About ioby
ioby connects donors and volunteers to environmental projects in their neighborhoods to inspire new environmental knowledge and action in New York City.
If you have questions about how the website works, how to donate, how to post a project, or any question not answered here, check out our Frequently Asked Questions page, or contact us. To find our who supports us, see our funders. To see what people are saying about us, check out our testimonials. Click here to read about our staff, Board and advisors.
What does ioby stand for?
How do we fund projects?
What is online microphilanthropy?
Why is ioby a website?
Organizational History
ioby's Non-Discrimination Policy
ioby stands for “in our backyards” and the belief that environmental knowledge, innovation, action, and service begin and thrive in our backyards. This is grounded in two important commitments.
First, ioby offers an informed step out environmentalism's NIMBY (not-in-my-backyard) history that pushed environmental hazards down the path of least resistance into low-income areas and communities of color. ioby builds an untapped funding source and by directing it to decentralized, community-based environmental projects, ioby supports communities with a larger share of environmental problems and fewer resources to confront them.
Second, ioby offers a reminder that the ‘environment’ is not just the Amazon rainforest or the Arctic glaciers, and that tangible environmental work is urgently needed right here on the streets and sidewalks of New York City. Even people who consider themselves environmentalists are sometimes disconnected from their local environment and unable to see the work going on around them. ioby.org creates a forum for people to rediscover, understand, and value their local environment, because we believe the places we live, work, and play each day should be the roots from which we understand the environment.
We think encouraging direct engagement with local environments is the best way to renew environmental action and knowledge and prepare society for the future, so ioby works hand in hand with New Yorkers to support hundreds of organizations that have their own ideas and solutions. ioby.org provides tools and resources that complement the creativity and generosity of civil society to achieve a cleaner, healthier environment and more just communities. ioby environmental partnerships may begin online, but we hope they continue and grow, face-to-face, neighbor-to-neighbor, person-to-place, in our backyards.
ioby.org is an online microphilanthropic initiative. It connects groups who are working on great environmental projects to people who care about their neighborhoods. If you have a project that we post on ioby.org, it might be funded by a single person or by a collection of individuals (since we allow donors to partially fund a project): moms, dads, friends, students, teachers, business people, social clubs, anyone who cares about the issue and feels that your project is important can donate to support it.
ioby.org disperses funds to a project only after it is fully funded by donors. We hope that every project gets funded, but unfunded projects do expire after seven months. Why? Learn more about expired projects in our FAQs page.
What is online microphilanthropy?
Online microphilanthropy is a new form of charitable giving. It’s gaining popularity because it’s fast, easy, direct, informative, and helps people get more connected to the places and people whom they’re supporting. You don’t have to be wealthy to participate in microphilanthropy — you just need to care.
Fundraising takes many different forms…
Most large, staffed non-profits seek funding from foundations, corporate sponsors, or wealthy individuals. These grants tend to be very large and support institution building for the organization—paying for staff time, office space, the purchasing of new equipment, overhead costs, and programming. For example, a non-profit like the World Wildlife Fund will fundraise for grants from large foundations for hundreds of thousands of dollars at a time to pay their expert staff in environmental work. These grants are difficult to win and require huge amounts of time and dedication (and often professional development staff who have expertise in writing and administering grants). Large non-profits also have a membership base, and often members pay a nominal annual fee—sometimes in exchange for a magazine or newsletter—or make a yearly charitable donation to support the organization they believe in.
Smaller non-profits, local government agencies, and volunteer groups usually seek small grants. These grants sometimes support staff time or office space, but usually support discrete projects. For example, a very successful small grant program in New York City is the Molly Parnis Dress Up Your Neighborhood grant. It’s for $500-$3,000 and is awarded twice a year. This grant is run by the Citizen’s Committee, which seeks large grants from large foundations, corporations, and/or wealthy individuals, then splits them up and gives small grants. This takes the burden of grant-writing off the small organizations, but still gets the funding to them. For the small organization, this is much easier and much faster than seeking large grants, but there are still some limitations. This is a type of microphilanthropy.
A new version of microphilanthropy combines the concepts of charitable giving, organizational membership, and small grants. It allows groups (like a “Friends of” park group, a club, a student group, or a community garden group) to petition individuals directly for support. These individuals don’t have to be wealthy to help causes they believe in; they can donate very small amounts, like $20. When this donation is pooled with others from people who also care about the cause and donate small amounts, a group can easily receive a $500 grant. In this situation, the donors know exactly when, where and how their gifts are going to be used because they are giving directly to a project rather than to a large organization—and many donors find this to be a very satisfying experience.
Online microphilanthropy makes small giving even easier. Using a website, donors and organizations can more easily talk to each other about causes they believe in. The website becomes an online bulletin board and shopping cart combined, full of great causes that people get excited about and would like to donate to. Some examples of this are donorschoose.org which supports school teachers and usatogether.org which supports veterans. Another example is kiva.org, a slightly different model because it uses micro-loans that are paid back to the donor (unlike micro-grants, which are not) to support micro-enterprises in developing countries.
ioby.org will connect NYC-based projects to New Yorkers who are looking for a meaningful mode of charitable giving and for volunteer opportunities. If your project meets our criteria, you begin by filling out our online application. Then ioby.org connects your project to a community of New Yorkers who care about your cause. They can log on, browse through all the different projects we post, find one that’s meaningful and click to fund it or volunteer to get involved. This is proven to be a highly satisfying mode of charitable giving because it is direct, simple, transparent, and fast.
And, in the case of ioby, the opportunity exists for the donor to walk down the street and actually see the results of his or her contribution. Moreover, as an ioby project group, you will have your own project profile page where you can post photos and videos and links and write about your project. Anyone who donates to your project can simply log onto ioby.org and see the progress of your work. And you can continue to build a relationship with the people who donate and/or volunteer, building a partnership based on neighborhood-level action.
At ioby, we believe in the places we live, work, and play so we encourage the building of long-lasting community partnerships among volunteers and donors. Most interactions in online microphilanthropy exist only online, in a purely transactional exchange. On ioby.org we encourage people to get involved with each other and learn from each other—changing passive, transactional experiences into engaged, transformative environmentalism.
Founded in July 2008, ioby is a nonprofit organization based in Brooklyn, NY. We operated as a fiscally sponsored group by the Open Space Institute, based in New York City, as part of their Citizen Action Program until we received received our IRS 501(c)(3) determination letter on June 3, 2009. ioby's tax ID# is 26-3283639. All donations to ioby and to ioby projects are tax-deductible.
ioby's Non-Discrimination Policy
ioby is committed to the principles of equal opportunity. ioby’s organizational policies, practices, programs, activities and decisions regarding employment, hiring, assignment, promotion, compensation, volunteerism, internships and other terms and conditions of employment or voluntary service shall not be based on a person’s race, color, sex, age, religion, national origin, mental or physical disability, ancestry, military discharge status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, marital status, source of income, parental status, housing status, or other protected status, in accordance with applicable law. Further, ioby requires individuals, associations and organizations applying for projects to be posted on ioby.org to agree they will not discriminate in programs, services, staffing and/or volunteer areas on any of the aforementioned bases. This policy will allow the targeting of specific populations for services. However, these services must be open to all people in the targeted populations.
