Tag Archives: civic engagement
What is civic engagement in a bad-news world?
November 20, 2018 Cleveland, Neighbors making neighborhoodscivic engagement, crowdfundingioby
It can feel like too much. Fake news, real news, natural disasters, mass shootings, racism, sexism, voter suppression—and let's not forget bee colony collapse disorder.
Troubling as they are, even these big threats sometimes feel like just the tip of the iceberg. Especially when we hear assertions like, "Americans are less socially and politically engaged now than 30 years ago," it's easy to conclude that consumerism has become our unquestioned king, to lament that our humanity has gone up in smoke, and to yell into the wind, "For crying out loud, what is civic engagement now, anyway?!"
Friend, we feel you. But at ioby, we also have the privilege of working every day with residents all across the country who look at challenges and see opportunities. These people are aware of the problems—large and small—in our neighborhoods, schools, parks, roads, downtowns, and town halls, but they also know that they can help create solutions, right where they live. These people are walking out their front doors, linking arms with their neighbors, and saying, "Let's do this." Continue reading What is civic engagement in a bad-news world? →
More than crowdfunding—civic power!
August 13, 2018 Neighbors making neighborhoodscivic engagement, civic power, Firefly Trail, Hike the Heights, MARTA Armyioby
Did you know that a crowdfunding campaign was created last month to help make Kylie Jenner a billionaire? (Right now, she has about $900 million to her name.)
We at ioby do not dispute that variety is the spice of life, and we love that crowdfunding can help so many types of individuals and organizations achieve their goals—even if those goals can sometimes seem, um, a little silly? But we have to admit, we get more excited about some crowdfunding possibilities more than others.
Continue reading More than crowdfunding—civic power! →
AWESOME PROJECT: Memphis Nurse Practitioner Becomes Powerful Community Leader… Accidentally
November 20, 2014 Awesome Project, Memphisbetsy robinson, civic engagement, civic muscle, ellen roberds, livable memphis, midtown, midtown memphis, murals, muscles, nursing, urban arts commissionioby
Betsy Robinson never saw herself as a community organizer or leader. A nurse practitioner originally from New York, she'd landed with her family in Midtown Memphis via Denver, and – like most Americans – she just hadn't been exposed to the I can be the one who makes it happen mindset.
Yet here she is today, one successful ioby campaign just behind her, a second already barreling down the pipeline. The first, which you can go visit now, is a vibrant community mural painted onto the Cooper/Higbee Underpass in Midtown – a joyous spread of ginkgo leaves, dandelion leaves and fluff, homes, bikes and bike lanes, images of kids jumping, hands shaking, fists bumping, and a map of Midtown. The second mural, which is almost fully funded (click here if you'd like to donate), will go up right around the corner, at the Central Ave underpass.
And so, in a few short months, Robinson has become one of Midtown Memphis' dedicated community leaders, a fact which still seems to surprise and delight her. "I honestly never thought I would do anything like this, ever," she insists.
So what happened? The short version: A little help – and a little push – from her friend.
The unabridged version:
When Robinson and her family followed her husband's job to Memphis seven years ago, they chose to make their home in Midtown – just 100 yards from the twin mural sites – in large part because there was a park right nearby. They loved the walkability of the neighborhood, but the truth was that the park had seen better days, and the walk to and from was rundown, too. Robinson was particularly desperate to see someone brighten up the dismal – and very highly trafficked – underpasses that lay between her family and the park.
"It's just a big ugly set of underpass walls, under the railroad," says Robinson. "I'd always said to my kids and thought to myself how ugly it is, and somebody should paint a mural there, and why does it look so bad?"
Somebody should… somebody should. Sound familiar?
Meanwhile, Robinson's friend, Ellen Roberds, had taken a job with Livable Memphis, and begun to talk about her new work as a placemaker and community builder. One day, Robinson mentioned her idea to Roberds; why didn't someone brighten up the dismal twin underpasses at Central Ave with some murals? Why didn't someone give them a little TLC?
"She said, 'so do it!'" says Robinson, laughing. "And I was like 'well, I just don't do stuff like that. I'm a nurse practitioner, and that's it.'"
But Robinson's curiosity was piqued, and when Roberds took her to see a community mural in another part of town, explained what their budget had been, and told her about ioby, the project started to look tantalizingly doable. Robinson reached out to the folks at the Urban Arts Commission for advice, hooked up with some local street artists and painters over at the Memphis College of Arts, and before she knew it, she was in too deep to turn back – she couldn't deny that she herself was exactly the right person to spearhead the project. Because it mattered to her. Because it was, almost literally, her backyard.
"So I did it," Robinson says. "I actually went home and made the ioby account that night, and it was live the next day." Within two days, she'd raised the $1,500 she needed to make the first mural a reality.
Robinson says she took that first mural project on not just because she wanted to better her beloved Midtown community, but also because she wanted to set the example for her own kids. "I really went about it hoping that my kids would see that I'm not just complaining about the place I live," she says. "I'm actually able to do something about it. I wanted them to see something happening, and that we have the ability to make a change. We had a lot of fun with it." Now, when Robinson's kids walk by the first mural with their friends, they proudly point it out and say: "we did that mural."
Local media noticed, too; there was quite a bit of buzz and excitement around the mural, which had gone a long way to brighten and revitalize the Cooper/Higbee Underpass and immediate area. In fact, says Robinson, "It was so easy that we started a second one." This new one will be very different, aesthetically, and much bigger, too. This time around, an architect commissioned by a neighboring business will work with the same local artists to create something he envisions as being "completely over the top."
One of the most inspiring aspects of this second mural project is that, this time around, Robinson is determined to pay the artists for their work: $1,000 each. "They were flabbergasted," Robinson said. The first mural had put them in the limelight and brought other commissioned projects in for them, but they'd never expected to be paid for either mural. And when local artists are being paid for community work, you know something good is afoot.
For Robinson, the process of getting involved and taking action in her community has been one of incredible learning. She learned, for one, in creating the Cooper/Higbee mural, what a powerful tool community art can be for remembrance and celebration of those who have touched her life. In one spot, the mural depicts a muscled arm emerging from the window of a home; on it is written, in the style of a bicep tattoo:
R.I.P. Mike Crary
10/1/71-12.4.13
It's a lasting tribute to Robinson's brother, who died last December.
She also learned that she had many more community-oriented skills in her than she'd ever known. The two mural projects have drawn them out of her, to her surprise. "There's a lot of things I didn't know I was capable of, in doing this," she says.
"We had issues between the artists. They were totally different artists with different types of art, you know, which at one point clashed, and I had to kind of mediate. That's not something I'd done outside of my own family. It worked out well."
Robinson's advice to those who, like her, never saw themselves taking action and leading their communities? "Start putting feelers out and talking to people, and realizing that it's small steps at first," she says. "That's what I did, and I started talking to people, and realizing that it was actually possible."
Crowd-sourcing for the Citizen Sector
January 12, 2014 Under the Hoodcivic engagement, crowdfunding, de toqueville, grassroots grantmakers, informal groups, janis foster richardson, neighbors, putnam, shannon dixonioby
Thanks very much to Shannon Dixon and Janis Foster Richardson for this thoughtful piece about the transformation of civic life in communities across the U.S.
They write, "As asserted by Robert Putnam in his much discussed work Bowling Alone and in subsequent writings, Americans are less socially and politically engaged now than 30 years ago. However, are these new forms of connection shifting that trend? For funders that prioritize civic engagement, this topic has relevance. Often this work is being done by informal groups of citizens. Sometimes this work needs an infusion of cash, and funders can certainly provide that ingredient. Members of the Grassroots Grantmakers' network have experience funding informal groups (non 501c3) and our white paper details how (forthcoming to www.grassrootsgrantmakers.org)." There's a lot to learn from this interesting report on the landscape; click here to read it.
Oh, and Grassroots Grantmakers, we're looking forward to that white paper on funding informal groups.
Measuring Neighborhood Resilience, Part II
July 3, 2013 News, Under the Hoodcivic engagement, community engagement, connection to community, neighborhood resilience, poptech, resilience, surveyioby
In preparing for our presentation at PopTech on neighborhood resilience, we decided to take a small sample of three ioby projects to find out how participating in ioby projects makes neighborhoods more cohesive.
Small actions—donating $40 or volunteering on a weekend—are opportunities for participation with a relatively low barrier to entry. In addition, because ioby projects tend to be small scale or short term, a participant is likely to see the positive impact of her own contribution fairly quickly. We believe these small actions and easy opportunities for participation can be a gateway drug for civic engagement. This is why we believe local participation is a key element, if not a backbone, of any definition of resilience that accounts for social systems.
It's not a statistically significant sample; n is only 37, but it does suggest some trends. What we found out was that most people who responded had already been a little bit involved in the project before the project became an ioby project. And that 40% of people became more involved after donating or volunteering for the first. That is to say that their first action—what ever it was—was a gateway drug to deeper involvement.
And 95% of respondents felt a deeper connection of some kind to their community, including a whopping 21% who felt like they are an important part of their community after participating.
Every single respondent feels more connected to their neighbors in some way—recognizing their faces, saying hello, knowing their names, feeling more comfortable chatting with them—after participating in the project. A few people wrote in saying even that they felt safer in the neighborhood after participating.
Which begs, "Is this neighborhood resilience?" Is knowing your neighbors names resilient? Does feeling more attached to your community make the neighborhood stronger?
That's what we would like to find out, with your help. Because of the nature of our work with active and involved citizens, ioby has tremendous potential to contribute meaningful data to these questions. We would like to expand our data collection and tracking to include a variety of possible key indicators of resilience at the neighborhood scale, including indicators similar to what we've shown here. But we're going to need your help making our data useful to others in this emerging field, and we're going to need support to make it robust. Please join us along the way.
Measuring Neighborhood Resilience
June 23, 2013 News, Under the Hooda tale of two cities, andrew zolli, anne marie healy, civic engagement, civic participation, daniel aldrich, detroit, detroit future city, hurricane sandy, katrina, knight foundation, matsuri, national league of cities, neighborhood resilience, resilience, sandy, soul of the communityioby
Resilience. It's a word many sectors use to mean many things. Because Anne Marie Healy and Andrew Zolli have already contributed a lengthy assessment of the term and its many uses in their eponymous tome released last July, we won't repeat it here.
Superstorm Sandy augmented the use of the word, contextualizing it in city response to disasters like Sandy, Hurricane Katrina, even September 11th.
Turning to the smartest people we know, we found a remarkable body of thought that blends resilience definitions from the fields of ecosystem, biological, climate, social, and behavioral sciences. The thrust seems to be an assertion that, with smarter planning focused on resilience, our cities will be better able to return to an earlier state after a disaster, and, when that is not possible, reimagine themselves into a better future (like we've seen with Detroit Future City).
However, there is one important point that can't be addressed even by the most careful city planner, municipal agency, or local government. No amount of planning can build the critical social aspects of resilience without involvement and participation by citizens.
If a city wants civil society to be part of a more resilient urban environment, we feel it must take a close look the social cohesion of its neighborhoods. Myriad indices and analytical tools (like Knight Foundation's Soul of the Community, Tale of Two Cities) are available to help cities assess social fabric.
But, there are few mechanisms by which city planners or urban designers might affect such social indicators in the same way that they might address infrastructure changes. Cities may try to catalyze citizen participation through programs like matsuri and others shared by Daniel Aldrich at Purdue. But there is a vast conceptual and practical gulf between being able to support neighborhood resilience by, say, increasing community participation at a block party and being able to support infrastructure resilience by, say, increasing the height of a sea wall.
Further research is certainly needed to better understand how the various systems in an urban environment—the complex interconnectedness of built infrastructure, natural systems (including ecology, geology, climate, etc), and social systems (including cultural, economic, governance, etc)—can produce a more resilient city and better prepare cities for disasters in different ways. But decades of work in fields as diverse as neighborhood development and social justice advocacy will make one thing clear: we're not going to design or plan our way to the social side of resilience.
Building neighborhood resilience requires grassroots effort, patient capital and patience. Opportunities for participation must build on local successes, and local successes must build on more opportunities, over time.
ioby supports citizen-led, neighbor-funded projects that make stronger, more sustainable neighborhoods. The platform provides relevant training and resource sharing to support these projects (and with future developments, we plan to bolster and reinforce this). But more importantly, the platform organizes residents to support local projects with donations and volunteer effort.
In April, the National League of Cities released "Bright Spots in Community Engagement" noting that an important step that separates an attached citizenry from an engaged citizenry is opportunities for participation in shaping the future of one's own city and the feeling that one's own actions can make a difference.
ioby tracks a variety of baseline data and key performance metrics related to the neighborhood impacts of all of the projects that use our platform, including some basic information about the donors and volunteers that support this work. We have clear demand for our services, and a strong and growing base of supporters who want to become more involved across the country. But there remain some very important questions about the effects of this type of work on neighborhood cohesion, and further, about the effects of this scale of work on a city's ability to respond to emergencies of any kind.
Because of the nature of our work with active and involved citizens, ioby has tremendous potential to contribute meaningful data to these questions. We would like to expand our data collection and tracking to include a variety of possible key indicators of resilience at the neighborhood scale, including the following. But we're going to need your help making our data useful to others in this emerging field, and we're going to need support to make it robust. Please join us along the way.
Key Performance Indicators of Neighborhood Resilience
After participating in a neighborhood project, do ioby users (especially donors and volunteers):
know the names of more of their neighbors?
recognize more of their neighbors faces?
participate in more/other local civic opportunities?
feel more comfortable leading change in their areas?
feel capable of making change in their neighborhood?
feel more confident in citizens' ability to improve the neighborhood?
feel like they can play an important role in their community?
feel more able to shape the future of their community?
feel more responsibility to shape the future of their community?
feel more comfortable turning to neighbors for help?
feel the neighborhood was able to band together to respond to a challenge?
Miami Launch Party
April 9, 2013 Awesome Project, Miami, Newscivic engagement, gumption, miami launch, naomi ross, tale of two citiesioby
This past weekend we officially launched our Miami office. Despite the city-stopping thunderous downpour of Friday evening over 50 people made it out to celebrate with us on Friday night at The LAB Miami where we showcased our inaugural cohort of 12 projects. These projects highlight the gumption, excitement and accomplishment that is coalescing here. Leaders in their own right, those behind these 12 projects are blazing a trail of citizen led change here in Greater Miami.
Then, on Saturday we participated in the second annual Philanthrofest and, we have to say, it was an incredible and impactful experience. The event's organizers brought together over 200 of Miami's most active and meaningful efforts and organizations alongside music and food trucks in a festival atmosphere, and then drawing thousands upon thousands of greater miami residents interested in becoming more civically engaged. We met so many great people, doing so many great things, in so many places — and are super excited about supporting those efforts.
When we started we really had no idea what to expect in Miami, especially on the heels of a report like The Tale of Two Cities. And while my own experience in Miami the past 2.5 years painted the beginnings of a more positive picture, it is always hard to make a distinction between your own experiences and the overall reality. But, since the announcement of the Miami office I have been inundated with interest and I have learned how deep and extensive the level of desire and action for a better, stronger, healthier and more encompassing greater Miami is.
Faced with as many obstacles, historic and new, to a healthily empowered and engaged citizenry, it is not surprising that every time you turn around there are more citizen advocacy groups working to address the needs of the places and ways they live. What is somewhat surprising — but welcome! — is how their efforts are echoed through the various municipal offices of greater Miami-Dade. There is a strong and growing understanding that the citizen is not the customer of the city/county, but a partner.
Part of my work here is to introduce ioby as a tool to potential project leaders and support them to take that leap into working directly on the problems they can solve. The other part is to partner with municipality and citizen to identify and remove the specific barriers to citizens doing this work. I am already making positive headway on a few issues, but the bulk of this work lays ahead of me.
Miami is no different from any other American City at this time, struggling to get ahold of a governance system and budget that has been warped over multiple generations by the pressures of sprawl development, mass consumerism and ever more questionable federal policy. There is still, and will continue to be for some time, much here that can be pointed out as unacceptable — not worth dealing with. But, Miami is quickly surging to the head of the pack of cities who are, nonetheless, overcoming its obstacles and building a brighter future for all residents.
Photos by Naomi Ross
Identifying Obstacles/Barriers to Civic Capacity Building
March 2, 2013 Miami, Newscivic engagement, engaged citizenry, hydrant, miami, starchitects, tough towns, washington dc, water accessioby
Since arriving in Miami, I've known that it was a city somewhat implacably hostile to change that didn't stem from big shot developers or "world-class" starchitects (groan). Like many of us, I hear it in passing–the comments about how things will never change, how the corruption is too entrenched, how citizens are too set in their ways and mindsets.
But then I see the reality, which is an ever more energized and engaged citizenry, giving of themselves to create, collaboratively, a better place to live.
The goal of a caring and engaged populace is almost universally shared, from municipal official to municipal resident. The mystery is how.
Part of the problem has to do with political will. Part also has to do with the realistic feasibility of the average citizen navigating municipal bureaucracy as a first step in affecting meaningful local change. Each place has its own unique mix of strengths, opportunities and challenges in these regards.
To focus on the greater Miami area, ioby invites you to join us for a day-long interactive civic hacking symposium. A series of discussions and exercises will help us better understand the barriers to civic betterment and how we can overcome them.
"Tapping" Citizen Energy
An example of one of these obstacles to citizen-led efforts to better our city that I've recently run across is the difficulty of accessing communally held and funded resources like water infrastructure. In Washington, DC, civic nonprofits run volunteer events planting over 3,000 trees per year. Once the trees are in the ground, volunteers water them, using a temporary hydrant tap that costs for three days or less just $55/day. For periods from three days to one year, a $700 deposit is all that is due to secure a floating meter and permit.
By contrast, in Miami-Dade, civic groups must pay a non-negotiable $2,500 deposit and must use a floating meter described as too large to fit in the trunk of a car and requiring a truck–a far cry from the modern, sleek and inexpensive floating meter many bike around the city and to water trees in DC.
A $2,500 deposit and truck rental are pretty big barriers to engagement. The disconnect is clear: policies and procedures are designed to serve professional building and landscaping trades as the prime doers, rather than the average citizen.
ioby's interest is in making it easy to get active for people who want to make their neighborhoods stronger and more sustainable. So, as a first step in building and supporting the capacity for citizen led change, ioby+Miami is securing a long-term lease of a floating meter hydrant tap for use by project leaders and partner events requiring on-site water access.
Do you have ideas for what needs to occur to facilitate citizen- and community-led projects? Contribute your stories and ideas to our launch in Miami. For more information on how to participate, click here.
When We're All Urban Planners
September 17, 2012 Newscivic engagement, crowdfunding, david lepeska, deutsche bank americas foundation, digital engagement, forefront, geo-location, gov 2.0, miami, next american city, pollos del pueblo, small green patchioby
This morning Next American City, a weekly online magazine about cities, published a comprehensive Forefront feature on how digital platforms are shaping our cities — and creating new avenues for participation for their residents. David Lepeska spotlights two great ioby projects, Pollos del Pueblo and A Small Green Patch, and mentions ioby plans to grow in the near and longer term. Thanks to Nuala Gallagher, Tami Johnson, Sam Marks, Nichole Hefty and Frank Hebbert for working with ioby.
The hook follows, but follow the link to see read Forefront in full.
Everyone from the co-founder of Twitter, to the guy who sells haute donuts near your office, to your local councilman and even President Obama is betting on a future in which you'll open your city app to get news as you geo-map that monster pothole on the corner, find your favorite food trucks for lunchtime and donate to a local park plan proposed by your activist neighbor. Journalist David Lepeska explores the players and tools vying for a place in this emerging, highly networked world. With an eye to structural inequalities and logistical realities, Lepeska provides valuable insights on the most effective ways of using the Internet to harness energy for local civic good. The article offers a close look at crowd-funding start-ups such as ioby and Spacehive, exploring their potential to transform the way we improve our communities and interact with our neighbors. Moving beyond Gov. 2.0 buzz, Lepeska digs into the complexities of civic participation in the Information Age. For anyone interested in how the Internet is reshaping cities and the way we live in them, this article is a must-read.
Go to Forefront in Next American City Now (subscription required).