ioby, the online crowd-funding platform for neighborhood development ideas, is launching a new $50,000 challenge to drive change in neighborhoods across Memphis.
Through an online tool for people to share and develop ideas,
ioby.org helps citizens identify needs and opportunities in their neighborhoods, design cost-effective solutions and raise money and volunteers from their friends and neighbors to pay for the projects' implementation.
"ioby is designed, basically, to support people who have an idea that is pretty well formed, that has at least a beginning to a plan and, most importantly, a specific budget," Erin Barnes, Co-founder and Executive Director of ioby, explained in 2014.
The website features a map with markers over areas where people have ideas for bettering their neighborhoods. Anyone can put up an idea and others can vote to support that idea, but at that stage there is no commitment to the project. What Livable Memphis and ioby hope is that someone with the resources and drive will take up the flag and run with it. Now there are new matching dollars to double resources invested by the public.
The new special campaign, dubbed "discover ioby," hopes to spur as many as 20 new projects across the city. From
April 11 through 15, $50,000 in new funds will be available to match dollars raised for small-scale projects that make Memphis' blocks and neighborhoods more livable, fun and safe. In order to qualify, project applications must be submitted by March 6. Campaigns must be launched by no later than
March 30, with at least 20 percent of the total project funds raised before
April 11.
"ioby has been used in Memphis to improve parks, plant gardens, create crosswalks, build bus stops, paint murals, and dozens of other things," says Ellen Roberds, Creative Placemaker at Livable Memphis, which will administer the funds. "In every corner of Memphis, citizens know how they want to change their neighborhoods for the better. These funds will unlock their potential."
For more information about starting a project that qualifies for matching funds, visit
ioby.org/memphis.