Crowdsourced, Neighborhood Philanthropy

By Timothy Beatley

In an era where crowdsourced investing has become a common strategy through platforms like Kickstarter or Indiegogo, the work of the small nonprofit ioby (http://ioby.org), based in Brooklyn, New York, has set a different and promising direction.

Ioby was formed in 2009 by three classmates who met at the Yale School of Forestry (Brandon Whitney, Cassie Flynn, and Erin Barnes, who now serves as executive director). I sat down recently to talk with Barnes in her Gowanus office, in Brooklyn, about the ioby idea and model.

Ioby — which stands for "in our backyards" — is motivated by a strong sense of the power of neighborhood-scale, neighbor-engaged change, and the necessity of addressing the needs of low-income neighborhoods. Barnes poses the essential question that distinguishes ioby from many other crowdfunding platforms: "What if people wanted to invest in their own backyards, not to fund an entrepreneur in a foreign country?" Ioby is profoundly place-based and local. "We want to make sure that anybody who lives in a community can make change on their own," she adds.

Only a few years old, the numbers tell a successful story — ioby has helped to fund and implement more than 550 projects across the U.S., raising more than $2 million. Ioby's projects are intentionally small-scale and solutions-based, and funding levels generated are often in the few thousands of dollars, and sometimes in the hundreds. The model relies on small donations; the average is about $35. But the funds are coveted and well spent.

One important difference from conventional crowdfunding is that the money is not generally generated by people far away. Many of the donors live in the same neighborhood, and Barnes tells me that around half the donors end up working on their supported project as volunteers. And the person seeking funding must live in the neighborhood.

Ioby trains project leaders and provides other "wraparound" services in addition to crowdfunding, including on-the-ground assistance with things like acquiring city permits (often necessary). It also extends its 501(c)(3) status so community organizations can collect tax deductible donations ("fiscal sponsorship," Barnes calls it).

The ioby model seems as much about neighborhood organizing as crowdfunding. Project leaders are encouraged to assemble teams and take their campaigns to the streets, as it were. The online donation, Barnes tells me, is really viewed as only the first step in participating in the project: "We believe [that donation] helps build participation and trust and a better project ultimately."

A focus on deep roots

Ioby aims to steer funding toward groups that they refer to as "deep roots" groups, generally organizations with annual budgets of $25,000 or less and few, if any, full-time staff (in contrast to the "grassroots" organizations that tend to be larger). These very small community organizations often see and experience problems firsthand, and they have many creative ideas for what can be done but little knowledge or experience about how to put them into effect. Here is where huge impacts can be made, and where financial and technical barriers to action can be broken down.

The projects are small, and often temporary. Many of them could aptly be described as examples of tactical urbanism. One of Barnes's favorite recent projects comes out of a campaign to identify ways to improve spaces around transit stations. Some very creative examples of "guerilla wayfinding" were supported in Los Angeles, a part of a larger initiative there called Walk This Way LA. Handmade signs declared how close things were by foot (we tend to overestimate the distance and time it takes to walk somewhere). In Denver, funds went to support the installation of play areas (designed by kids), a collaboration with an organization called PlayDenver.

Many of the completed projects have been aimed at design interventions for safer streets and providing healthy neighborhood food. Environmental efforts account for about eight percent of the projects, according to ioby, and include such things as installation of neighborhood rain gardens and local pedestrian and bicycle projects.

Ioby funds have also been used to support neighborhood-based citizen science, something we can and should be doing more of. A mere $1,000 was raised and went to support the Mystic River Open Water project in Massachusetts, which monitors the river's water quality.

By all accounts the future of ioby is bright, and the ioby model holds much promise. In addition to New York, they have now opened offices in Memphis and Miami and are working on projects around the U.S. They are also beginning to explore partnerships — the latest with the mayor's office in Memphis. Barnes sees the value of working to "fit" neighborhood-based solutions into larger citywide initiatives and strategies where possible.

Barnes is quick to caution that their approach is not an alternative to local government. "Civic crowdfunding is not meant to replace the role of government," she says. "It's meant to shine a bright light on spots and say 'this community is already putting skin in the game' ... maybe you could also pay attention to this issue."

Skeptics might wonder whether these often very small and temporary interventions will amount to long-term change. And it is not clear whether a model that seeks to marshal neighborhood wealth can work in poorer parts of the world. Can the ioby model of neighborhood philanthropy work to effect community change in a favela neighborhood in a Brazilian city, for example?

These are important open questions and concerns, but they do not diminish the potential power of this tool as it has been used so far in North America.

Timothy Beatley is the Teresa Heinz Professor of Sustainable Communities at the University of Virginia, where he directs the Biophilic Cities Project.