European Activism Incubator is in the process of testing a range of fundraising models available to non-profit organisations and impact entrepreneurs in today’s economy. It also gathers knowledge and know-how on innovative, yet underutilised fundraising methods.

The Green Fundraising project investigates and pilots a fundraising model, which is based on developing commercial products and services to gain revenue that is, in turn, reinvested into projects and initiatives that bring positive benefits to society.

The challenge that this project aims to tackle is to develop an affordable offer in line with the values of ethics, sustainability and fair pricing.

The main issue lies in the fact that profit-making in our current economic model is not inherently ethical.

Fairly priced services and goods are often unaffordable to those who need them due to (among many other factors) the prevalent taxation policies, which focus on labour. Sales of goods for-profit predominantly rely on producing them on the other side of the globe and capitalising on low wages and inadequate social protection for workers in those countries, as well as on low environmental standards. The transportation of goods across the globe contributes to global warming, as it predominantly runs on fossil fuels. Finally, end-of-life for most products in our economy is currently not addressed to a minimum satisfactory level.

Problematically, even non-profit merchandising is grappled with this issue.

The Green Fundraising project is a series of feasibility studies into various entrepreneurial opportunities, aiming to identify and develop ones that could potentially become a source of funding for non-profit impact projects, whilst overcoming the above-mentioned challenges as far as possible.