Neighbourhoods
How do you fund a community garden with crowdfunding?
Fund a neighbourhood garden: price the beds, soil, water and tools, set a goal the streets around it can fill, and thank backers with plants.
Short answer
Price the garden line by line: the beds, the soil, the water, the tools and the fence. Set the goal at that total plus fees, with a deadline that lets you plant in the right season. Thank backers with the garden itself: a plant or a tree with their name, a place on the sign, a basket from the first harvest. Ask the neighbours on the streets around it first. If the goal is met, the person running it claims the funds for the garden; if not, every backer takes their pledge back.
Key facts
- One campaign for one garden: a story, a goal, a deadline and rewards.
- No association, no company and no approval queue on our side. One adult signs up with email or Google.
- Rewards can be symbolic: a plant with your name, a name on the sign.
- All or nothing: miss the goal and backers take their pledge back.
- Each pledge pays 1.5% plus a flat $0.99.
What does a community garden cost to set up?
Mostly wood, soil and water. Write each line before you pick a number, and have the place agreed before you publish.
- Raised beds, or the wood and screws to build them.
- Soil and compost to fill them.
- Water: a tank, a tap connection, hoses or drip lines.
- Tools and a small shed or box to lock them in.
- Seeds, seedlings and a few fruit trees.
- A fence or a gate, if the place needs one.
- A compost bin and a sign with the garden's name.
- The rewards: pots, labels, the plaque.
How big should the goal be?
The setup total, plus the fees and a small cushion. Running costs, like water through the year, are better covered by the gardeners than by the campaign.
For example: 10 raised beds at $80 each, so $800, soil and compost $300, a water tank and hoses $250, tools and a shed $400, seeds and seedlings $100, the sign $50. That is $1,900. Add a little for fees and the goal is about $2,000. Then check it: 100 neighbours backing at an average of $20 makes $2,000. The goal planner does that sum for you.
What rewards fit a community garden?
Rewards that grow in the garden or happen there:
- A plant or a seedling with your name on its label.
- A fruit tree planted with your name on it.
- Your name on the garden's sign at the gate.
- A basket from the first harvest.
- An invitation to the opening day lunch in the garden.
- A gardening workshop with the people who run it.
- One raised bed of your own for the first season.
Use up to five levels. Put the smallest at the minimum pledge, $10, and the bed of your own at the top, since there are only a few. The reward tier planner checks what each level costs you.
Who should you ask, and how should you share it?
The neighbours who will walk past it every day, then the residents' groups, the cafés and the garden centres and hardware shops nearby. A shop may give materials too, and it can still back a sponsor level.
- Hang a poster with a QR code on the fence of the empty plot.
- Post the link in each building's group chat and on the neighbourhood page.
- Knock on doors on the streets around it, with a flyer.
- Show a drawing of the finished garden, so people can picture it.
Backers can pay by card or in USDC. A share reward goes from nothing up to 18.5% of each pledge a shared link brings; for a neighbourhood garden a low one, or none, is fine. How to share your campaign covers the first week.
Do you need an association to run the campaign?
Not on our side. A campaign needs no association, no company and no approval queue: one adult signs up with email or Google and publishes.
The campaign belongs to that one person, and the funds go to their own wallet. So the neighbours behind the garden should agree who runs it, and the story should name them and list what the money buys. Raising money for a social cause has more for projects like this one.
What does the campaign cost?
Writing and previewing it costs nothing, and opening it costs $5 on the free plan. Each pledge pays 1.5% plus a flat $0.99, and any share reward you set comes out of the pledge too.
The percentage fee on a pledge follows the plan of the account making it. It's taken when the pledge is made, so it isn't returned if the campaign misses its goal. Paid plans aren't on sale today, so the published fee is the free plan's fee.
What if the goal is missed?
If the goal isn't met by the deadline, you take your pledge back from escrow with one tap, and nobody has to approve it. What comes back is the amount held for you: your pledge minus the fees taken when you backed (the platform fee, the flat fee, any tip and any share reward the campaign pays).
So no neighbour pays for beds that never get built, and you can try again in the next planting season.
How do you start?
- Have the place agreed and the group decide who runs the campaign.
- Price every line, rewards included.
- Sign up in the app with email or Google.
- Write the story with a drawing or a photo of the plot, the goal, the deadline and the rewards.
- Publish, and hang the first poster on the fence.
Everything you can fund has a guide for each kind of project, and every other question is in the answers.