizations in their respective communities.
  • Step 2: review and selection of submitted proposals by the evaluation panel and subsequent approval by Fondazione Cariplo’s Board of Directors.
  • Step 3: training of Community Foundations and their partners in the selected projects to maximize effectiveness of crowdfunding campaigns.
  • Step 4: admission of projects into the ForFunding platform and launch of the fundraising campaigns.
  • Step 5: attainment of the fundraising goal, end of the campaign, transfer of the funds raised via Forfunding and of Fondazione Cariplo’s matching grant.
  • Step 6: start and execution of the projects.

If the crowdfunding campaign target sum is not reached, ForFunding will still transfer the funds raised to the Community Foundation for it to create a fund dedicated to the project, but Fondazione Cariplo will not give any grant funds.