Funding Smart Cities

Funding and Financing Methods for Smart City Projects

As part of the Georgia Smart Communitie Challenge, we hope this workshop on funding and financing assists you and your community in aqcuiring the resources your community needs to fund new innovative smart community projects. This workshop will outline different grants, partnerships, and financing methods while you create a plan for funding your projects into the future.

Workshop Lead
Lee Davenport, Director of Community Development - US Ignite, Email: lee.davenport@us-ignite.org


Creating a plan for funding Smart projects

To prepare for the virtual workshop, the steps below are setup to guide you through an exercise in creating a plan for funding your own smart cities projects. At the completion of the exercise please create a 10 min presentation to share with the group using this Presentation Template.

Please download the power point presentation slide deck discussed in the videos below and review the supporting comments in the notes section of the slides for even more information beyond the slides and videos: Download

Introduction and Origins of Smart City Opportunities

As an introduction and background to the concepts that will be discussed at the workshop, please watch the following introductory video.




Step 1 - Your Community's Priority Areas

To begin, consider what areas are important to you and your community, who has authority to act to make a change to that area, and what are the factors needed to make decisions supporting a project in this area.


 



Step 2 - Define The Use Case

Next, develop a use case and narrative that tells how your smart city project will meet the needs of your community including potentially reducing cost, increasing choice, or accelerating a return on investment.


 



Step 3 - Scanning for Funding Opportunities

Lastly, familiarize yourself with the types of funding opportunities available to your community including federal and state grants and public-private partnerships that exist to fund smart city projects.