Grassroots Community Projects

Our Spacehive crowdfunder directly empowers communities to choose their own projects. It gives people the opportunity to create and fund projects which energises the community around what they need.  It’s for the small-scale community projects that make a big difference to people’s everyday lives.

We’ve funded:

• Bee-keeping in the Meadow Well
• Beach Wheel Chairs at Cullercoats
• Community kitchens
• Boat trips for disabled children
• Bicycle recycling
• Community gardening

Local people are involved at every stage: anyone can propose a project for public benefit, inspire community support, and raise money.  Crowdfunding works by encouraging grassroots community projects to raise a proportion of their funding via direct donations from people within the community, with the NTCA then matching these investments with pledges for projects that meet our criteria.

For the initial rounds, in Autumn 2020 and spring / summer 2021, the focus was on projects which contributed to Covid recovery. In July 2021 we launched our third round of funding, backed by the Mayor’s Capacity Fund, with the theme of Zero Carbon, Zero Poverty. The aim is to provide match funding for projects which create or improve green spaces and/or reduce food waste and make it easier for everyone to access fresh, local food.

Due to the huge success of the programme in terms of engagement from local communities, we’ve just allocated a further £150k from the Mayor’s Capacity Fund. And we are reaching those communities most in need as our research show that 75% of projects we have funded are located in the lower half of deprived areas.

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