LARAMIE, November 20, 2017—The Local Crowd (TLC), a rewards-based crowdfunding platform, won a Crowdfundie Award presented at the Global Crowdfunding Conference in Las Vegas, last month. The award recognizes outstanding contributions to the crowdfunding industry. The Local Crowd is hosted by community economic development groups in 12 states, where Local residents have used the platform to raise more than $172,000 for their businesses and organizations.

Co-founders Diane Wolverton and Kim Vincent accepted the award at a VIP event at Planet Hollywood in Las Vegas. “We are super excited to receive this reward — on behalf of all The Local Crowd communities!” Wolverton said. “TLC host communities have been working very hard to launch this tool. Each community creates an ecosystem where people understand crowdfunding and show up to support each other’s projects. It is very gratifying to see this work recognized!”

The Global Crowdfunding Conference (GCC) founded by Ruth E. Hedges, is the Crowdfunding Industry’s flagship event. This convention brings the global crowdfunding community together to learn, share and co-create the future of the industry—an industry that is experiencing explosive growth. In 2016 start-ups, non-profits and entrepreneurs raised more than $60 billion in capital from crowdfunding. This is a huge jump from just four years ago when in 2012 crowdfunding raised $1.7 billion in capital. Hedges commented, “I love what The Local Crowd is doing. It fills a very important niche in the industry.”

The Local Crowd platform is specifically designed for rural communities. In conjunction with community hosts, TLC provides education, support and hyper-local tools to connect local businesses and organizations with the capital they need.

The Local Crowd’s work has been supported by the Wyoming Small Business Development Center as well as Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grants from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to research and develop their capital raising tool for rural communities. Technology is provided by Community Funded Enterprises of Fort Collins, Colorado.

December 10, 2016 — We are pleased to announce an opportunity for several U.S. rural communities to participate in a pilot study on the use of crowdfunding as an economic development tool.

It is well known by economic development professionals that strong rural economies require strong entrepreneurs who can start businesses and create jobs. Supporting entrepreneurship in rural communities requires finding ways to enable better access to capital.

As a participants in the study, your community will receive use of a customized crowdfunding platform that will take localism to a whole new level. Imagine a fund-raising tool that:

• Supports local and small businesses’ capital needs
• Raises money for civic projects
• Provides needed funding sources for local non-profits and charities
• Connects the economic development resources in your community with the people that need them

The Local Crowd, a Laramie, Wyoming based company, has received a USDA Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant to develop a crowdfunding incubator that will help small businesses in rural communities access new sources of non-traditional capital. We are very excited to announce an upcoming pilot program that will select up to 10 rural communities in the U.S. that will implement the program in their communities and test its results.

The Local Crowd model combines the power of Internet crowdfunding with a strong educational focus designed to increase the knowledge base and sophistication level of rural entrepreneurs and investors in using the Internet to raise money and make investments in local companies. The model represents a catalyst for community involvement that will anchor it into rural communities by working directly with local economic development groups.

We are inviting a limited number of rural communities to apply to be pilot communities and utilize the crowdfunding platform and training program. We want to work with communities that offer great networks of businesses, entrepreneurs, residents, and community leaders that can understand this vision and help champion this opportunity. We are targeting local economic development organizations to respond to this RFP and these responders could be the local or regional EDC, SBDC, chamber, Main Street or other organization. As the TLC model becomes fully active in a community, it can serve to create more opportunities for entrepreneurship and employment, a greater and more diverse economic base, more options for growth and a better quality of life for rural residents.

This is a time sensitive project and only one community will be chosen for the Pilot Study. Submission deadline is January 11, 2016. Your response to our Request For Proposals (RFP) will allow The Local Crowd to determine your interest and ability to participate in this innovative crowdfunding technology. Please be advised that the selection of the communities will be based on the content of the response to the RFP. Organized, succinct and straightforward submissions are appreciated.

Please contact Diane Wolverton at 307-760-7373 or diane@thelocalcrowd.com or Kim Vincent at 307-760-7018, kim@thelocalcrowd.com with the name and contact information of the organization that is interested in responding to the RFP. You may register for our pre-submission webinar here.

LARAMIE, Wyoming, October 17, 2016. The Local Crowd (http://www.thelocalcrowd.com), a locally-focused crowdfunding platform, has selected three rural communities to serve as Demonstration Sites for a USDA funded research project.

The Local Crowd’s platform offers features and educational programs designed to help rural communities activate entrepreneurial ecosystems and spur local investment. The two-year USDA Small Business Innovation Research grant will support the launch of up to 30 Demonstration Sites, with the ultimate goal of commercializing a new tool that provides better access to capital for businesses and organizations across rural America.

The three communities selected to be Demonstration Sites are Butte, Montana; Lower Valley Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, Harlingen, Texas; and Wood County, Wisconsin. They will join the communities of Bozeman, Montana; Laramie, Wyoming; Golden Hills, Iowa; Goshen, Indiana; Monadnock Region, New Hampshire; Oregon, Illinois; Sauk Valley Region, Illinois; Spoon River, Illinois. and Teton Valley, Idaho.

“We are pleased to have such a strong group of dedicated and visionary communities coming in as our second group of Demonstration Sites,” said Diane Wolverton, Co-Founder and CEO of The Local Crowd. “During the review process, each community team submitted a vision statement about how being a Demonstration site would impact their community. These vision statements capsulized their commitment to stimulate ‘deep collaboration, innovation, local investing, job creation, eco-tourism, youth engagement, and connectivity between businesses and the community.’ We are looking forward to great results from this dynamic and extremely creative team!

FORT COLLINS, Colorado, November 11, 2015. Community Funded (www.communityfunded.com) today announced that The Local Crowd (www.thelocalcrowd.com) has chosen Community Funded’s crowdfunding technology platform to provide better access to capital for rural businesses and organizations across America.

The Local Crowd, based in Laramie Wyoming, provides education and technology to help rural businesses and non-profits raise funds locally via online crowdfunding and to educate rural investors about crowdfunding.

“Rural communities must cultivate vibrant entrepreneurial cultures to remain economically healthy,” said Diane Wolverton, Co-Founder and CEO of The Local Crowd. “Access to early-stage capital is essential to supporting entrepreneurship in these areas and that’s what we do by galvanizing local investor support.”

“We examined several crowdfunding platforms,” said Kim Vincent, Co-Founder and COO of The Local Crowd. “Community Funded’s platform is the only one with the features we need to support local campaigns and extensive educational resources our clients need.”

The Local Crowd, with support the USDA, successfully tested its solutions with six communities in 2014. With additional support from the USDA, The Local Crowd is recruiting up to 30 rural economic development organizations nationwide to implement local crowdfunding.

“Community Funded is proud to partner with The Local Crowd,” said McCabe Callahan, Co-Founder and CEO of Community Funded. “Their track record of results means that together we can positively impact communities nationwide and that’s our mission as a company.”

About Community Funded

Community Funded (www.communityfunded.com) provides powerful yet easy-to-use crowd-fundraising solutions that help organizations achieve their development goals. We also offer education and training to ensure success. @communityfunded

About The Local Crowd

The Local Crowd (www.thelocalcrowd.com) combines crowdfunding technology with the Spirit of Community and the power of local investing to catalyze communities that invest in themselves. @TLCpower