With fewer grants available to businesses and community groups it is important to explore alternative funding options. Ynni Ogwen and Ynni Padarn Peris were looking to raise up to £750,000 for two community hydro schemes and Arloesi Gwynedd Wledig agreed to collaborate with them to trial a crowdfunding campaign to measure the response of the public. The support that would be offered would include the creation of a promotional film, social media campaign, production of marketing material and events.

Arloesi Gwynedd Wledig worked closely with the two groups to coordinate and deliver the crowdfunding campaign. The main elements were as follows:

• Production of a marketing strategy outlining the target audience and how they would be engaged with.
• The production of 2 bilingual promotional films providing details of the community share offer.
• Support for a series of public events in both communities.
• Support for an intensive social media campaign promoting both projects.

Both campaigns were a success with the target of £750,000 being reached within two months. In fact investors had to be turned down towards the end. The schemes have now been built and are producing power. In order to learn as much from the process as possible Arloesi Gwynedd Wledig sent a questionnaire to every investor to gauge why people invested, and we also produced a film on “lessons learnt.” The main lessons learnt were as follows:

• That creating professional videos in a very efficient way boosts the campaign as it raises awareness and understanding about the project, and then disseminating the lessons learned from the project.
• The most effective way to increase the numbers who watched the videos was through Facebook pages. Only 30-40 watched a promotional video directly on Arloesi Gwynedd Wledig’s YouTube channel, while about 20 thousand people watched the same video through Facebook.
• Found that local people are willing to invest their money in local projects because they appreciate the overall benefit which will return to the community.