Boris says “go fund yourselves”

London Mayor Boris Johnson is doing his best to plug the gap left by government cuts in local authority funding – by inviting service users to pay for their services direct. He has found £730,000 which he will use to top up people’s voluntary contributions, but the main funding will have to come from “crowd funding” sources – or “pay for it yourself”.

Under the pre-2010 arrangements, the national system of taxation ensured that money was raised according to wealth and income. It was then spent on priorities set by elected representatives. If you didn’t like what your representatives did, you could change them. You would have to wait until the next election came along, but you could make a change. If they were spending money on the local park but you wanted more money spent on the local library, you knew whom to lobby.

The new system relies upon communities which want to benefit from a service finding other ordinary people who will donate some money to them. Such donations are more like to come from the poorest in society, as they are the most keen to see the services continue (or start): this is where the concept of “pay for it yourself” comes in. The other side to the new system is the local people lose control. Your elected representatives don’t have control over what is funded – that’s down to what “the crowd” wants to pay in to. “The crowd” is never up for election and you can’t even find them for a chat about whether the park or the library is the most deserving cause.

You have until 1st May to get your idea on to the London Mayor’s Spacehive page and get the “crowdfuding” going. The London Mayor will then give up to £20,000 to the ideas which generate the most enthusiasm. “Generate the most enthusiasm” is not, of course, the same as “are most popular”. Better off communities are best placed to have the resources to generate enthusiasm. Services such as better childcare and more support for elderly carers may be more popular or even more needed – but the people who depend upon these services are not the ones with the time to go out fundraising.

Take the London Mayor’s last round of crowdfunded projects, for example – in which he put in £285,000 to 20 schemes. The schemes had to raise £430,000 from the “crowd”. The PEER Gallery in Hoxton, for example, received £19,000 towards its plans to replace its shopfront after it had managed to raise £25,000 from 187 backers through Spacehive. Good luck to them – but would a campaign to improve the incontinence laundry service find it as easy to come up with community donations?

Daniel Moylan is the Chair of the Mayor’s Design Advisory Group – though he styles himself “Chairman” for some reason. He greeted the new funding round by saying, “Using Spacehive for this pilot has allowed us to combine our grants with funds from individuals, businesses and organisations, meaning we can make more great projects happen faster, tapping into the wealth of creativity and enthusiasm within communities across the city.” Of course you will get your project to happen faster if you made people pay twice – through taxation and then by voluntary collections.

Chris Gourlay, Founder of Spacehive, was no better. He said, “A community coming together around a successful campaign is incredibly powerful. You will meet new people, build new relationships and find the skills to get things done that you never thought possible. A pledge from the Mayor will really help you on your way, and there are many more people and companies who will want to be a part of a great idea.” Guess what, Mr Gourlay: a community coming together to lobby their elected representatives on how to spend money raised through taxation can to all that too – just more fairly.

This is apparently the first time the Mayor of a major European city has used a civic crowdfunding website to pay for services. The World Government Summit has recognised the scheme as “a leading innovation”. Heaven help us. To date, over £575,000 has been pledged in London to 37 local projects. Perhaps that’s the innovation – that so few projects are successful.

•For full instructions to submit your idea and to view previous project examples, visit the Mayor’s Spacehive page: http://spacehive.com/Initiatives/mayoroflondon

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