Tag Archives: recipes for change

How is ioby different from other crowdfunding sites?

March 23, 2014Newscrowdfunding, crowdresourcing, fastcash, fees, fiscal sponsorship, flexible finish, ioby, recipes for change, tax deductible, webinarsErin Barnes

How is ioby different from other crowdfunding sites? Glad you asked! There are some important differences.

1. ioby is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization, so all donations to projects on ioby are tax-deductible. Anyone can use ioby, so if you’re not a 501(c)3 yourself, ioby can offer you a limited form of fiscal sponsorship.

2. As a nonprofit, we have a mission to make sure your project is successful. This means we go the extra mile to make sure our platform is designed to serve you.

• NEW DONOR ACQUISITION. We give donors an easy way to join your mailing list after they’ve supported your project and send you the contact information of those who have given to you. Using ioby to power your campaign means a long-term investment in building your own base of donors.
• HIGH SUCCESS RATE. We have a very high rate of fully funded projects. That’s true because we’re here to help throughout the process.
• FLEXIBLE FINISH. We have a unique flexible finish policy that makes it easy for you to keep the funds you raised. “All or nothing” policies might work for contests, but not for real people doing important work on the ground.
• LOW FEES. We have a fee structure that intentionally supports early stage ideas and small projects. No matter how you figure it, we’re cheaper than our competition.
• TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE. We host webinars specifically designed to support civic leaders. We take the best lessons we’ve gathered from successful campaigns to date and share them.
• FRIENDLY STAFF. We care about your work and want to help leverage the ioby community of leaders to support you. We’re always here. And we listen to what you have to say.

3. ioby is more than a funding platform. We call ioby crowd-resourcing because we want you to get all the resources you need for a successful project. We connect you to other civic leaders, host meetings and discussions to support thought leadership in local solutions and civic engagement, like our Getting Good Done series, and bring you into a community of peer learning through our Recipes for Change toolkit. Check out our Resources.

4. You know what’s best for your neighborhood. All projects that are good for the community and make no profit are eligible to use ioby. We never judge how cool or innovative or creative your project seems to us. You know what’s best for your neighborhood, and we’re here to support you.

How to Build a Rain Barrel

July 26, 2012Recipes for Change, Videocommunity gardening, devona sharpe, how to, pickle barrels, rain gardens, rainwater harvesting, recipes for change, runoffErin Barnes

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.

Recipes for Change Workshop

November 13, 2011Recipes for Change, Workshopsclarisa diaz, desis, peer learning, placesforall, recipes for change, user generated content, workshopioby

We had a great workshop session on Saturday to get feedback on our Recipes for Change toolkit. Thanks to those who came, we had a range of participants: young and old, local residents and visitors from abroad, project leaders and people with just great ideas for projects in their neighborhoods. That diversity of participation led to insightful feedback on aspects to make us better from an array of perspectives.

It was helpful for us to know for instance, how our toolkit was viewed by an experienced project leader in comparison to someone who just has an idea but doesn’t know where to start. It was also interesting to compare the views of those who want a compact list of tips and those who want a longer set of templates and visuals. Over the coming months, ioby and Places for All will be asking ourselves the questions raised at the workshop to refine the toolkit based on your comments. We think in the end Recipes for Change is going to be a really useful tool and resource. Thanks for confirming this to us on Saturday and letting us know we should keep going to make this project happen.

If you have any additional ideas or comments, please email info@ioby.org

Below are some images from Saturday, credits to Katie Doane for the great photos.

Share & Build Recipes for Change, Sat., Nov. 12, 2pm

November 9, 2011Recipes for Change, Workshopsclarisa diaz, desis, peer learning, placesforall, recipes for change, user generated content, workshopioby

On page 40 of ioby's Business Plan, you'll find our Founding Principles. I'm gonna save you the trouble of looking for them and just tell you now that the third one is:

Local people often know best what changes are needed in their community, and are the best source of creativity, ingenuity, and motivation needed to realize change.

Basically, what this says is that you are the expert on your community's needs and the best ways to address those needs. You and everybody else out there like you. Tami in Brooklyn is the expert. Jared in the Bronx is the expert. Martha in Queens is the expert. You get the idea.

And so, rather than create a bunch of "expertise" from our organization's staff, one of ioby's three main objectives is to share the expertise, knowledge and experience of project leaders that post their projects on ioby with all of you. And back in August, we started a new project to do just that.

We started working with Clarisa Diaz from Places for All.

Together we've built a toolkit that we're calling Recipes for Change. Admittedly, it is hokey. But it makes sense. Every project has key ingredients and steps to being successful. At at the end, the chefs, er…uh…project leaders, give you extra tips and lessons they learned along the way.

The Recipes for Change recipe box, just like any other recipe box, can grow. You can contribute your recipe, and we'll throw it in the mix and let others use it.

And so, not surprisingly, the Recipes for Change recipe box is under development, with just eight recipes so far. But those eight are pretty damn good and we have a working draft that we want to share with you to see what you think.

We're getting together on Saturday, November 12 at 2pm in Brooklyn for a two-hour workshop.

During this time you can talk directly with ioby project leaders that have taken their ideas to fruition and who want to share their "recipes" with you. You can RSVP here: http://recipes4change.eventbrite.com/

All of this is part of a larger project called Amplifying Creative Communities that we're working on with Parsons the New School, DESIS, IDEO, Shareable, and our old friends the Lower East Side Ecology Center and Green Map, all funded by the Rockefeller Foundation's NYC Cultural Innovation Grant. The exhibition is open until November 20 and you can check out our toolkit on your own anytime, but we'll be there in person only on Saturday, November 12. The workshop is from 2-4pm, but we'll be hanging around from 11am – 4pm if you want to just walk in and browse without participating in the workshop.

Please RSVP. Location information here.

Here's a sneak peak: