In resonance with the recent citizen mobilization against the DUPLomb law, the crowdfunding campaign “Decarbonons la France” reveals another form of commitment, turned towards the development of solutions and the implementation of a collective project. It testifies to changes to work in the modalities of citizen participation and the growing role of digital platforms. Decryption of record success of this campaign.
Launched on May 13, 2025, the “Decarbonons la France” campaign carried by the Think Tank The Shift Project aroused exceptional mobilization on the Ulule platform. In the space of a few weeks were collected 4,634,968 euros (on an target of 300,000 euros) from 36,552 contributors. This is the crowded donation campaign with counterparts (reward-based crowdfunding) the most sustained in European history. This record was previously held by the Youtubeur Tev – here Japan with the Odyssey project aimed at opening the biggest video game museum.
The objective of the “Decarbonons La France” campaign is clear: formulate concrete proposals to organize the energy transition and weigh on the political agenda for the 2027 presidential election. It is more precisely a question of responding to the climate emergency “by planning a progressive, but determined outing of fossil fuels”.
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This campaign questions the keys to success and the challenges of crowdfunding. Far from being limited to a simple mode of fundraising, it testifies to an evolution towards a citizen crowdfunding, oriented towards the activation of a collective commitment.
Citizen support for a transition project
While crowdfunding is regularly associated with creative, cultural or entrepreneurial projects, its evolution towards civic purposes is increasingly manifest. The case “Decarbonons La France” is the perfect illustration. It is a question here of contributing to the dissemination of a social project and to fuel individual and collective reflection on the energy transition.
The contributors’ sources of motivation will therefore be far beyond personal or symbolic interest. It is not simply a question of receiving a counterpart, including a copy of the book presenting the SHIFT Project action program for 2027 or the invitation to a webinar in the presence of Jean-Marc Jancovici or even to benefit from the tax exemption system.
The qualitative analysis of the comments collected on the Ulule platform testifies to the will of the contributors to associate with a project perceived as necessary, lucid and collective meaning. As one of the contributors formulates:
“We finally get out of ideological and dogmatic debates to approach the problems linked to climate change in a more factual and scientific way. »»
This financial support is thus accompanied by an adhesion to an approach which they consider to be rigorous, educational and emancipatory. Another contributor expresses in these terms the reasons for his involvement:
“For a real educated project, built and initiated by conscious citizens. »»
The act of contributing becomes a way of taking part in an effort to clarify the public debate around the ecological transition.
A collective organization lever
The success of this campaign is also based on consistency between the bottom of the project and its deployment methods. Contributors are not only funders. They are asked as relays, mediators, participants in a collective dynamic.
This collective dimension is reinforced by the supports made available to each within a communication kit. The plurality of counterparties allowing access to the statutes of citizen “solidarity” (20 euros), “enchanted” (50 euros), “invested” (100 euros), “mobilized” (300 euros), “determined” (1,000 euros) or even “conquered” (2,000 euros) testifies to a desire to engage the contributors in a logic of swarming.
The campaign also opens up to companies, whose participation contributes to expanding the impact of this collective mobilization. The Ulule platform then becomes a horizontal coordination system, where membership involves the appropriation of the message and its transmission within the respective circles of contributors, individuals or companies.
Through these different forms, crowdfunding tends to become a tool for mobilizing the crowd, likely to bypass certain institutional or economic blockages by giving citizens the possibility of funding directly or politically necessary.
This mode of engagement is neither a substitute for representative institutions nor a simple alternative to classic financing channels. The success of the “Decarbonons La France” campaign is not only based on an effective communication strategy. It reveals an increasing social provision to support projects with high collective value, as soon as they are meaningful and offer readability on their objectives and transparency on the use of resources.
While the petition against the DUPLOM law crystallizes an awareness in the face of environmental declines, the “Decarbonons La France” campaign shows that citizens can also invest platforms to propose, to structure and to finance an alternative ecological trajectory.
More than a technical lever, citizen crowdfunding appears to be a renewed form of democratic participation, anchored in the informed support for projects carrying social transformation. In this, it offers a space to articulate donation, commitment and dissemination of a collective vision.
