FUND-IT: Expanding Funding Skills For The Financial Sustainability Of Youth Initiatives

Ambitious young people who are running community projects are often missing experience or an overview of funding opportunities. They need to be empowered, their self-confidence, skills and creativity should grow, they ought to be heard since they are important motors of society. Their initiatives attract more and more young people to follow their example and to engage in a public life. They invest a lot of energy that is wasted once they do not find sustainable support. FUND-IT project wants to improve young people’s entrepreneurial skills. Even in a non-profit area. Sustainability and efficiency is a key to expanding the impact of their projects. Different funding models should be examined and improved. We focus on a group of young initiatives that sprang up around the USE-IT project. The non-commercial USE-IT map guides created by locals, honest and practical, are showing the real face of cities, breaking a bubble between locals and travelers. The worthiness of their mission is obvious, it meets European values on many levels. It supports intercultural understanding, fights the social exclusion between locals and tourists and does create European citizens. It is truly bottom-up, the maps show that there is "unity in diversity".

These youth initiatives mentioned above, however, have always stayed independent, looking for their own financial resources. During the last decade, it became clear that only 25% of the 400 of them were able to find resources to publish the map. There is no universally working recipe to get the youth project funded. The geographical differences of the city initiatives, like the location, size of the city, the conditions for the tourism industry and its level make some of them disadvantaged. Plus young fundraisers are often facing difficulties when trying to find a common ground with local politicians and to overcome prejudice. Much energy is often invested in unsuccessful fundraising activities and by observing each other we learn that it must be used more efficiently. We focused on these. Our goal was to double the percentage of successful initiatives during the project period. And by sharing the funding stories and focusing on a specific group of young people during the projects we aimed at the target to inspire the users and stakeholders to learn from their experiences.

The team of 6 currently operating youth initiatives were researching and analysing fundraising experiences of 50 of their fellow counterparts across Europe, looked for the best practice and created a toolkit based on the results. During te project we trained 30 youth leaders and chose 4 prospective initiatives, performed 4 fundraising experiments using the toolkit, after which we observed and published their results and made conclusions based on those. We made the outputs available to all future initiatives, USE-IT and others, through a new web platform. The visibility was an integral part of the project. Since we wanted to raise awareness about funding possibilities and motivate community startups, we were sharing our progress and findings, in an attractive and fun way on a web platform and through a conference with 65 participants.

We produced these measurable tangible and intangible outputs: A case study and report, based on experiences of 60 USE-IT initiatives (interviews, business plan analysis, focus groups). 30 junior youth leaders trained in entrepreneurial, product development and negotiation skills, finding common goals with authorities, and teamwork. 5 initiatives obtained experience and learned in real-time, by doing the work under the guidance of experienced people. 2 of them successfully raised the funding for their activities. The initiatives’ activities were shared through a social media blog with currently 208 posts and stories. New ideas among participants were developed, good practices were shared, the skills in teh partners consortium have developed. New toolkit set plus reports is available on an online platform for future and already involved initiatives. It includes these elements: 1 PDF Guidebook about funding 1 Prezi Timeline about the map project and its funding 1 Editable booklet for funders 4 Group reports about motivation 1 Database and its interactive map 4 videos about negotiation with authorities 2 video presentations about European project opportunities. 1 digest about EU money overview 1 video of a topic meeting about crowdfunding 3 interviews of officials 2 videos about continuity in USE-IT cities 4 case studies and success stories from 7 countries 1 open blog section with currently 12 posts 65 youth workers got familiar with the toolkit through the conference and got more capable of funding projects using the toolkit. The outputs will serve primarily to influence all past, present and future USE-IT initiatives. Thanks in part to FUND-IT, more of them already did and will improve their ability to run financially sustainable projects through both private and public funds. During the project years 30 youth initiatives out of the 65 succeeded and found money for their maps, which makes the rate 46% which, in the post pandemic era, is an impressive achievement. Importantly, the results were also promoted to the whole group or young travellers that use the USE-IT maps and follow their social media (up to 34 thousand of followers) and to other. After this project ends, we expect its results to be presented annually during the general conference, promoted within the network and further improved with the new experiences coming. In the long run, we would like the new initiatives to keep the minimum 50% success rate. With more funding and activities, we expect a bigger impact of USE-IT in the field of responsible youth city tourism.