Three more fantastic community projects have been awarded thousands of pounds as part of a £50,000 pot of Crowdfund East Devon grants.

In the last few weeks alone, the East Devon District Council (EDDC) scheme has pledged the following amounts:

  • £2,000 to No Toy Left Behind which is 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. See the Help us launch No Toy Left Behind campaign page.

Beth Steele, from No Toy Left Behind, said:

We’ve been completely blown away by the support we’ve received for the project and we’re so excited to be able to launch No Toy Left Behind in Axminster!

  • £6,000 towards a £12,000 project to 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. See the Luppitt Playground Project campaign page.
  • £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. See the E-cargo Bike for the Exmouth Community page.

Transition Exmouth said:

We are over the moon with the success of our Execargo crowdfunder. It really goes to show what can happen when the local community get together with town, district and county councils, all chipping in to make great things happen.

Free crowdfunding workshops are still being held to help the district’s community and voluntary groups and other not-for-profit organisations access more than £50,000 of remaining funding available from the council through Crowdfunder.

This money available is in addition to a large amount of county-wide crowdfunding money available from Devon County Council and Devon and Cornwall Police, as part of the Crowdfund Devon partnership.

Find out more, particularly about the free online ‘Introduction to Crowdfunding’ sessions being offered by EDDC, here.

Councillor Jack Rowland, EDDC’s portfolio holder for finance said:

I’d encourage anyone thinking of starting up a community based crowdfunding project to take advantage of the free training support from EDDC.

The examples shown of successful crowdfunding projects really demonstrate what can be achieved with the additional support available from East Devon District Council for eligible schemes where targets are achieved.