Brussels, 13 January 2022 - In the last months of the last year, the Microfinance Centre (MFC) and the European Crowdfunding Network (EUROCROWD) have signed a cross-membership agreement to strengthen access to finance and support for small and medium-sized enterprises (SME). This formalizes a years-long collaboration between the organisations in developing professional and impact-focused financial services for social economy.

Many small and micro-entrepreneurs, as well as early-stage businesses have difficulties accessing the necessary financial services. While some lack funding to take their innovative ideas and business off the ground, others need to overcome income or economic fluctuations with working capital, yet others need to invest for asset building. Even if they successfully manage to raise funding once, the route to financial sustainability is usually not done in one step, while more ambitious SMEs seek to scale up face a mix of fragmented semi-professional – often unregulated – funding sources.

By signing this cross-membership agreement, EUROCROWD and MFC join forces to develop partnerships among their respective members, to benefit not only crowdfunding platforms and microfinance providers, but also all companies looking to access funding. While the Microfinance Centre has a strong track record of developing best practices and behavioral codes of conduct for social lending, crowdfunding brings a newly regulated market with compliance and oversight.

This collaboration falls within a wider framework of partnerships in the alternative finance industry developed by both parties. Both organisations are committed to providing the tools and the necessary know-how to support SMEs in their business journey through training models, joint webinars, joint policy actions, and events.

“We are excited to formalise our efforts in promoting financial services with a social mission with such an experienced and well-established partner such as the MFC. Our combined strengths will help create a strong social and impact-focused mission within the development of digital finance”, said Oliver Gajda, executive director of EUROCROWD.

“We are extremely happy about this next big step in our already long term collaboration with EUROCROWD – the leading network in digital finance and excited to further work together more closely in developing modern, professional and impact-focused financial services for the social economy,” said Katarzyna Pawlak, MFC's deputy director.

MFC, the Microfinance Center, is a social finance network that promotes fairness, inclusion, equality and responsible service. It is a membership-based organisation gathering over 100 members – microfinance providers, associations, fintech, and other networks.

EUROCROWD is acting for an efficient, balanced & transparent crowdfunding eco-system in Europe. For more information on how crowdfunding platforms can benefit from our cooperation, please reach out to us via info@eurocrowd.org