Goteo: Building stronger communities through "cloudfunding"

goteo

Goteo is a civic crowdfunding platform focused on citizen initiatives and social, cultural, technological and educational projects. The platform not only encourages collaborative actions among communities, but also its design and blue print operate under an open source model and are free to use. Consequently Goteo has replicas and alliances in several countries. Managed by a non-profit foundation (with consequent tax advantages for donors) Goteo’s multidisciplinary team develops tools and services for co-creation and collective funding. Their work and projects are tightly linked to principles of transparency, progress and societal improvement. Moreover, they encourage the transfer of civil society’s values to the institutional sphere, in order to enhance participative adoption of public policies as well as facilitate and encourage self-organization and citizen participation. They call this type of funding cloudfunding.

Goteo's cloudfunding programme allows different formulas for public and private institutions, as well as individuals willing to multiply and thus encourage co-responsible investment in projects that rely on the support of the civil society.

Goteo foundation has developed numerous matchfunding partnerships in the past four years. By tailoring their services to each institution, they allow universities, public authorities etc. to experiment with crowdfunding and to channel their financial support as they please to their target audience. Matchfunding partnerships are an important part of income for the platform. Moreover, they help raise awareness about crowdfunding and bring legitimacy to the platform. The platforms’ focus on public engagement and open source makes it an attractive organisation for governments to partner with.

Goteo has established itself as the only open source platform for crowdfunding, with long lasting benefits for the donors and backers who support projects. It is well known in Europe and is present in Japan and Latin America.