Category Archives: Memphis

10 creative community service ideas

Opportunities to serve our communities are everywhere, and can take many forms. Some of the most popular community service ideas are rooted in volunteering with an existing organization—like a soup kitchen, school, or house of worship. We at ioby think this type of community service is stellar, and we applaud anyone who makes the time to get good done with an organization they love.

But we also know there are some that are moved to act by the unique issues in their own neighborhood, and want to imagine, build, and execute their equally unique community service ideas. That’s why we’ve been helping residents bring their good ideas to life for over 10 years. ioby’s community crowdfunding platform—and the expert fundraising support that goes with it—gives people the tools and information they need to raise the cash, awareness, and buy-in necessary to take the positive change they envision from idea to reality.

Below, we’re happy to share 10 of our (many) favorite ioby projects that illustrate how creative, fun, and impactful resident-led community service ideas can be.

Continue reading 10 creative community service ideas

Ten Year Stories: Barrier Free

ioby was founded in 2008 in order to make it easier for local leaders to gain the funding, knowledge, and resources needed to make positive change on a local level. For the past ten years we’ve worked alongside more than 1,600 passionate, committed community leaders and have watched as small projects have turned into larger initiatives and collaborations have become movements.

In the coming months, we’re taking a look back at the past ten years, and tell some of our favorite stories of positive neighborhood change. We want to know: what kind of things can start with a conversation, a neighborhood meeting, a few dollars raised?

Yancy Villa-Calvo, in Memphis, tells us about how she created a living art installation that responded to the danger that vulnerable communities experience and encourage empathy. Through ioby, she was able to access quick financial support in a way that she wouldn’t have been able to access through a grant, and that let her quickly react to the vitriol that came out of the 2016 election cycle. Read more about Yancy and her Barrier Free installation.  Continue reading Ten Year Stories: Barrier Free

Tactical urbanism, the Memphis way

“Memphians don’t always do well with rules,” explains lawyer and city planner Tommy Pacello. Memphis-raised, he left for college and was drawn back to join the Mayor’s Innovation Delivery Team, an effort funded by Bloomberg Philanthropies to generate neighborhood economic vitality and reduce gun violence among youth. “The city’s got this grit and soul and texture to it that comes from being a river town, I think. It’s part of our DNA as Memphians.”

But that grit and that soul, in a city that faces its share of systemic challenges, haven’t always found creative outlets. “For many years,” says Pacello, “we had lived in an environment where people felt somewhat stifled. Felt they had to wait on other people to do things for us, to find the silver bullet.” For a community to see itself as dependent on slow-moving government, or on anyone, for positive change, safety, and cohesiveness, is deeply demoralizing. Something had to give.

Continue reading Tactical urbanism, the Memphis way

Awesome Project: STREETS Ministries uses data to diversify funding streams

For faith-based community organizations, fundraising can pose particular opportunities and challenges. Megan Klein, Chief Development & Communications Officer at STREETS Ministries in Memphis, puts it this way: “It’s heaven and hell all together.”

Continue reading Awesome Project: STREETS Ministries uses data to diversify funding streams

AWESOME PROJECT: The Heights Line, Memphis

At a community meeting recently, in a Memphis neighborhood called The Heights, a white woman named Linda Burgess – a resident since the 70s – stood up and said that she’d had an answer to prayer. She’d seen her African American, Hispanic, and Caucasian friends and neighbors joining hands in service of their community. They were working together on the Heights Line project: a pop-up public green space on National Street, designed to bring people together and to connect the historically overlooked neighborhood to exciting nearby developments. “Linda said that we’ve been needing this in our community,” explains Jared Myers, Executive Director of The Heights Community Development Corporation (CDC).

Continue reading AWESOME PROJECT: The Heights Line, Memphis

AWESOME PROJECT: Memphis nonprofit needs truck to transport restaurant compost to farms

Did you know that the average restaurant meal produces one and a half pounds of food waste? Much of it – think potato peels, broccoli stems, eggshells, or food the restaurant ordered but never got to send to a table – is pre-consumer waste, and some of it – like that last quarter sandwich you couldn’t finish – is post-consumer.

Until a little restaurant-to-farm composting nonprofit called Project Green Fork (PGF) was piloted in 2008, all that food waste from Memphis restaurants was going straight into landfills. That’s a whole lot of space taken up in landfills, a whole lot of methane dumped into the atmosphere (food produces methane, a greenhouse gas, as it rots), and a whole lot of potential fresh new soil going down the tubes. Imagine Memphis-area farmers paying for fertilizer and soil, when they could have been getting it for free all that time! Continue reading AWESOME PROJECT: Memphis nonprofit needs truck to transport restaurant compost to farms

Q&A: Nashville’s Chief Data Officer on the parallels between crowdfunding and the Open Data movement


Three-time ioby Leader Robyn Mace  raised  the money, buy-in, and manpower needed to convert a neglected lot adjacent to her family’s Memphis home into a flood-ready  rain garden, butterfly sanctuary, and community space. That grassroots work – with its ups and downs – has informed the groundbreaking work she does on open data, in her day job as Nashville’s Chief Data Officer.

The Open Data movement is a relatively new one. Born about a decade ago, it first took hold in big cities like New York, Seattle, San Francisco, Philly, and Boston, and is spreading beyond. City officials who specialize in open data are interested in making public data just that – public. Available for all to see and to use. They’re interested in the democratization of city data, seeking to engage as many people as possible, and ensure complete digital inclusion. We talked with Mace about some of the sweet spots where crowdfunding and open data overlap.

 

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[Photo by Jamie Harmon]

 

How did your ioby project, the Evergreen Rain Garden, come about?

Well, I had thought about it for a long time, because my family owns that house, and everyone in the neighborhood blamed us for not maintaining the lot next door, even though it wasn’t ours. So when I moved there in 2013, I felt it was incumbent on me to start to address that.

When  people realize that the City owned the lot, and that there was something we could do about it, that’s when it really took off. I approached the neighborhood association, and they were instrumental in getting the sidewalks rebuilt, but we couldn’t get any kind of agreement with the City for the garden. We had offered to pay liability and get a Memorandum of Understanding with them, and basically they never followed up with us. So it left me in a position of either having to maintain a really big grass lot, or figure out an alternative. I’m a Master Gardener, and I was a member of the Garden Club, as well as I’d approached the Evergreen Historic District Association Board. The more volunteers worked in the garden, the more people were interested in supporting that work.

 

Did the project bring people together?

Absolutely. Instead of having an ugly lot and impassable sidewalk, now we had four beautiful garden beds, and a really pleasant and interesting landscape to walk by. You’d see people talking in the garden, or people would pull over to talk on the phone. It’s just a lovely focal point, and it’s just nice to not have it look ratty, frankly.

 

“The ioby project reinvigorated me, and really helped me understand the importance of civic engagement, and how residents  and municipal employees can work together”

 

What’s your focus, as Nashville’s Chief Data Officer, and does your experience on the ground with crowdfunding ever sneak in?

Municipal data, for the most part, is publicly owned, and the idea is that by opening the public data access, we can help citizens understand what is happening in their government. Traditionally, cities haven’t been so great at using the data that they have and collect. I think Washington DC had the first open data portal in 2006, and it’s been sort of a movement since then. So it’s about transparency and accountability but also citizen engagement, in terms of giving people  the ability to identify trends and patterns around different types of services and activities that they’re particularly interested in.

The ioby process and doing a project really helped me better understand how to use community engagement to drive good outcomes. We work closely with the civic tech community, and now  I’m  trying to think about how to engage and deploy residents  in  data visualization and analysis.

 

Does your crowdfunding experience make you more prone to see little pockets of opportunity, as you look at Nashville?

Absolutely. Even though I’m a city official, recognizing the important of being able to be agile and do tactical urbanism is pretty important. One of the things we learned from the development community is you don’t try to design and implement a full-blown program; what you need to do is  deploy and see what works and what doesn’t, and then try again, and try again. So it’s in some respects  introducing the ability to fail, because we’re trying different things. It’s a huge paradigm shift. And so in thinking about the ioby project, it’s  the same kind of engagement: how do we get the results we want, in small, incremental steps?

I had worked for municipal government before, and done a lot of advising and training of municipal employees. The ioby project reinvigorated me, and really helped me understand the importance of civic engagement, and how residents  and municipal employees can work together on problems that they both identified, maybe with different interests or concerns. This has made it so much easier for me to work with the civic tech community.

 

Why is it important for cities to be willing to experiment, fail, and try again?

The problems are so big and so complex,  you can’t expect that you can fix them right away. You have to understand that complex problems require multiple partners and complex solutions. And you don’t get to those with the same business as usual approach. It’s  a big risk politically. At the same time, it’s really important to engage citizens and have them understand the complexity of issues that are faced as well as the fiscal issues. Because once you help people understand the dynamic, they can set their own expectations and decide how much they’re going to participate. And even understanding that they have avenues and ways to participate is critically important.

 

For those in the crowdfunding sphere who are new to open data and want to explore, what’s a good first step?

Just go to your open data portal, and start to click around. Traditionally, governments have been taking information, keeping it in a black box, making decisions, and then providing information on demand. And Open Data basically says that public information is going to be open by default, and we’re going to share it with you, because we want you to know what’s going on, and we want you to have input into the processes, because this is your government.

 

Feeling inspired? Want to take action in YOUR neighborhood? If you have awesome ideas about how to make your town greener, safer, and more fun, let us help! Tell us your awesome idea right here. We’d love to help you get started today.

Pssst…. In OTHER ioby news: Do you have a project in mind for your neighborhood? Hesitating on getting started, because you need a green light from city officials, and you’re loath to ask? Fear not! ioby Action Corps is here! Click over here to learn from the pros about “getting to yes” with city officials. If they did it, so can you.

Ask Action Corps: Need help getting to “yes” with city officials?


Our lunchtime webinar series, Ask Action Corps, brings the real-life challenges of resident leaders to a panel of ioby Action Corps experts who offer strategies, tools, and resources to help overcome them. At the end of each webinar, viewers can chime in with their own questions!

ioby Action Corps is our awesome network of experts who help local leaders succeed in making positive change in their neighborhoods. They’re here, they’re ready for action, and they want to help YOU implement your project! Visit ioby.org/actioncorps for more info.

 

Ask Action Corps #1: Green Triangles

On December 20, 2016, Cathy Marcinko, Grant Development Coordinator at Le Bonheur Community Health and Well-Being in Memphis, and leader of The Green Triangles Project, kicked off our inaugural webinar as our first featured leader. (Full disclosure: Cathy is also an Action Corps expert!) She was joined by a panel of three Action Corps members: Justin Garrett Moore, Executive Director of the NYC Public Design Commission and an ioby board member; Tommy Pacello, President of the Memphis Medical District Collaborative; and Janet Boscarino, Executive Director of Clean Memphis, Inc.

The premise

The diverse Memphis neighborhood of Vollintine Evergreen boasts many appealing features, including lovely historic homes and the V&E Greenline, the city’s first rails-to-trails project. But residents are rallying behind one amenity that could use some sprucing up: the raised asphalt traffic triangles in the sprawling intersection of University Street and Jackson Avenue. While the triangles were likely green spaces when the area was developed in the 1920s, they’ve since been paved over, become deteriorated, and are now an eyesore in this otherwise verdant neighborhood.

Cathy is leading the charge—with VECA, the Vollintine Evergreen Community Association—to remove the asphalt from the triangles and fill them with fresh soil and drought-resistant plants. Through their Green Triangles Project ioby campaign, the group quickly raised the $6,215 they budgeted to get the project off the ground; worked with residents and a landscape architect to develop the triangles’ new design; and had their plans approved by the Memphis City Engineer’s Office. All systems go, right?

 

Kids walking to school2

The problem

Well, not quite. While the City Engineer did give their okay, they also sent VECA a contract to sign that included two unexpected (and major) requirements: the group would need to 1) buy commercial general liability insurance totaling about $4.5 million!, and 2) lease the land the triangles are on from the city for a year. The premiums for insurance policies like these are too hefty for VECA to afford, and the group is not prepared for the additional responsibility of becoming leaseholders.

So, panel: how can VECA persuade Memphis city government to “lighten up” on these parts of the contract so The Green Triangles Project can proceed?

 

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The possibilities

Our Action Corps members put their heads together and offered Cathy these thoughts and suggestions:

  • This contract might have been drawn up using boilerplate text and not pertain as specifically to The Green Triangles Project as it seems. If so, the simplest way forward might be to reply to the city and say, “We like this contract generally, but think it’s a bit overbroad. Would you consider a slightly simplified version?” Then attach the contract with the insurance and lease provisions removed, and see what they say.
  • Try to get a meeting with Vollintine Evergreen’s city council rep, county commissioner, and/or other local elected officials to explain the project and ask for their support. During the meeting(s), you can cite your crowdfunding donors to prove community buy-in: “X number of residents in this district think this is a great idea—they’re even putting their own money behind it!”
  • If you have trouble scoring face time with electeds, try:
    • Approaching junior rather than more senior reps,
    • Asking local nonprofit organizations who’ve undertaken similar projects if they can help connect you with any representatives they worked with,
    • Illustrating how Green Triangles fits in with one or more existing city goals or initiatives—for example, Memphis’s Blight Elimination Program.
  • Memphis’s new Adopt-A-Park program could serve as a useful reference/precedent to bring up with city officials, as it does not require liability insurance—just a “hold harmless” waiver. In Indiana, Indianapolis’s Adopt-A-Median program has succeeded for about 20 years using similar parameters (and they post their partnership agreement online). Both of these programs could help to convince Memphis’s legal counsel that a big insurance mandate might not be necessary.
  • Have some sympathy. While this might seem like a simple project to residents, it’s part of a complex web of regulations and responsibilities that the city has to consider and is ultimately accountable for. So know that they do want to help you help your neighborhood, and help this project pave the way for other ones like it in the future. They just need to be sure all their i’s are dotted and t’s are crossed in the process.
  • Consider framing Green Triangles as a pilot or demonstration project. This can help the city see it as a low-stakes trial run of something different—not a commitment to change.
  • Look for nearby “anchor institutions” to partner with: they can be great allies. In this case, Rhodes College is right across the street from the triangles. Consider approaching them, presenting the project, and asking if they would agree to support it. “Support” could be as simple as lending their name to your list of backers, or they might be keen to help with the implementation work or ongoing maintenance efforts. You might as well go knocking and see what you find!

Watch the full Ask Action Corps webinar or sign up for our newsletter for news on   future ioby learning webinars.