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Please note that we stopped providing grants through the Crowdfund Devon partnership on 4 April 2022. 

This was a way for East Devon’s community and voluntary groups and other not for profit organisations to attract funding available for projects.

Not for profit organisations could apply for up to £10,000 from us for East Devon projects. At the same time they could apply for grants from national pots that were present on Crowdfunder and attract other funding from the local community. No need to fill in lots of forms.

Crowdfunding gives community groups and other not-for-profit organisations, including town and parish councils the means of promoting a project in one central place to attract funding from many sources. Although we no longer have any money available through crowdfunding, there are various crowdfunding websites available where you can still raise money for your project / activity from your local community, your wider crowd and from other funding organisations.

Before Crowdfund East Devon closed on 4 April 2022, we funded the following projects:

  • £4,000 to Axminster's Community Waffle House. Their aim was to create a community owned and run space used to bring the community together to form unlikely friendships from the oldest to the youngest with a particular focus on those that are lonely or isolated. 
  • £4,500 to Beer Men's Shed's campaign. Beer Men’s Shed uses a workshop environment to get men together from the area to make things, which helps them socialise, improve their mental and physical health, and feel less isolated. The funding means that they were able to build their own workshop in the centre of the village and buy good quality tools and equipment. Previously the project participants had to use their own tools and meet in garages and small sheds, which restricted the number of men able to take part.
  • £9,000 to a project to provide beach wheelchairs for the disabled in Exmouth. This will provide custom made wheelchairs to allow people with mobility issues to access Exmouth’s wonderful beach and sea. The Exmouth Town Council project raised more than £20,000 to buy a storage shed, hoist and some wheelchairs. The delivery of the project has been postponed due to Coronavirus.
  • £4,000 to Axminster Gymnastics Club's campaign. The club helps children from 6 months to 16 years of age in Axminster and its surrounding areas. The club needed to upgrade their gymnastics equipment and with the money raised will be buying things including a sprung floor, a beam and professional matting, a stable landing mat for their bars and a movable foam pit area.
  • £2,000 to Sidmouth Science Festival 2020. This was to allow the festival run again in 2020, attract the best speakers and experts and hire venues. The festival was then unable to take place in 2020 due to Coronavirus. We're in discussions with the project.  
  • £4,867 to the Budleigh Salterton Community Workshop project. This project aims to create a workshop and other recreational facilities in Budleigh Salterton for the community to enhance skills, confidence and social inclusion. Volunteer led activities would be made available to individuals who have need for them because of their age, infirmity or disability, financial hardship or social circumstances, to try and improve their lives. Activities on offer will initially focus on carpentry, wood turning and other DIY, textile crafts and repair skills under the supervision of experienced practitioners and support volunteers.
  • £5,160 to the Coleridge Memorial Trust to place a life-size statue of world famous poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, born in the town in 1772, at St Mary’s Church in Ottery St Mary. There is no memorial statue of Coleridge anywhere in the world. The Coleridge Memorial Trust wishes to recognise and honour his shaping of people’s modern view of the world through his literary and philosophical contributions.
  • £5,885 to the Waffle on the Move project. The very successful not-for-profit community Waffle house in Axminster needed to move premises to somewhere larger and incorporate; A bigger space for people to come, waffle and relax in the heart of "Waffle House"; "Waffle Work" space, a space specifically aimed at those who would like a comfy, warm and inviting space away from the office and home to catch up with their business needs and to function as a place to have board meetings and games nights; "Waffle Play" space, a designated area with some intuitive and sensory soft play for little ones to enjoy. They have various support and outreach schemes that help the local community. Any profits they make are ploughed back into the local community. 
  • £3,500 to Pippins Community Centre in Axminster. The very popular Pippins Community Centre in Axminster houses more than 40 community groups and initiatives under normal circumstances, each doing amazing work in the community. Their building needed to be made watertight, windproof, safe and warm for the future, whilst making sure their room hire prices stayed affordable, so they decided to run a crowdfunding campaign. 
  • £6,500 to Beer Men's Shed's second workshop project. Beer Men's Shed has been successful in getting men from Beer and the surrounding towns and villages into its workshop to join in team activities, deliver projects that help the local community and develop and improve their skills in its current workshop. However, this is fairly small and can't accommodate everyone that wants to take part, and isn't accessible for people with significant mobility issues. 
  • £7,500 to Electric Dreams, a project from Honiton TRIP Community Transport Association to help them buy a wheelchair accessible electric vehicle to replace a 17 year old vehicle that was at the end of its life. 
  • £2,000 to No Toy Left Behind, an Axminster based Community Interest Company that aims to challenge the cultural norms of consumerism by offering clean, good quality secondhand toys of giftable quality. An environmentally friendly alternative to buying new stuff. 
  • £6,000 towards a £12,000 project help a group of parents from Luppitt put a centrally located playground into the village, near Luppitt Village Hall. Rural life is amazing in so many ways but it can bring isolation and lack of social opportunities for children and teenagers, and their parents/carers. Their hope is that this playground will help the community come together more. 
  • £3,000 towards a scheme that ended up raising £13,060 from Transition Exmouth called Execargo, to buy electric cargo bikes. Local businesses, community groups and residents will be able to use ExeCargo for deliveries, transporting sports equipment, doing the shopping etc.