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Homepage > Training > Innovative Entrepreneurial Experiences at Schools

This module focuses on initiatives and training to stimulate entrepreneurship among students, suggesting ideas to train entrepreneurial teachers, presenting entrepreneurial projects carried out in schools and proposing methods to create a network and to find funds.

Innovative Entrepreneurial Experiences at Schools

Table of Content

Chapter 4: creation of a network
What is crowdfunding?
Fundamentally innovative, this type of participative funding originates from a threefold technical, social and financial evolution.

During the Workshop on crowdfunding organised in Brussels on the 3rd of June 2013, Commissioner BARNIER emphasise that “crowdfunding has the potential to become an important vehicle of the new growth model to invent”.

He specifies that:
  • In a time when banks are still reluctant to grant credits, crowdfunding makes it possible to fund projects that are excluded from traditional financial systems
  • Beyond the strictly financial aspect, project authors can with crowdfunding test their idea among a community of potential investors, who can then form an a priori faithful customer base.
  • Crowdfunding is a powerful innovation vehicle, thanks to which entrepreneurs can create their enterprises proposing innovative services.
  • Encouraging people to invest, even small sums, in projects they believe in, crowdfunding can contribute to improve entrepreneurship and social cohesion on our continent

What is crowdfunding?
It consists in putting a project author into contact with investors through a website.

Unknown people are contacted to fund a project of an economic, cultural, educational, artistic… type. Nowadays, crowdfunding concerns nearly all types of projects in all areas.

No need to go through a bank or a loan organisation anymore to start: financial intermediation is carried out through the Internet.

It is very effective, and all the more promising that the phenomenon is developing fast thanks to the internet and the maturity of social networks.

The project author who wants to get into action can quickly gather people around their project. However, they should not get their ambitions too high, they must be able to define their objective and to tell a story.

Yet, crowdfunding is not a magical tool! Contributions are not heaven-sent. The success of the fund-raising campaign will depend on the energy spent by the project author.

Resorting to crowdfunding thus means resorting to funding by “the crowd”. It is different from a traditional fundraising. Indeed:
  • If crowdfunding also addresses a large number, it all happens online and with a younger audience.
  • In crowdfunding, support does not go to an institution like in fundraising, but to a project.
  • In crowdfunding, a community is addressed to, like on social networks, a community that is going to be informed and called to join the project (an audience who is taken with the project and wants to support it right away)
  • Unlike the traditional fundraising, which is thought on the long term, crowdfunding can gather people around a project in a short time and without huge means.
This is the definition given by Yaële Aferiat, manager of the French association of fundraisers, it is giving the largest number of people the possibility to support projects with little resource.

In the United States, this technique called “peer-to-peer landing” was born in the early years 2000, with the platform “Kickstarter.

After Kickstarter, many platforms have developed around the world. There are now several hundreds of them.

According to the figures provided by enterprises active in the area, the amount of funds collected around the world through crowdfunding has almost doubled between 2011 and 2012, from 1.1 billion euros to over 2 billion.

There is the same dynamic in Europe, where crowdfunding platforms have collected 446 million euros in 2011 and 735 million in 2012, and have funded 470,000 projects (Commissioner Barnier’s Communication).
Online Resources

Table of Content

Comments on this section

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Date: 2016.08.03

Posted by S. Cabrerizo - Spain

The e-learning guide is very useful. Module 4, Innovative Entrepreneurial Experiences at Schools, provides easy examples for teachers.
The negative side is is that there is a lot of information in English, and sometimes it is difficult to follow it if you have an intermediate level of English. Moreover, as a suggestion, I think it could be a good idea to have it in a download version to print the most interesting parts.

Date: 2016.07.07

Posted by Didier Cahour - France

This module is a little bit complex and theoretical. Good practices at the end are relevant.

Date: 2016.07.06

Posted by Gabriela Vrabie - Romania

This module highlights a very important aspect of education: entrepreneurship education in schools, vocational schools and universities, which will definitely have a positive impact on entrepreneurial dynamism in our economies, on young people’s employability.
To this end it not only raises teachers and counsellors’ awareness about the benefits of enterprise projects but also provides them with invaluable tips on how to implement such enterprise projects at their own school. Teachers and counsellors will find practical advice on the necessary steps in creating an enterprise project at school, how an enterprise works or how to search for funds such as crowdfunding. The module also proposes teachers, educators or guidance counsellors a series of best practices to get inspired from.

Date: 2016.07.05

Posted by Martine Prignon (AEDE-EL) - Belgium

The choice of topics and the study of them provide a valuable source of information to teachers, trainers, counselors...
The best practices and online resources add a useful complement to theory, by presenting concrete examples of experiences, projects, exchanges between peers...

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This project has been funded with support from the European Commission. This web site reflects the views only of the author, and the Commission cannot be held responsible for any use which may be made of the information contained therein.