This summer marks the one year anniversary of civicside’s launch. It feels like yesterday we were sitting down with community leaders and citizens vetting the idea and wondering if the vision was too ambitious or a feasible concept for the community to rally behind. We cautiously launched in collaboration with the downtown development authority. And 5 hours and $1,700 later, a parklet was born. For the community, this meant Lafayette would get their first parklet. For civicside, this meant validation and a hopeful future for the months following. Since that time, we’ve seen citizens rally to install lights in a neighborhood park, community gardens, drinking water fountains, a better block at Four Corners, and a public art installment in Parc San Souci that will last for our lifetime. All to the credit of those project creators who had a vision for their community.
Since that time, civicside has been the crowdfunding engine for an additional 7 projects totaling over $35,000.00. While we are proud of these numbers, particularly because they are funds or projects that may have otherwise not been brought to fruition, we’re most impressed with the 320 backers that supported the projects (FYI – backers are those that contributed to a project). For us, this proved that citizens have the ability to pursue an idea and connect that idea with other citizens alike. So, now we sit a year later, a bit nostalgic, and pondering the questions that many have asked. What now? How does a website like civicside sustain itself? We believe in transparency. We also believe that ideas should be shared, and not kept hidden from the world. Here’s our first attempt to abide by our own beliefs.
As in life and business, all things evolve. Our idea for civicside was the typical “tech” approach. That is to launch, measure success, and then develop a plan for sustainability and growth. We’ve evaluated our progress over the past year, and thought about a sustainable long term vision. The majority of our time and resources were allocated to developing and maintaining a user friendly/secure crowdfunding website for backers and project creators. After all, the website functionality is the tool that drives the process. We needed this to be a sound and efficient system. Truth be told, these tools already exist on the web and are available for all of us to use. Some of which are actually free of charge (minus credit card fees). Our preference is to not re-create a tool that is already being done elsewhere. Rather, we want to spend our time and resources in a way that provides the most value to the process. In other words… Can we achieve the same outcome (and do it better) by allocating resources elsewhere? The answer is yes.
Our finest moments this year were watching citizens feel empowered throughout the project vetting process. Watching the process unfold is truly beautiful. We’ve watched our community leaders make themselves available to hear ordinary citizens’ ideas. We’ve witnessed citizens feel a level of comfort knowing an organization like civicside put a stamp of approval on their idea. And furthermore, our followers felt confident that if a project was launched through the website, it would be get done. And done well. Our vision for civicside is to build upon these interactions. We want to spend our resources seeking the ideas of citizens, and empowering them to pursue their vision for the community. While we are working on a plan to layout exactly what this looks like, we will act as a “launchpad” for citizen-lead community projects that meet our criteria for an approved project. We still want to hear your ideas and help you pursue them. We’re excited to welcome the new changes ahead. Another great year of civicside projects await you. We promise to be in touch.
There comes a point in every organization’s life cycle, where they must step back and evaluate past experiences from a thousand foot view. Where there is failure, there is learned experiences. And where there is misfortune, there is value. We’ve done our fair share of this evaluation during the past couple of months, and there’s one thing that keeps coming to mind. Our citizens. If there’s anything we’ve learned over the past year, it’s that pursuing an idea for the community is no easy task. We’ve seen citizens share ideas, and fail over and over again. We’ve seen citizens become excited about their ideas, only to be let down by the realities of their pursuit. We call an idea being pursued by a citizen a “citizen-lead project.”
There’s an abundance of ideas in communities. Equally, there’s an abundance of excitement when it comes to sharing those ideas. We’ve seen the excitement ourselves in taking interactive chalkboards to the streets.
Citizens have been expressing their “I wants” for years. So, why do the “I wants” often fall to deaf ears? Maybe it’s because citizens are voicing their ideas to the wrong crowd. Or maybe their voice isn’t loud enough. Imagine a community where there was a successful recipe in place to convert the worthy “I wants” into fully executed projects. The result is something we refer to as “Small Community Victories” or “Short Term Solutions.” We believe there are three voices in the community that are critical to success when it comes to empowering citizens.
So, what if for a moment we brought together all three of these voices? We ask the “I wants” (citizens) to collaborate on their ideas and vision for the community. During that collaborative effort, we provide citizens with all the tools and resources they need to vet their ideas. Then we ask the “You Cans” (public officials/key decision makers) to approve the ideas for implementation, all the while providing an opportunity to connect citizens with public officials directly. And lastly, the “I wills” (businesses or key supporters) to come together to hear the approved and vetted ideas of the citizens, with hopes of funding those ideas for implementation. And we do this all in 48 hours. The purpose of the 24 Hour Citizen Project is not to fund or solve the big problems in the community. But rather to bring forward small projects that make up a greater achievement. Few examples that come to mind… One downtown parklet may lead to the development of other parklets. One neighborhood gateway, may lead to others neighborhoods desiring the same. One bus stop may lead to 10 others. And so on. Admittedly, even with focusing on small community victories, the 24 Hour Citizen Project may seem overly ambitious and unrealistic. And we’d be lying if we didn’t think the same from time to time. But building better communities is about empowering citizens and giving them the tools they need to create the environment for which they want to live. And that in itself, is worth the risk.
