When it comes to supporting communities, two particular challenges consistently rise to the surface for councils: the disengagement of communities with council initiatives and the pressure to distribute finite grant funding fairly. Innovation is required to respond and one of the solutions being embraced by authorities across the UK and Ireland is community crowdfunding.

Take Lancashire County Council, for example, who set up their platform for supporting grassroots projects through community crowdfunding in late 2022. The platform now gives local people as well as groups the ability to fund and deliver their own ideas, while the council is able to amplify its grants allocation even further through the collaborative funding that crowdfunding enables.