Crowdfunding – An Alternative Way To Start Start-ups?

LOCAL SUCCESS

Crowdfunding was used to finance the archaeological dig at Flag Fen earlier this year, with tremendous success. It was the first crowd-funded archaeological excavation to be carried out in Europe. Being American, Project Manager Lisa Westcott Wilkess was well aware of the use of crowdfunding for certain projects as she explained:

It’s very popular in the States, especially in the creative industries. For example, 10% of all the movies shown at the last Sundance Film Festival were financed by crowd-funding. It was my husband Brendan who said ‘Let’s do this for archaeology’ so we got involved with Sponsume. com which is the largest crowd-funding platform in Europe. They had to create a new heritage category for us but we’re now the highest- grossing project that they’ve ever hosted

Lisa and Brendan sat back nervously and watched the Dig Ventures website (digventures.com) to see if any donations would start coming in.

We didn’t really know what to expect because this has never been done before on such a scale. So we were elated that, after the first 24 hours, we had already raised £3,000 and it just kept coming

In fact, the crowd funding platform managed to reach, and surpass, the £25,000 target in just 60 days thanks to contributions from 193 people, some of whom paid minimal amounts of £10, and others who paid upwards of £1,300. The funding followed a “reward” method, and those who paid £125 or more got the chance to actually join a real archaeological dig at one of the world’s most important Bronze Age sites.

You can keep up with all the findings of the Flag Fen dig by visiting digventures.com