They say that sharing is caring. But what does sharing look like in real life, in our neighborhoods?

ioby Leaders are sharing powerhouses. They share their time and talents to make their communities better places to live, play, work, worship, and relax. And because all ioby projects must have a public benefit, our Leaders’ visions are focused on sharing, too: of resources, knowledge, enthusiasm… you get the idea.

And all that sharing does a lot of good. Sharing brings people closer together, makes our communities stronger and more resilient in the face of challenges, and makes our neighborhoods better places to live.

To celebrate these great contributions to the greater good—and to inspire YOU to start your own sharing initiative where you live—we’ve gathered three favorite sharing-based projects from the ioby movement.

Sharing project #1: The tool library

What it is:

Ah, the joys of do-it-yourself projects. The sense of accomplishment, the satisfaction of hands-on work, the pride of self-efficacy… If only the tools weren’t so expensive! And such a pain to store. And really, do I have to buy this thing when I’m only going to use it once?!

If you enjoy DIY home or neighborhood improvement projects, you know the tool rigmarole. But did you know that some wise community-minded cats have engineered a solution to this toxic tool scenario?

It’s called a tool library, and it’s fabulous!

NYC’s Makeville Studio sums up the idea nicely:

A tool library is just like a normal library, but with tools instead of books. They lend household, yard, and specialty tools to members with the goal of promoting reuse, access, and shared knowledge.

Imagine being able to borrow tools instead of buying them. Who wants to own a tool you use once or twice? For less than the cost of renting or buying one tool from Home Depot you could have an annual membership to borrow hundreds of tools. It just makes sense.

Tool libraries have sprung up all over the planet to serve neighbors in cities, rural areas, and everywhere in between.

Standout ioby project example:

The Saint Paul Tool Library’s organizers raised almost $14,000 on ioby to provide nearby Minnesota residents will a full assortment of tools and classes for one low annual membership fee.

Project leader John Bailey shared his best tips for fundraising success in this ioby blog post. Among them was the importance of focusing on the project’s inherent goal of sharing. As he put it: “We always sold this as a community endeavor, a community project. Much more a transformational than a transactional thing.”

Read about more cool tool library projects on ioby!

Sharing project #2: The timebank

What it is:

Timebanks are similar to tool libraries in that they exist to help people share resources, but they’re more generalized. Timebanks offer neighbors a way to “bank” both their time and expertise to help each other get things done—without exchanging money.

Here’s how it works: You spend one hour doing something for someone in your community, earn one “time dollar” for your bank account, then spend your time dollar having someone else help you out for an hour. Repeat and enjoy the benefits!

According to Wikipedia:

Timebanking is primarily used to provide incentives and rewards for work such as mentoring children, caring for the elderly, being neighborly—work usually done on a volunteer basis—which a pure market system devalues.

As well as gaining credits, participating individuals, particularly those more used to being recipients in other parts of their lives, can potentially gain confidence, social contact and skills through giving to others. Communities, therefore, use time banking as a tool to forge stronger intra-community connections, a process known as “building social capital“.

Today, there are hundreds of timebanks across nearly all 50 states, and even more across the world.

Standout ioby project example:

The organizers of the Unity in Our Community (UOC) TimeBank in Detroit raised close to $3,000 on ioby to help their staff plan events, conduct community outreach, and run the timebank on a daily basis.

According to Alice Bagley, UOC’s coordinator, “Time banking is about thinking about our communities and our economy a little differently. Our money economy only tends to highly value certain kinds of work, and places very little value on things like checking in on our senior neighbors, or the wisdom that people with different experiences might have, or the important work of community building through things like game nights. But we also know that if those things all went away tomorrow then we would no longer have functioning communities.”

Learn about more great timebanking projects on ioby!

Sharing project #3: Solar power

What it is:

You’re no doubt familiar with the basic premise of solar power: the conversion of energy from sunlight into electricity. Technological advances in recent decades have made capturing and using solar energy much more practical, efficient, and affordable than it’s been in the past. According to the Solar Energy Industries Association, which tracks solar trends, the US solar industry experienced an average annual growth rate of 50 percent between 2008 and 2018. That’s a lot of sunshine!

It’s no wonder solar is booming. Using solar power instead of fossil fuels reduces the air pollutants that cause childhood asthma and other health and environmental problems; lessens water consumption, decreasing water scarcity; and helps to mitigate climate change generally, saving humans money and safeguarding the health of all our planet’s inhabitants.

What else is great about solar? It’s easy to share! Unlike oil that needs to be drilled for, or coal that needs to be mined, the sun shines in every neighborhood on Earth—free for all to enjoy and employ.

Standout ioby project example:

The organizers of the Michigan-based Soulardarity project raised over $13,000 on ioby to support their community-led work of replacing over 1,000 city-repossessed streetlights with 200 solar-powered, neighbor-owned streetlights.

In a story celebrating ioby’s 10 Years of Civic Change, Soulardarity member Juan Shannon related how crowdfunding with ioby helped his organization prove that his neighbors were literally and figuratively invested in the idea of energy democracy. “A lot of people that are around us believe in what’s going on, but they didn’t have the large amount of money to just put in. [Crowdfunding] was a way to share in that moment,” he said.

Check out another awesome solar powered ioby project, currently funding!

Feeling inspired? Have a project to share with your community? Tell us what you have in mind! We can help you take your project from the page to the real-life stage.