Research has shown that crowdfunding could and should further be developed to boost competitiveness and sustainable growth in EU. Leveraging and mobilizing private funding and expertise in various Financial Instruments and specifically Crowdfunding is a game changer for the CCI sector, especially in using and embedding innovations. Combination of crowdfunding with ESIF funds is challenging but offers great opportunity.

There is evidence that public expenditures on cultural projects in the EU affect crowdfunding platform origin and 
development, and at the same time cultural crowdfunding is more developed when public engagement in promoting CCIs is high. 

The pilot will build on these findings and good practices and develop in the existed One Stop Liaison Office Mechanism, a specific service that would evolve as a separate initiative in the short term. This service will focus on CCI – Innovation business models & Technologies (XR, Metaverse, WEB 3.0, DAOs, Digital Communities, Data Collaboration, Open innovation in Media, Gaming, Digital Film, Product Design) and CrowdFunding models (Equity, P2P lending, Reward, Donation etc) as well. 

Region of Central Macedonia will develop a co-crowdfunding guide along with our interregional partners and local stakeholders. The digital campaign will be organized to promote the crowd funding of SMEs that get EU funds that need more funds and to leverage EU (ESIF) funds with crowd funding.
In the latest phase of the pilot Region of Central Macedonia will test 3 cases (SMEs that will get funds from ESIF) and develop with them their pitch deck for crowdfunding.