Solidarity pool
How it works
Every year, a cohort has its pool. Sponsors fill it pack after pack; the association pays nothing. The sponsors are shown on the website, and each website starts when its funding is there: no threshold has to be reached before starting, but nothing is guaranteed either. The number of websites and their calendar depend entirely on the companies that answer, and the programme commits to no date and no number of websites before the money is there.
The pool is not a separate account in the banking sense: it is a commitment to transparency. Every signed pack is assigned to the cohort, every day of work is counted at cost, and the gap between the two is visible in the report.
What it funds
Only direct costs: design and development days, hosting for the first year, the shared training. No commission, no sales costs, a margin cut to the minimum. The price of a cohort website depends on its size, from 3 to 20 days according to the formula of the ladder; the five websites of a cohort are of the same size and their group price, lower than five separate projects, is what it takes to fund the whole cohort. The end-of-cohort report shows the use of every euro.
Why a pool rather than one sponsor per association
- Fairness: the least known associations are funded like the others, and selection is made on the goal and the need, not on charm
- Simplicity: a sponsor does not have to choose, compare or arbitrate between files
- Pooling: the foundation, the workshops and the training are shared, which lowers the cost of every website
- Readability: one report for the whole cohort, with the same structure from one year to the next
An association sponsor can be more visibly associated with one structure of the cohort, in agreement with it, but its money serves the whole cohort. A company funding a whole cohort chooses its region or theme with the programme.
In Kern4Good
The fund of the year's cohort is visible on the Our cohorts page, with the list of its sponsors and a report at the end. A company contributes through a pack, described on the Companies page; a partner gathering five associations, or a sponsor who wants to fund a whole cohort, goes through the Create your cohort page. Associations that cannot wait order their website at cost on the ladder of the Pricing page.
What happens if the pool is not enough for every association?
Websites start in funding order; the remaining associations move to the head of the next cohort, and they are informed. If their calendar is pressing, they can form a cohort with other associations or switch to a formula of the at-cost website ladder.
Can an individual contribute?
The programme is designed for companies and freelancers (the Friend pack at 500 EUR). An individual who wants to help an association does it better directly with it.
Is the pool's money invested or kept?
No. Each pack is invoiced when the cohort it funds starts, and it is consumed in days of work and hosting. Nothing is capitalised, nothing is left at the end of a cohort: the report does the count.
Must an association contribute to be selected?
No. The contribution is free and plays no part in the selection, which is made on the societal goal and the need. An association that contributes does it to speed up the funding of its website, not to jump the queue.