In the past decade, online crowdfunding has gone from experimental technology to budgetary mainstay.
In the beginning, crowdfunding was an intriguing new approach that individuals and grassroots groups could try as a way of gaining support for their work. Now, it’s become a cornerstone of countless project budgets for both unincorporated initiatives and established nonprofits that brings in tens of billions of dollars annually. Continue reading Six crowdfunding myths grassroots groups fall for
If you and your neighbors have been working on a project to improve your community, the idea that you should turn your informal group into a formal nonprofit has likely come up. That’s understandable, since there are good reasons for some groups to do so.
But for other groups—especially small ones just starting out—incorporating can be unnecessary, even counterproductive. In some cases, it can be such a drain of time and money that it actually deprives communities of the very services the group is working to provide!
The Firefly Trail was one of ioby’s largest-budget projects to date. Learn how its leaders leveraged their ioby campaign to bring even more good change to their community.
In the spring of 2017, ioby Leader Ivette Lopez Bledsoe led her fellow Firefly Trail board members in raising over $62,000 on ioby for the trail’s Model Miles Project. An effort to build a 39-mile multimodal rail trail from Athens to Union Point, Georgia, had been afoot for at least the past 10 years, but progress was slow. The Board realized that raising funds for “Model Miles” in the communities of Athens, Maxeys, and Union Point would help move the project forward. Then, the board saw a rare opportunity that promised to transform the trail-creation process.