Tag Archives: how to

How to Get Corporate Sponsorships When You’re Crowdfunding for Civic Change

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What makes your community unique? Maybe it’s the physical characteristics of the neighborhood, like architecture or neat murals. Or maybe it’s the spirit of hospitality. Or maybe it’s your neighbors themselves that make it special. Chances are, local businesses are also a big part of your neighborhood’s identity—the shops that know you by name, and the cafes and restaurants that know your order before you walk in. They’re likely unique and one-of-a-kind, too!

If you’re organizing to make positive change in your community, whether you’re a nonprofit or just a group of neighbors with a great idea, local businesses can be a great partner to help you achieve your goals. One way to do this is by partnering with a local business or corporate sponsor to match donations to a fundraising campaign. 

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How to ask for donations and level up your fundraising!

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Have a great idea for a neighborhood project but nervous about how to ask for donations? Join the club!

The first-time crowdfunding club, that is.

Since 2008, we’ve supported nearly 2,000 local leaders as they’ve crowdfunded to make positive change right where they live. Did all of these people turn out to be successful grassroots fundraisers? Yes! Did they all love fundraising and know how to ask for donations when they started out? Heck, no!

Few of us wake up each morning excited to pound the pavement for cash. But once you learn a few basics about how to ask for donations—and after you practice a few times—we can all but guarantee that the process will get easier, seem more natural, and even feel gratifying. Read on for some of our best tips!

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How to raise money for our movements: taking the stigma out of fundraising

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By Dana J Schneider

For many of us, talking about money–and by extension, asking for it–is something that we’re seriously uncomfortable with. It makes us anxious, embarrassed, and some of us straight up refuse to do it. That’s understandable. Our approach to money is often informed by our upbringing, our economic background, and often a cultural veil of secrecy, discomfort, and maybe even shame. It certainly doesn’t help that when we think of money, it’s easy to associate it with the way it can be used to further exploitation, oppression, and inequity. But it doesn’t have to be that way!

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Recipe for Change Video: How to Start a Time Bank

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 Time banks are an amazing way for communities to share using time instead of money as currency.  The time bank movement is helping neighbors all over the country shift us away from economies based on consumption to economies based on relationships.

The concept is simple:

1. You spend 1 hour doing something for someone in your community

2. You earn one “time dollar” that goes into the time bank.

3. You spend your time dollar having someone do something for you and then

4. Repeat!

In this video, we present some simple tips and steps to starting a time bank in your own neighborhood.

This video was produced by Good Eye Video, in partnership with ioby and The Center for a New American Dream.

New Dream’s Get2Gether Neighborhood Challenge  (happening right now!) encourages neighbors from all over the U.S. to start new ways of sharing to build and transform communities, and timebanks are a great way   to start!

Visit our Vimeo page for more great videos on making change in your neighborhood.

 

 

How to Build a Rain Barrel

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This is the second in our online video series portion of Recipes for Change, our online and hard copy toolkit designed for urban environmental leaders to share their knowledge and expertise with others. ioby’s platform is designed to be a place for community-driven, community-funded environmental projects as well as for knowledge sharing. We hope you enjoy this first video, featuring our friend Devona Sharpe, who has generously shared her knowledge of rain barrel installation for community gardens and home gardens with all of us, in this video.

This video was produced with love by Good Eye Video.

How to Raise Urban Chickens

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This is the first in our online video series portion of Recipes for Change, our online and hard copy toolkit designed for urban environmental leaders to share their knowledge and expertise with others. ioby’s platform is designed to be a place for community-driven, community-funded environmental projects as well as for knowledge sharing. We hope you enjoy this first video, featuring Bee Ayer, from BK Farmyards, who has generously shared her knowledge of urban chickening with all of us, in this video and through her work with BK Farmyards.

This video was produced by Good Eye Video. The good folks at Good Eye Video are also teaching a workshop series on shooting and producing your own how-to videos just like this. The next one is on Monday, April 16, at 6:30pm at the ioby office and will focus on editing your video content. Register for the workshop here.

 

 

For more information on our Recipes for Change toolkit, visit the Recipe archive.