Photo via pea green girl.

Recently, I participated in GOOD’s first annual Neighborday. We invited our neighbors over for milkshakes and sat on our lawn and talked with them about everything from what our block used to be like to tips for toddler sleep to how to entertain visiting family.

The turnout was smaller than I’d hoped for, but it was still nice to stop for a moment and focus on the people who lived around me. So when I came across Zoe Green‘s little project of brightening her UK street with balloons and nice notes for one day, I couldn’t help but think, “Yes!”

She writes:

From my perspective, Shelbourne Road is just another long, fairly anonymous Bournemouth street. Nothing really happens here.

Other than the occasional social gathering in the corner shop, we go about our daily routines side by side and yet our paths never seem to overlap. I only really know my next door neighbour Paul and his dog Foo. I don’t know who lives opposite, or two houses down, which really makes for quite a sad state of affairs.

So how can I make a difference? One smile at a time.

I don’t intend to change the world. but I know that if you brighten one person’s day they are highly likely to brighten someone else’s. Happy Street Day took place on Monday 15th April 2013. It was my personal mission to bring some unexpected cheer to my fellow Shelbournians, encouraging them only to stop for a moment and talk to one another.

This project was about inspiring people. So take my ideas and share them with your community.

Go on, spread a little joy.

What are some other ideas to make YOUR street a little bit cheerier?

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Join GOOD’s Fix Your Street day on the last Saturday of May. 

More than five months after Hurricane Sandy tore into the coasts of New York and New Jersey, many people are still feeling the effects. One neighborhood that suffered great losses and is still digging out is Rockaway, Queens, where the nonprofit organization Respond and Rebuild is working to repair damaged homes and get residents back inside.

The idea

Shanna Snider and Terri Bennett, two founders of the disaster response nonprofit Respond and Rebuild, met when they were volunteering with relief efforts in Haiti after the 2010 earthquake. Neither woman had any prior field experience with disaster relief, but they both took an instant liking to it.

Terri Bennett (all photos courtesy of Respond and Rebuild)

“It’s a weird kind of work to enjoy,” says Terri. “The world would be a better place if it wasn’t needed.”

After months spent helping in the Caribbean, Shanna, Terri, and three other good friends they’d made on the island scattered around the map. They watched from different vantage points in 2012 as Hurricane Sandy drew closer and closer, and then struck—hard.

The five friends, soon to be joined by another they’d meet in New York, dropped what they were doing and, in 24 hours, made tracks to the Rockaway Peninsula—11 miles of beach at the southern edge of Queens whose neighborhoods were devastated by the storm. Nearly 100 homes were completely destroyed and many more seriously damaged, over ten thousand residents were displaced, and the power was out for weeks.

“When we came out here, we just wanted to help,” says Shanna. “We didn’t intend for it to become an organization—we all had other plans.” When the hurricane struck, Shanna was weeks away from leaving the U.S. to serve with the Peace Corps in Jamaica, and Terri was halfway through a Ph.D. program in international development and humanitarian relief. “But this took off,” Shanna says. “So why would I leave? This is obviously where I’m supposed to be.”

Shanna Snider

Respond and Rebuild is now the leading volunteer group working side-by-side with homeowners and community leaders in Rockaway to safely clean out and repair damaged homes so their owners can return to them. The water removal, mucking, and (their specialty) mold remediation they perform is funded by donations and comes at no cost to the residents.

“Organizationally, we wanted to do something different than we’d seen done before. We wanted to be community-led and centered—not to drop in and tell the community, ‘This is what you have’ and ‘This is what you need,’ Shanna says. “The community here has really shaped what we do; they’ve led us to be able to meet their needs very directly.”

Obstacles

Respond and Rebuild’s success has not come without challenges. Here are a few Shanna and Terri have come across:

Obstacle: Living conditions
Solution: For the first five weeks of their operation, the initial members of Respond and Rebuild all lived together in a one-bedroom apartment near the beach. At times, it was hard for the crew to keep the organization running without going crazy.

But when they reached out to the community for help, they quickly secured two larger apartments to live in rent-free. “Everyone is vulnerable to disaster. So it’s a cause that touches people in a different way: it’s very personal,” Shanna says. “When we asked for assistance, people really opened their hearts and homes.”

Obstacle: Narrowing focus and asserting expertise
Solution: Given that there are a lot of needs in disaster response, Shanna and Terri knew they needed to give a focus to what they were trying to do.

“One thing we identified early on was our signature ‘cause’,” says Terri. “Mold. We became ‘the mold people.’ We researched and outfitted volunteers, waged a public health campaign, reached out to experts and other city orgs who had experience… We were the most organized group you could speak to about it, and that gained us trust.”

Obstacle: The ebb and flow of a volunteer-led group
Solution: “Especially in the first few months after a disaster, people come and go,” says Shanna. “And that can be a very emotional experience. But the group that remains, the core that’s left behind, is the one that works best together. It can be hard to hang on and not burn out; to recognize when to step back and breathe and when to give 150 percent. The ones that are left are the ones who figured out the balance. And as things formalize and become more structured, it gets easier.”

Advice

Volunteers pose in their ‘Mold Buster’ suits

Since the end of October 2012, Respond and Rebuild’s hundreds of volunteers have logged an average of 1,800 hours a week to bring more than 100 homes back to livability. And the work continues.

Currently, Shanna and Terri are developing a blueprint of their organizational model, which they plan to share with others. In the meantime, here’s their advice for people who want to coordinate their own disaster response effort:

• Just do it. “Trust yourself and the people you work with,” says Shanna.
• Share skills.“We all had different skill sets and experiences that complemented each other: logistics, construction, management, communications, fundraising. And we also worked to partner right away with other organizations, which was a great way to take what we all had and make it most effective.”
• Ask for and accept help. “Never be so arrogant as to think you don’t need help,” says Shanna. “I make a lot of calls and ask for a lot of favors. No one has all the answers by themselves, but together, you can get close.”
• Be open to advice. “If someone else has already learned the lesson, don’t waste time relearning it yourself,” says Shanna. “Take advice openly, then decide if it’s right for your mission.”
• Maintain balance. “Initially, adrenaline pushes you forward in disaster relief,” says Terri. “But as the immediate relief period comes to a close, the pace changes. Now we’d like to focus on employing local people, moving forward with partnerships, and developing a case management system for homeowners.”

“In five years, I can see us doing this work around the world,” Terri says. “But having the patience to take on all these things can be difficult. We’ll have to balance focusing and growing.”

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Inspired to help with disaster relief in a community you’re close to? Read more about Respond and Rebuild’s successful model on their website, or contact them through Idealist. In the NYC area? They’re always looking for new volunteers and donations.

Respond and Rebuild is also always looking to make their nonprofit better. If you have experience with disaster relief, they would love your advice about what surprise obstacles they might expect to encounter down the road. Or if you have experience with volunteer management, they’d love to know your ideas on best practices to retain volunteers, and on the best volunteer and donor tracking solutions.

Started the year with a resolution to get more involved in your community but still need that small push? Here’s your chance.

On March 10, more than 1,000 people across the globe will do something good. Or so they say.

Over the past few months, they’ve sworn on social media to participate in the quickly approaching Good Deeds Day, a five-year old event created by Israel-based volunteer foundation Ruach Tova.

Whether it’s making someone laugh (the promise of Mexico’s Valeria Blanchet) or adopting a pet from an animal shelter (Tennessee-based Steve Carter’s vow), the hope is that each deed will better their community, environment, or personal well-being.

I know these one-time promises often have the best of intentions  (“I’m going to do this EVERY weekend!”) but can peter out after the excitement of the day is over. So I spoke with a few folks to see how they’ll be defining their good deeds and sticking to them – both this March and beyond.

People across the globe have pledged their good deeds on the event’s site. What’s yours? (Photo via rosefirerising on Flickr’s Creative Commons.)

Cindy Anapolsky is about to participate in her second Good Deeds Day in Washington, D.C. (the U.S. headquarters for the event) with her husband and two children. Instead of doing a good deed on their own, Anapolsky’s family plans on joining others: Making thousands of sandwiches to hand out to the local homeless population.

“My son hasn’t stopped talking about it since we volunteered last year,” says Anapolsky, who brought her family to a similar sandwich-crafting event last March. “I think it was an important lesson for both my kids and myself.”

Since last year’s Good Deeds Day, she’s been inspired to pitch in on a variety of volunteering opportunities in her area.

“The day is an example of how we should act throughout the year, “ she says. “Not only as an individual, or a family, but as a community. It’s really lovely.”

Toni Gage plans on spending her Good Deeds Day with her synagogue congregation, making food, packaging snack packs for kids, and painting the nails of residents of a local rehab. Like Cindy, she sees the day as an important model for the youth in her community.

“Spending a day helping others keeps kids grounded,” Gage says. “When they deliver food or work with those who are less fortunate then them gives them a whole new perspective.”

Over the past few years, her synagogue has participated in the day together, and continues to host charity and volunteer opportunities throughout the year. And it’s not just the kids that benefit.

“Many of the adults in our congregation don’t even realize how needy our community is,” Gage says.

Ruth Lamberty, who helps manage Good Deeds Day, may be too busy with running the event on March 10 to participate. So, she and her staff organized a trial run in February where they committed an entire day to everything from painting a neighboring preschool to volunteering at a local furniture donation shop.

“It’s important to practice what we preach,” Lamberty says. “Because, if we don’t, what’s the point?”

Ultimately, Lamberty says, the day is meant to trigger good deed-doing in its participants throughout the entire year.

“It’s always the hope and goal,” she says. “But even if it’s just a day, it’s a commitment to something good. It’s a start.”
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Inspired to get in on the celebration? Pledge your good deed here in this colorful box conveniently linked to Facebook. Don’t forget to also browse over 13,000 volunteer opportunities worldwide listed on Idealist.  

Ever wonder who else is using Idealist?

We do, so our developers put together a real-time visualization of our traffic around the world.

Our traffic from 2 p.m. today.

The height of each bar represents the number of visitors we have at any one time. This image is from 2 p.m. NYC time.

You can see that most of our visitors are coming from the East Coast of the U.S., while the West Coast is just starting the day.

We’re also getting quite a bit of traffic from Colombia, Peru, and Argentina to our Spanish-language site, Idealistas.org. It’s early evening in much of Europe and Africa, so we still have some visitors from France, Germany, Ghana, and Cameroon.

To see what our traffic looks like right now, take a look at the visualization.

I think it’s really inspiring to see so many people from around the world who are looking for opportunities to make a difference.

Where are you from? Say hello in the comments.

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Special thanks to Gregory Haynes for making this visualization.

Jason Lee is no stranger to the ups and downs of financial instability. In Detroit—a city left financially and physically vacant following the 2008 economic downturn—it’s impossible for Lee to be anything but.

“I became director right before the economy changed, so I got to experience it all first-hand,” says Lee, who runs the Detroit Area Pre-College Engineering Program (DAPCEP).  “It wasn’t easy. People sometimes forget that nonprofits are businesses, too.”

Nonetheless, DAPCEP—a local mainstay offering free pre-college science and mathematics programs to minority youth—has seemed to rise above the bankrupt-triggering recession. From summer computer camps getting prospective college students up to speed on cutting-edge technology to basic pre-engineering classes for Kindergarteners and their parents, DAPCEP’s breadth of classes rope in a wide reach of support.

Students learning about molecules in DAPCEP classroom

Its secret? Community trust.

Now at 37 years old, DAPCEP has successfully led students from the first day of elementary school to the first day of college. Growing from a small idea to a family name over the decades, the program has now reached a point where its community is returning the effort.

From public schools and local universities regularly encouraging parents to enroll their kids in DAPCEP to second-generation DAPCEP graduates donating money and time to keep the program on its feet, Lee says he’s has seen an uptick in local support since the city hit financial bottom.

“A lot of credit goes to schools and universities when it comes to encouraging people to get involved in the program,” says Lee. “They see students interested in becoming doctors or scientists in the classroom and can send them directly to us.”

Local and national grants, issued through a variety of foundations, have also kept DAPCEP above water over the years.

But this support didn’t come without work. The program’s pre-recession roots in the community certainly added to its neighbors’ backing.

DAPCEP offered its first classes 37 years ago with a small population of 245 middle school and high school-aged students (now, Lee says, they’ve had up to 10,000 at a time) with the simple goal of breaking outdated career stereotypes. At the time, it was uncommon to see students of African-American, Hispanic, or Native-American heritage choose a career path in science, engineering and other technical fields. DAPCEP wanted to change that.

Now, based on a 2010 survey, 94 percent of all students enrolled in DAPCEP plan to attend college and pursue a technical degree. Additionally, more than 90 percent of Detroit Public School entries in the 2011 Metropolitan Detroit Science Fair originated in DAPCEP classrooms.

Soon, DAPCEP college graduates will likely return to the city to add to its regrowth. Lee himself went through a similar program as a child in Massachusetts, a move that, after leading him through graduate school to an engineering job at Ford Motors, inspired him to take the reins at DAPCEP.

The community has clearly recognized the impact.

For the first time in the program’s history, DAPCEP will be charging for its younger age bracket classes this summer. The price? $100, a steep jump from a long-time free program. But instead of grimacing at the change in policy, applicants’ parents appear eager to pitch in to DAPCEP’s grant-funded pot.

“Many parents were amazed that DAPCEP has survived so long without having to charge,” says Lee.

With the community-based support giving the program the boost to continue growing, Lee has fielded many requests from people across the country wanting insight on the program’s successful model. While he’s hesitant to expand DAPCEP itself to other metropolitan areas, Lee fully supports other programs starting up their own similar platform, as he’s seen such success in Detroit.

“We’ve been around long enough to engage a population that’s had parents and grandparents in DAPCEP,” says Lee. “And now we have their children telling them ‘Mommy, I want to be a scientist!’ on their own. It’s come full circle.”

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Interested in learning more about the importance of community trust in sustaining a nonprofit? Talk to Jason Lee at jdlee@dapcep.org.

An ongoing experiment: can our community’s collective brainpower help an idea become reality?

Meet Alex

Alex Linsker has done a little bit of everything. He studied playwriting and business as an undergrad at NYU, did marketing for an online T.V. seller, created a software company, interviewed shoppers, and most recently, co-founded and acted as president of the democratic co-working space, Collective Agency in Portland, Oregon.

But one common theme threads his pursuits: the less he knows, the more he wants to do it. So when his time as Community Organizer of the Collective Agency was up, he turned to an issue he knew little about yet would affect any business choice he’d make: taxes.

“As a playwright, I really like figuring out what the false story is and finding what the true story is,” he says. “There’s a lot of mythology about how jobs are created. The truth is that a higher tax rate on people who are the richest grows jobs.”

The intention

Alex wants to introduce a progressive income tax in Oregon through a lobbying group called Tax and Conversation.

He envisions a diverse group that writes an Oregon constitutional amendment, acquires 100,000 signatures to get it on the ballot, and petitions people to vote. He also sees the group building community and promoting education about tax, government, and civics through workshops, meetups, and more. Similar to Collective Agency, the structure will be democratic with membership fees that go to representatives.

The hope of Tax and Conversation is two-fold: On a practical level, getting rid of tax breaks will mean more money for quality K-12 education, healthcare, and other basic services in Oregon. “There’s this scarcity mentality that’s been created and talked about in the news. But there’s more than enough to go around if we choose,” he says.

On a deeper level, Alex believes that a fair tax will help reduce income disparity and therefore generate more trust and empathy in society, a viewpoint he shares with the social researcher Richard Wilkinson.

Obstacles

Alex has been reading, networking, talking, and working with various people and groups such as Tax Fairness Oregon as much as he can. So far he’s created a website that includes a first draft of the amendment.

Here are some current challenges he’s facing:

1. Alex finds that there is a general lack of awareness about how the tax system works and subsequently, myths about what government services our tax dollars go to.
2. Communicating the value of the group can be tricky. Different people will read different things into the description.
3. Some of the feedback he’s gotten from others is that it’s too big of a project given the scope, and they question whether or not will it make a difference.

How you can help

One of many public parks in Oregon Alex hopes more money can go to. (Photo from Ian Sane via Flickr’s Creative Commons.)

• Do you know of any organizations and/or community organizers he could partner with to help him reach people of all ages, races, incomes, etc.?
• How would you make the Tax and Conversation website even more relevant? What else do you want to learn about tax in Oregon and/or our government services?
• What are the benefits of a project like this?
• What issues and questions does it raise?
• What would motivate you to become a member? What would you need?
• What government services do you like, and what government services would you like to see improve?
• Civics education, which promoted the idea of citizens having an active role in solving problems in their communities, was phased out of schools in the late 60’s. What specific examples of civics education are you aware of? What kind of optional civics education for adults would you value?
• If you’re Oregon-based, would you like to get involved? (Alex is also open to support from outside the state.)

Leave a comment below or send him a message through Idealist and if the project progresses, we’ll keep you posted!

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Do you have an idea that’s just starting to brew? If you’d like us to consider posting it as part of this series, email celeste [at] idealist [dot] org.

Many beer brewers are passionate about perfecting their craft while making a difference. (Photo credit: visitflanders, Creative Commons/Flickr)

Summer has finally arrived here in Oregon, and with that, craft beer month. In July, we celebrate Oregon brewers by hosting a variety of events including festivals, tastings, and meet-and-greets. While some folks kick off the summer by relaxing in the sun with a great beer, many breweries and nonprofits in Oregon and around the country are using our love of this beverage to work together and do some good.

To help budding brewers develop their businesses and careers, the Glen Hay Falconer Foundation in Oregon has a scholarship program that sends brewers from the Pacific Northwest to the Siebel Institute of Technology and the American Brewers Guild to further their knowledge and expertise of the industry. Additionally, the Foundation hosts an annual golf tournament that kicks off the Oregon Brewers Festival. During this event, participants pair up with local brewers for a morning of golf and beer to support the growing northwestern tradition of crafting beer. By supporting local brewers, the foundation ensures the industry and history of northwestern brewing live on.

Another foundation created by craft-beer lovers, brewers, and distributors is the Beer for Brains Foundation in Arizona. Beer for Brains is a nonprofit dedicated to raising awareness about brain cancer, helping fund groundbreaking research leading to a cure, and giving compassion to its victims. Each year they host large-scale craft-beer appreciation and fundraising events all over the country working in partnership with breweries and local organizations. The money raised goes to support the development of cutting-edge brain cancer research and treatment options at the Barrow Brain Tumor Research Center (BTRC), in Phoenix, AZ. The goal is to encourage people to have fun while making a difference.

The Dogfish Head Craft Brewery in Delaware also encourages people to have fun while doing good by donating beer, brewpub gift certificates, and Dogfish merchandise to local nonprofits. One of their biggest efforts has been the Dogfish Dash – a 5 and 10K run. Over the past few years, the race has raised more than $100,000 for the Delaware chapter of The Nature Conservancy.

Whether or not you’re a beer connoisseur, you can find plenty of social events that combine entertainment and an opportunity to give back. Ask around and check out what’s going on around where you live! Or if YOU want to partner with a local brewery, find one near you and ask if they work with nonprofits. Meanwhile, here at Idealist, we’ll say “cheers” to enjoying a beer while benefiting our community.

Have you partnered with beer brewers? Share your experiences below.

From Harvard Law Record via Flickr

Part of my job is to review listings of new organizations that join Idealist. The other day, we welcomed Scavenger Crawl to the site! Here’s their mission:

Scavenger Crawl is a nonprofit organization that aims to build awareness and advocacy for Bay Area nonprofits through a scavenger hunt and pub crawl event…The crawl portion lands teams at different restaurants, bars, and retail shops throughout San Francisco…In addition to building awareness for our nonprofit partners, we also hope to increase support for our local businesses.

Scavenger hunts are games in which the organizers prepare a list of objects to be gathered or tasks to be completed, and the participants, as individuals or teams, compete to check items off the list. I think this sounds super fun — and, though disappointed that I’m too far away to participate, I got to thinking about why this idea is so great. Folks who work at nonprofits tend to be mission-driven, and pretty much everyone I know loves a giant, interactive game. Why not combine the two? Lightbulb: Scavenger hunts for a cause.

Scavenger hunts can foster team-building; give participants a unique way of interacting with one another and their communities; push people to explore their neighborhoods; and are a fun way to raise awareness for a cause. They can even dispatch a whole corps of participants with assignments to do good.

I started poking around and found some other groups had done scavenger hunts too:

• The Independent Booksellers of New York City’s goal is to “keep indie bookstores thriving and raise awareness of the vital contributions that these local businesses make.” Their scavenger hunt sent teams to independent bookstores across New York City to explore what these small businesses have to offer. They gave participants a week to complete the hunt, so they’d have lots of time to check out some new reading material.
• The Students for Free Culture believes in creativity and innovation, communication and free expression, and public access to knowledge. To contribute to everyone’s favorite public knowledge hub, they sent their teams out to take photos of landmarks across New York City that would fill in blank spaces on Wikipedia. They even had people edit the event’s Wikipedia page to RSVP!
• The Secret Order of Do-Gooders went on a top secret mission to gather items needed by local charities.
• One Brick organizes fundraiser scavenger hunts that take participants through local museums.

I love hearing about creative ways to get people to meet each other, collaborate, do good, and have fun. We started thinking about other ways to mix things up. A softball league for nonprofits joined our site a few weeks ago. How about a “speed dating” style meet-and-greet for local nonprofits? Or the Glasgow group that performed guerrilla acts of gardening? Or the Green Edge Collaborative who organizes “Eco-Eatery Tours?”

Can you think of fun ways to gather food for a local food bank, clean up local hiking trails, or create a collaborative work of art? Don’t forget to invite us!

[This blog entry appeared on an older version of Idealist; any broken links are a result of having re-launched our site in Fall 2010.]

From Flickr user kaibara87 (Creative Commons)

By Anne Lind.

At Idealist, we’re committed to helping people turn their intentions into action, and we know that there a variety of obstacles that sometimes stand in the way—financial concerns being just one of many. How many times have you had a great idea and dismissed it out of hand because of a lack of funds?

Recently, hundreds of people have been empowered to pursue their former pipe dreams, thanks to a a website called Kickstarter which provides “a new way to fund creative projects and ambitious endeavors.”

Basically it works like this:

You post your idea on Kickstarter and set a fundraising goal: an amount, and a date you will raise it by. Your “backers” pledge money towards your goal, but no one gets charged unless the project meets its goal. To encourage people to back your project, you provide creative incentives like public recognition, prizes or event invitations.

Many of the project “creators” are musicians looking to fund a record, filmmakers trying to distribute their new documentary, or writers hoping to self-publish their first novel, but Kickstarter uses a broad definition of “creative” and many community-oriented projects have found success on the site.

Kickstarter is quick to point out that they are not an investment or lending site, but rather a “new form of commerce and patronage.” While backers may not be financial investors, per se, they often become personally invested, and are more likely to be fans, advocates, or even volunteers for the project in the future.

What do you think? Would you use a site like this to fund your great idea?

[This blog entry first appeared on an older version of Idealist; any broken links are a result of having re-launched our site in Fall 2010.]