A Powerful Crowdfunding Alliance

Two of the UK’s leading crowdfunding platforms are joining forces to produce a more holistic, education-focused model.

Crowdcube – the world’s original equity crowdfunding platform – is collaborating with hubbub – the leading UK specialist for crowdfunding in education. The union will enable hubbub to incorporate equity investment into their service, which currently is to provide white-label, rewards-based platforms for educational institutions. The resulting portal will thus allow universities to support both creative, charitable initiatives, alongside more entrepreneurial, commercial endeavors.

Luke Lang, Co-Founder of Crowdcube, said:

“We’re passionate about helping budding entrepreneurs secure the funding they need and making investing in start-up and early stage businesses more accessible, affordable and rewarding. Our partnership with hubbub has tremendous potential to benefit university students, graduates and alumni.” 

Jonathan May, Founder of hubbub, also commented:

“We want to empower people to make their ideas a reality. Many of our projects are non-profit, social good projects or are culturally significant. The future of crowdfunding is in the service, not the platform – we want people to get started, build relationships and grow, and in the meantime to provide specialist tools and services for educational organisations to help them communicate and fundraise better online. We look forward to collaborating with Crowdcube to help future generations of students realise their dreams.”

The “white-label” approach taken by Crowdcube-hubbub entails providing educational institutions with a bespoke platform over which that institution has complete control. Using this platform, universities and schools can leverage the support of their alumni-base to support the campaigns of current students. Crowdcube-hubbub handles the hosting, maintenance, and payment processing – leaving the institution to focus on creativity, promotion, mentoring, and the development of listed projects.  

The education-sector is a potential boon for crowdfunding platforms. It is the second largest global market after healthcare with an estimated global market size of $6.3 trillion by 2017. At present, just 1% of university alumni fundraising is managed online. In the States, $25 billion is given to universities annually by US alumni. The potential in the UK is enormous.