Starting this summer, Laramie will help pioneer a new kind of local online crowdfunding called “The Local Crowd.” Crowdfunding is when an entity raises small amounts of money from a large number of people.
Trey Sherwood is the Executive Director of the Laramie Main Street Alliance, which will take the lead in the platform’s implementation. She says the difference between “The Local Crowd” and other crowd funding sites like "Indiegogo" or "GoFundMe" is that “The Local Crowd” will feature campaigns for projects that will invest back in their community.
"If it’s something that benefits the community, helps a local business grow, is beneficial to a non-profit, we’ll work with them to develop their campaign. But if’s determined it’s something like ‘I want to raise money to go on vacation’ we may say, you know, GoFundMe might be a better platform for something like that," says Sherwood.
The site is expected to be up and taking project submissions by early July. Implementation of “The Local Crowd” is funded by a Small Business Innovation Research Grant.
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