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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Crowdswell aims to help community complete projects, solve problems

Eric Dahl and Dennis Magner are pictured at a damaged bench outside Runners Soul in downtown Spokane. The website the pair created, called Crowdswell, lets people name a project, donate to its completion and find others who’ll do the work. (Dan Pelle)
Toms@Spokesman.Com (509) 459-5492

A Spokane ad agency’s new spinoff is designed to bring together like-minded folks to tackle community projects and problems, big and small.

Local Web company Crowdswell aims to be the place where people can invest a few bucks for civic good and then find people who will tackle the job.

The company is a for-profit spinoff set to launch next week from Magner Sanborn, a downtown Spokane agency that develops branding, advertising and marketing plans.

Although the website is still being tested and refined, it already lists an assortment of “swells” – the term it’s using for projects looking for support.

For instance, one project identifies the need to repair a wooden bench outside the Runner’s Soul retail store on North Wall downtown. Once the site is live, users can contribute as little as a dollar or two toward its repair.

At some point, whoever wants to tackle the repair claims the “swell” and gets paid when the job is done.

Dennis Magner, one of the principals behind Crowdswell, describes it as “a marketplace for doing good.”

Crowdfunding has become a widespread Web activity; sites like Kickstarter, Kiva and others offer all sorts of business ideas and personal projects looking for collective support.

Magner and Eric Dahl, the CEO of Crowdswell, say their service is unlike other civic crowdsourcing sites because of its “find your community passion” approach that they hope will encourage cooperation and grassroots partnership.

Dahl, who works as a digital strategy director at Magner Sanborn, came up with the idea 18 months ago. After extensive brainstorming, he and the three main partners in the ad firm decided to make it a for-profit company.

“This really operates on the capitalistic idea of supply and demand,” Magner said. “If enough people put money behind a swell, it will get to a point where someone will say, ‘I’ll fix that for that amount of money.’ ”

Projects can range from asking for support to fix a pothole to launching a community service like a mobile dog-neutering operation.

One other current example on the site is someone’s plan to add a doggy-bag dispenser along the Centennial Trail.

Unlike sites that allow users to raise money for their individual pursuits, Crowdswell is meant strictly for projects that help many people.

By and large, there are no target dollar amounts on Crowdswell, Dahl noted. As a project gains support, someone with the ability and means to take on the task will grab it and go.

When there are complex issues involved such as property rights, the Crowdswell model is meant to find people who can help, Dahl said. “So, if a goal involved removing graffiti, someone might say, ‘I know the property owner’ and that would be part of the solution,” he said.

Built into the rules on Crowdswell is formal review by contributors before payment is made. The plan requires a supermajority vote of approval by the contributors.

Once anyone pledges money, the funds go into an escrow account and are only used if the project is considered complete, Dahl said.

Crowdswell takes a 5 percent cut of all contributions toward a project.

For now the site is Web only, but the goal is to develop mobile Crowdswell apps for tablets and phones.

“It’s a simple idea, which is why it’s so appealing to us,” Dahl said. “But it’s also complex in all the details. That’s why it took 18 months to get it to this point.”

For Magner, the appeal behind the idea is the ability to help communities and individuals change the world, one project at a time.

“We are surrounded by things we’d like to fix or get made better,” he said, “but most of us don’t have the time or have money on our own.”