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FAQ from City Governments

 

How will ioby make our job easier?

In working with a city on its long-term planning process, ioby aids in:

1.   Bringing new people to planning conversations: When the same few residents come to community meetings with the same concerns and complaints each time, crucial problems in a neighborhood remain unsurfaced and residents who are not part of planning conversations don’t feel ownership of the vision for their neighborhoods. This form of disenfranchisement leads to significant opposition to a plan that typically mounts after most of the work has been done. ioby offers a lower-barrier way for residents to learn about and express their support for a project.

2.   Identifying communities’ pain points and generating new ideas: ioby’s platform documents and archives local priorities, pain points, and solutions. ioby works closely with city leadership at the start of a planning process to bring forward solutions from local residents and organizations who have already used ioby’s services. Taking this early step allows planners to draw on important precedents from citizen-led projects, and helps to ensure that the city’s community engagement teams know about community efforts that might otherwise fly under the radar.

3.   Investing in resident-led solutions: Investment often lags behind planning and can be tied up in bureaucracy for long enough that even the most engaged residents lose track of where a plan has gone. ioby gives communities a chance to make changes quickly, which signals to residents that they do not have to wait for a plan to be complete to begin making improvements to their neighborhoods.

4.   Enabling new project types: Working with ioby offers a great way for governments to enable residents to create and fund projects in neighborhoods even before a plan is complete. Sometimes, agencies decide to work with ioby to become better at issuing permits to residents with creative solutions that don’t fit an existing category of permitted activity. In these cases, ioby can provide best practices in building more flexible permitting processes for public space projects.

The result of ioby’s engagement in a planning process is a plan that is informed by communities’ desires, good ideas, and pilot projects. Rather than sit on a shelf, the plan is more likely to be championed by the residents who have been deeply engaged in its creation.

 

How exactly does ioby introduce new voices to planning processes?

ioby helps to open up planning and decision-making process and give residents more voice and power. As a supplement to traditional community engagement strategies, ioby’s model allows residents who have been unable or unwilling to attend community meetings to add their voices to a process from which they have previously felt disconnected. We do this by offering several opportunities for residents to engage in civic work, each with a different time commitment required. Residents can choose to lead an ioby campaign (large time commitment), serve on the fundraising team for a campaign (medium-to-large time commitment), volunteer at a work day (low-to-medium time commitment), or donate to a campaign (low time commitment). Even easy actions, like donating, signal deeper commitment than ‘liking’ or online voting.

 

Why does resident leadership matter to our work?

Each campaign on ioby’s site represents a community of local leaders, volunteers, and donors organizing to address a  challenge in a neighborhood. When a group starts a campaign on ioby, it is because they have recognized a local need, agreed upon a vision, and committed time and resources to seeing a project through to completion. In other words, an active ioby campaign signifies both a demand for a specific type of intervention and the presence of a devoted group of residents who are willing to organize for their chosen solution. A funded ioby campaign indicates that it has support from residents who are willing to put their “skin in the game” (i.e. financial contributions or volunteer hours) because they agree with the solution and share the vision laid out on the ioby campaign page.

 

Do you speak on behalf of residents?

No. Where possible and appropriate, ioby connects residents to the right people in city hall, so that they can work in full, trusting partnerships with decision-makers.

 

Are you an advocacy organization? Do you have a specific policy agenda?

No. In engaging the city, we aim only to lift up the work, vision, and values of residents leading projects in their neighborhoods. By focusing government’s attention on residents’ needs and ideas surfaced on ioby’s platform (i.e. outside of a traditional forum for citizen engagement), ioby dismantles barriers to civic participation and makes it easier for residents to implement their solutions.

 

How does ioby find leaders to support?

We rely on relationships with partners who have deep connections to community leadership. In cities where ioby has staff, our Action Strategists work intentionally to offer our services to leaders in neighborhoods with histories of disinvestment, and organize through personal relationships. We always strive to introduce new voices to planning conversations.

 

How does ioby partner with cities outside of a long-term planning process?

There are three ways for governments to partner with ioby in the shorter term:

• Communications/alignment – ioby can provide your team with informational materials and invitations to introductory grassroots fundraising webinars, which you may easily distribute to neighborhood leaders in your networks.

• Outreach partnerships – ioby can train your staff to speak to residents and community-based organizations about crowdfunding.

• Match partners – if you have a pool of funding available for grassroots projects, we can work with you to leverage it to attract and fund local projects that meet your funding criteria.

 

What if a project that ioby supports contradicts one of our goals or policies?

All groups leading legal projects that meet our criteria (ioby.org/criteria) are eligible to fundraise using ioby’s platform.

Two of the key differences between ioby and more traditional sources of funding for grassroots projects are the flexibility and freedom that our crowdfunding platform affords to neighborhood leaders. We encourage all of our partners to embrace resident innovation and begin a constructive dialogue with every leader who uses ioby.org to fund a project in their cities.

While we would not remove a campaign from our website if it does not meet a government partner’s criteria, a government partner may decide to withhold formal support (e.g. government funding or a public endorsement) for a group that is fundraising on ioby’s platform.

We make every effort to ensure that our leaders’ campaigns do not appear to have a partner’s endorsement (tacit or explicit) for a project in your city unless the partner makes it clear to ioby that the group has the partner’s full support.

 

Isn’t it unethical for governments to burden the public with their responsibilities?

The short answer is “no.” Governments all over the country are using crowdfunding to help make smarter and more responsible investment decisions. Here are some reasons why we don’t think that civic crowdfunding lets government off the hook:

1.   Far from being a threat to government investment in infrastructure and basic services, campaigns on ioby are typically small and designed to meet the immediate needs of people doing important work in their neighborhoods.

2.   Civic energy is not a limited resource, and people are not less likely to vote or protest if they’re busy funding a project on their block.

3.   Crowdfunding for neighborhood improvements offers a powerful, resilience-building supplement to the essential services that government funds.

4.   You can advocate for government responsibility and encourage citizen-led projects.

ioby’s Katie Lorah published a great piece in Planetizen on this subject.

 

Can a resident really be trusted to implement a project that the city is usually tasked with leading?

Yes! Here are some reasons why ioby believes that public goods are strongest when residents play leadership roles in their delivery:

1.   Governments that involve residents in solving problems tend to have the trust of the people they serve, and distrust can be downright dangerous. When residents don’t trust their governments, they don’t feel compelled to heed emergency warnings or learn the roles and functions of institutions that are set up to help them in times of crisis — personal, financial, climate, or otherwise.

2.   Encouraging community participation initiates a virtuous cycle that bolsters trust and community resilience in the long term.

3.   Governments concerned with improving a neighborhood’s ability to respond to an emergency must cultivate an active citizenry, demonstrate its trust in community leadership, and learn about the needs and concerns of residents.

ioby’s David Weinberger published a piece on ioby’s blog about this very topic.

 

How does disbursement work? Does ioby disburse to the city?

ioby does not disburse directly to cities, except in cases where the city maintains a 501(c)3  nonprofit entity that can accept funds on the city’s behalf.

Scenario A: If the ioby leader is working with a 501(c)3  nonprofit organization, ioby will ask the leader of the fundraising effort and a representative of the organization to sign a legal agreement with ioby that commits the organization to spending the funds as laid out on the ioby campaign page. ioby then writes and mails a check to the 501(c)3 organization.

Scenario B: If the ioby leader is not working with a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization, ioby serves as the project’s fiscal sponsor. In this case, the leader of your fundraising effort and a representative from ioby sign a legal agreement that commits the leader to spending the funds as specified on the ioby campaign page. ioby then writes and mails a check to the leader, who must submit a receipt for every purchase made.

 

Who maintains projects implemented by ioby leaders in public spaces?

Before fundraising begins, ioby encourages its leaders to work out a maintenance agreement with the city. In some cases, the city will commit to maintaining projects erected by ioby leaders. In other cases, the group responsible for fundraising on ioby’s platform commits to maintaining the project in perpetuity. Every municipality has its own set of stipulations governing the maintenance of public projects.

More often, resident groups lead ioby campaigns to fund maintenance for city-led capital projects.

 

Does ioby offer leaders site insurance? Do you expect the city to assume liability for ioby projects?

ioby does not offer leaders site insurance. Some ioby leaders decide to include the cost of site insurance in the amount that they crowdfund on ioby’s site. ioby staff can assist by leaders in working with the city to resolve questions concerning liability.

 

Can ioby support economic development projects? What about small business projects?

ioby can support economic development and small business projects in cases when a 501c3 nonprofit organization is serving as the project’s fiscal sponsor. For more, see our eligibility requirements here.

 

 

FAQ from Residents