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To the left, Teresa Tarragó, co-founder and CEO of Iproteos, during her speech at the debate workshop.
 12.11.2014

Iproteos, a case of success in the workshop ‘New forms of philanthropy and social transformation’

Iproteos´s experience, based at the Parc Cientific de Barcelona-  and Creoentuproyecto, has been one of the three successful cases presented today at the conference 'Between Public and Private - New philanthropic networks in Catalonia'. The debate closed the series of open dialogues' New forms of philanthropy and social transformation", an initiative co-organized by the Catalan Institute for Public Policy Evaluation (Ivàlua) and the Palau Macaya of "la Obra Social la Caixa", which aims to analyze the philanthropic activity that takes place in our country and prioritize and focus efforts to address the social needs of today's world.

The objective of this third debate workshop -moderated by Ricard Valls, CEO of Zohar Consulting & Social Marketing and president of Entropia Solutions for NGOs- was to bring the entity that has helped fund the project with the recipient thereof. ‘Crowdfunding for business: the experience of Creoentuproyecto and Iproteos’ was the first example of success of the new philanthropy presented in the debate.

Iproteos -founded by two Catalan scientists leaders in the field of therapeutic peptides, Teresa Tarragó and Ernest Giralt- is the first Spanish biotech to have launched a crowdfunding campaign for subscription shares. “The aim of the campaign was to raise 100,000 Euros to complete preclinical testing of compound IPR019, a drug under development for the treatment of cognitive deficits in schizophrenia that we aim to license out by 2016.” The project has reached this amount in less than two months, with contributions from 42 investors who could acquire a stake in the company from only 300 Euros,”, said Teresa Tarragó, founder and CEO of Iproteos.

The crowdfunding campaign was carried out through Creoentuproyecto.com, a collective funding platform founded in Barcelona last February and is part of the Spanish Association of Crowdfunding and the European Equity Crowdfunding Association, of which is a founding member. “Creoentuproyecto.com allows anyone who wishes to acquire stakes in unlisted companies through a simple online system. Crowdfunding investment, still little known in Spain despite being governed by specific legislation, moves almost 5,000 million around the world each year, providing capital to tens of thousands of companies”, said Daniel Oliver, founder and CEO of the collective funding platform and president of the Spanish Association of Crowdfunding.

The other two successful cases  presented to debate were: “Educational innovation: the MSchools’ project”, promoted by  the Mobile World Capital Barcelona (MWCB) with the collaboration of the Generalitat de Catalunya, the Barcelona City Council and GSMA– aimed to train high school students in the creation and use of mobile solutions;  and “Philanthropy for environmental sustainability: GEPC-Edc and land stewardship”, an initiative of the Study and Protection Group of Catalan Ecosystems- Ecologists of Catalonia (GEPEC-Edc) and the Land Stewardship Network (XCT) that is committed to donating space as an innovative strategy for the conservation of land and biodiversity in public and private spaces.