Helpful resources

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Welcome to Make London.

We know that COVID-19 has taken a toll on our mental health, social connections, and local economies, as well as highlighted the need for quality outdoor spaces and new ways of safely coming together.

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In response to this, the Mayor of London has created a new £500,000 programme to support communities to come together and create new and impactful projects that help their neighbourhoods recover and ‘build back better.’

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We’re calling for actions that aid recovery by Bringing People Together, Improving Public Spaces, and Helping Local Economies.

So...what types of projects do we want to support?

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Projects Bringing People Together might include:

• Setting up intergenerational arts or heritage projects, or co-designing and creating public artworks

Projects to Improve Public Spaces could involve:

• Making streets safer and more sociable by improving walking routes, installing outdoor seating or spill-out space, or pocket parks, growing spaces, or community farming

Projects to Help Local Economies might include:

• Testing temporary uses for vacant and underused spaces on your local high street;
• Or establishing new open access resources such as community kitchens, tool libraries, or workshops

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We’re offering two levels of funding through Make London.

• Tier 1 is designed to support informal or grassroots groups with little experience securing public funding. Your turnover must be less than £50k per year.
• We can also support individuals representing their community at this tier. There’s no match funding required, but you can use the Spacehive website to create a campaign and raise additional cash from people and businesses in your area and beyond.

• You will also need to provide a letter of reference from a recognised, legally constituted organisation in your area who can vouch for you and your project

• Tier 2 is available to groups who are formally constituted and leading more ambitious projects and offers up to £50,000 match funding
• This tier requires 25% minimum – and typically 50% - match funding from ‘the crowd’ – people, businesses, public funders etc.

At both Tiers it’s important to remember that we’re looking for strong projects that have consulted with their local communities and aim to involve local people every step of the way.

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How do we apply?

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Make London is partnering with Spacehive, a civic crowdfunding website, which makes it easy to share your project idea online and then begin a crowdfunding campaign to collect donations of cash and skills – and to show evidence that local people support your project.

The steps involved are:

Plan your project - Now is the time to start thinking about your idea and talking to your community to shape your ideas and get their support. You’ll want to do your research, develop a budget, and make sure you’ve got all the right skills in place. Now is a good time to start thinking about what success looks like and how you’ll measure your impact at the end.

Create a Project Page on Spacehive

• Your project page explains your story and vision, gets across what you are trying to achieve, who will be involved, who will benefit, and how this will contribute to local recovery efforts. This will be visible to the public for crowdfunding.
• We will also need to ask you some more specific questions about your project so that we can make a decision on your application.
• This is called a ‘Pitch’. It is where you’ll need to provide evidence for us to assess your idea and how you will make it happen. Don’t worry, you can fill in this information in stages. But make sure you leave yourself plenty of time before the deadline, which is 28th January 2021.

Verification

• Before you can start fundraising on Spacehive, we will need to verify your project. This means we’ll check all the details to ensure you have necessary permissions to deliver it before passing it on to be assessed. We’ll let you know when we’ve done this and give you the go ahead to start fundraising.

Start Your Campaign

• After verification, it’s time to start campaigning on the ground. All projects must have started their campaign by the 11th February
• Get as many people as possible to show their support for your project by making a pledge - it doesn't matter whether they pledge £2 or £2,000. For us, the number of community backers you attract is as important as how much you raise. Members of the community can also show their support for your project by ‘liking’ and ‘following’ your project page and leaving a comment.

Mayor Pledges Funds

We will assess your project, and your campaign and decide which projects we would like to support.

We’ll let you know our decision by the 15th March

Meet Your Crowdfunding Targets

• For projects reliant on match funding, you must hit your campaign targets by 11th May 2021.
• Match funding is required at Tier 2, and the Mayor's pledge will not complete your project costs if you fall short.

Make it Happen!

• Once you’ve got all pledges in place, we’ll sign a contract, agree a payment schedule and you can get started on your project

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We’re expecting a high demand for our funding and won’t be able to support all good applications. So, it’s important for you to understand what we’re looking for in an application.

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These are the four areas we look at when reviewing projects and deciding what to support:

1. Project Description (40%)

We are really interested in the quality and originality of your idea and how it responds to a specific recovery challenge or opportunity in your neighbourhood, communicates a clear set of objectives, and how local people will be involved or benefit.

2. Your project plan (20%)

You need to show us that you know how you will make your project happen once funded. Show us you have a plan and the right kind of help. Make sure you’ve got the permissions you need. If things are uncertain, that’s ok, as long as you say so and explain how you will manage that.

3. Impact and Benefit (20%)

The Mayor's pledge must be spent wisely and fairly, it is public money after all. We need you to show excellent value for money. Consider the lasting effects your project will have, or how to maintain it. Describe what evidence you will collect, or what you will observe or measure to show us it’s working.

4. Strength of support (20%)

How much local support do you have?

Support is not necessarily the number of financial pledges you raise, but how many people support your project. We will look at the number of backers your campaign has, your social media activity, number of likes, or letters of support. Tell us about any other activity that you’ve undertaken to get support for your project – public meetings, consultations, etc. as we will use this in our assessment.. And at Tier 2, we’ll look at the number of pledges your campaign attracts.

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The key deadline to be aware of is completing a final project page by 28th January 2021.

Announcement of Mayoral funding pledgesWe’ll let you know our decision by 15th March 2021.

If crowdfunding for the remainder of your project costs, you’ll need to complete the campaign by a cut -off date of 11th May 2021.

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• You might want to check out our Self-Assessment tool to help you decide which Tier is best for you
• If you wish to get support discussing or developing your idea before making an application on Spacehive, you’ll need to submit a Project Support Form by 21 December 2020.
• We have loads of helpful information and guidance on our website to help you get started, from planning your project to running a crowdfunding campaign.
• Don’t forget to start your project page on Spacehive – you can work on it up to the 28th of January deadline.

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Still got questions?

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Make sure you check out our website for full eligibility criteria and guidance on what makes a good project, and feel free to drop us an email.

Spacehive will also be hosting regular Drop-in Q&A sessions across December, so stay tuned.

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Thank you, best of luck, and we look forward to reading your Project Pages on Spacehive soon!