Magdas hotel crowdfunding

Magdas hotel is a social business hotel based on cooperation, existing resources and a social vision. Refugees, volunteers and professionals of the hotel business transform a former rest home, situated at the Wiener Prater, to a grand budget hotel. The idea of the hotel deals with the topic of integration and enables the chance for multicultural encounter between people.

About Magdas hotel

The hotel is an innovative project that connects people and creates chances. Refugees from different nations are integrated into the hotels operations and work together with volunteers and professionals from the hotel industry with different cultural, social and professional background.

The hotel offers 80 rooms, a garden, café, lounge, artists-in-residence, a library and a great variety of services and features. Refugees from Afghanistan, Syria, Somalia, Iraq and other crisis regions live and work in the hotel and get together with traveling salespeople, families, city and culture enthusiasts from all over the world.

The opening takes place in February 2015 and until then renovations and modification are conducted in a participatory process by using already existing resources from donations, the inventory of the Caritas or furniture from dissolutions of other hotels.

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Types of crowdfunding

The project is planned and implemented by the Caritas Service GmbH, which is a subsidiary company of the austrian aid organisation Caritas. Supplementary to a given budget, which was provided by the Caritas itself, two types of crowdfunding were applied to realize Magdas hotel:

financial-based crowdfunding: a project or business is funded by raising monetary contributions from a large number of people, who support the idea, usually on a platform on the internet.

product-based crowdfunding: people contribute to the project with donations in kind, like furniture or unused materials.

Financial-based-crowdfunding

The Caritas provided a budget of € 1.500.000,- to finance the main modification costs of the hotel. The idea to raise money via crowdfunding came from Clemens Foschi, the leader of Caritas Service GmbH. The goal is to collect 50.000 euro through monetary contributions via the austrian crowdfunding platform www.crowdfunding.at. This money is not included in the project budget, so it is used for the finishing and further investments, e.g. curtains, pillows or other hotel inventory.

The following “gifts” are received when supporting the Magdas Hotel on a financial basis: For € 20,- you get a postcard and “sweet dreams” from the hotel. When donating € 100,- you'll be sleeping in a double bedroom. For € 1.000,- you receive 10 double bedroom vouchers with breakfast and for € 3.000,- forty vouchers for a double room inclusive breakfast and will be mentioned by name or logo in the foyer.

Product-based-crowdfunding

At the beginning of the project the architectural office AWG (AllesWirdGut) included mainly firms in the process with whom they had already built bigger projects successfully in the past. At first the magDAS was not that well known by the public, an so it was rather hard to get donations of any kind, but with increasing public relations more and more firms called the Austrian architectural office AWG and offered them their help in form of cheaper products or even for free (those where mainly from overproduction or inventory).

Types of crowdsourcing

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Art-based-crowdsourcing

The cooperation between the academy of fine arts and the projects has just startetd with the fassade competition. But its even a start of a long liaison to get more input and more future-oriented artwork at magdas hotel. The homepage (http://www.magdas-hotel.at/) and the YouTube video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YhmW2IgCNPk) were important tools to get the attention of the public. This fell into the competence of Cloed Baumgartner who is a designer. She did an excellent job by creating and designing the pictures, interviews, videos etc. for public relations.

Work-based-crowdsourcing

Besides financial and products help,the project needs of course manpower at the construction side. An example would be international well known firms like e.g. Samsung, sent 30 of their employees including the CEO Samsung Austria to the construction area of the magDAS hotel. There they helped by cleaning recycled door handles and washbasins from the former home for the elderly. They also assisted with smaller assembly works. Even a lot of people, who noticed the project through the media (TV-documentary or the magDAS-homepage etc.), came and offered their help. It was tried to integrate the asylum-seekers into the construction during the whole building process.

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Benefits

The Magdas hotel offers a profitable symbiosis for all sides. The hotel and its supporters can benefit from contributing to the project in different, mutual ways::

• Profile
• Marketing
• Product
• Audience engagement

Profile
For companies ,assisting in such a social project is a good advertising strategy. It throws a positive light on the company and the consumers think they do something good.

Contributing can boost the reputation of a company or supporter f.ex., 30 employees of the company Samsung Austria, even including the CEO, offered their help for one day and cleaned door handles and washbasins and assisted in doing installation work. All bigger sponsors are mentioned with their logo on a panel on the ground floor.

MAarketing
Raising money via crowdfunding helped the project to gain more attention from the public. At a certain degree of popularity companies and private individuals started to call the architectural office AWG and offered resources and help.

product
Depending on how much you donate, you receive smaller gifts or a specific amount of vouchers for double rooms in return. The concept of the facade of the Magdas Hotel also reflects the social vision of the project. Small square-tiles made of copper can be bought by the hotel guests, which can mount them on the balustrades of the balconies on their own. At the end of the project the copper will be resold, whereas the proceeds will belong to the Caritas, so the facade is actually self-financing.

Audience engagement
Crowdfunding enables a direct encounter with the audience. People can give feedback, comment and can follow the process on the crowdfunding platform or on the facebook site.

Initiators

Contend translation about the answer of the question: How did the architects use crowd funding and crowd sourcing as a tool?

“This should have happened at a much earlier stage in the process. … If I ever have to use crowd funding again in the future, this enormous public relations machinery has to start earlier, so you get a much better overview of the resources you will possibly get access to.”

„Architecture IS crowd funding.” “Crowd funding is a tool to USE - because it is there.” “This should have happened at a much earlier stage in the process. … If I ever have to use crowd funding again in the future, this enormous public relations machinery has to start earlier, so you get a much better overview of the resources you will possibly get access to.” For example: in an architectural competition there are always tools used (e.g. Renderings…) which are advertising the possible project, so the best project is chosen to be built. This is not that far away from the basic crowd funding concept: You develop a project and search for investors, who get some kind of reward. Crowd Funding is a new tool in Austria. If there would be for example 3000 architecture projects, the MAGDAS hotel maybe would not be so popular, but because it is not common yet you can earn more interest. In this particular case it was not the magdas hotel itself that got attention through crowd funding – it was the crowd funding that became popular through the project.

architects - Johanna Aufner // Alles Wird Gut Architekten

„Architecture IS crowd funding.” 
“Crowd funding is a tool to USE -  because it is there.”
“This should have happened at a much earlier stage in the process. … If I ever have to use crowd 
 funding again in the future, this enormous public relations machinery has to start earlier,
 so you get a much better overview of the resources you will possibly get access to.” 

full interview - J. Aufner

caritas - Klaus Schwertner // Caritas Vienna

„Generally to deal with the subject crowd funding: It is relatively new in Austria."
“There are only few projects - when I think about the web platform respekt.net - 
which I think are very interesting.

full interview - K. Schwertner

Marketing - Cloed Priscilla Baumgartner // PRISCILLA & PAT

full interview - C.P. Baumgartner

learning from

The Project is online since....Praesent rhoncus eu mi id faucibus. Sed convallis ex sed nunc volutpat, sit amet congue lectus viverra.
Sed id lobortis magna. Vivamus non faucibus dui. Maecenas et sodales enim. Praesent massa nisi, aliquam sit amet libero at, tempus malesuada odio. Sed gravida dictum euismod.The Project is online since....Praesent rhoncus eu mi id faucibus. Sed convallis ex sed nunc volutpat, sit amet congue lectus viverra.
Sed id lobortis magna. Vivamus non faucibus dui. Maecenas et sodales enim. Praesent massa nisi, aliquam sit amet libero at, tempus malesuada odio. Sed gravida dictum euismod. The Project is online since....Praesent rhoncus eu mi id faucibus. Sed convallis ex sed nunc volutpat, sit amet congue lectus viverra.
Sed id lobortis magna. Vivamus non faucibus dui. Maecenas et sodales enim. Praesent massa nisi, aliquam sit amet libero at, tempus malesuada odio. Sed gravida dictum euismod. The Project is online since....Praesent rhoncus eu mi id faucibus. Sed convallis ex sed nunc volutpat, sit amet congue lectus viverra.
Sed id lobortis magna. Vivamus non faucibus dui. Maecenas et sodales enim. Praesent massa nisi, aliquam sit amet libero at, tempus malesuada odio. Sed gravida dictum euismod.

guidance

The Project is online since....Praesent rhoncus eu mi id faucibus. Sed convallis ex sed nunc volutpat, sit amet congue lectus viverra.
Sed id lobortis magna. Vivamus non faucibus dui. Maecenas et sodales enim. Praesent massa nisi, aliquam sit amet libero at, tempus malesuada odio. Sed gravida dictum euismod.The Project is online since....Praesent rhoncus eu mi id faucibus. Sed convallis ex sed nunc volutpat, sit amet congue lectus viverra.
Sed id lobortis magna. Vivamus non faucibus dui. Maecenas et sodales enim. Praesent massa nisi, aliquam sit amet libero at, tempus malesuada odio. Sed gravida dictum euismod.The Project is online since....Praesent rhoncus eu mi id faucibus. Sed convallis ex sed nunc volutpat, sit amet congue lectus viverra.
Sed id lobortis magna. Vivamus non faucibus dui. Maecenas et sodales enim. Praesent massa nisi, aliquam sit amet libero at, tempus malesuada odio. Sed gravida dictum euismod.The Project is online since....Praesent rhoncus eu mi id faucibus. Sed convallis ex sed nunc volutpat, sit amet congue lectus viverra.
Sed id lobortis magna. Vivamus non faucibus dui. Maecenas et sodales enim. Praesent massa nisi, aliquam sit amet libero at, tempus malesuada odio. Sed gravida dictum euismod.

Literature

• Tayfun Belgin (Hrsg.): Christine und Irene Hohenbüchler – ... ansehen als ..., ... regarding as ... König u. a., Köln u. a. 2007, ISBN 978-3-9502333-0-8.
• Dorothee Messmer, Markus Landert (Hrsg.): Wilde Gärten. Christine und Irene Hohenbüchler. Niggli, Sulgen u. a. 2004, ISBN 3-7212-0523-5.

References

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