ioby is about more than just crowdfunding. We're growing a movement of community-led positive change. ioby gives local changemakers the tools and resources they need, like one-on-one coaching, fiscal sponsorship, and opportunities to connect and build real, lasting impact from the ground up. Our crowdfunding platform helps connect leaders with support to raise the money they need from within their communities to make our neighborhoods healthier, greener, more livable, and more just.

ioby stands for “in our backyards,” but it also stands for taking care of each other, for flexing our collective civic muscles, and for trusting our neighbors to know what’s best for their neighborhood.

At ioby, 87% of those we serve are from the grassroots and deep roots. They are the folks on the block who know their communities well and have great ideas for tackling their challenges, but who oftentimes don’t have the funding they need.

As COVID-19 presented new and intensified problems, those same neighbors took a look around and saw powerful solutions. ioby was uniquely able to step up and help them take action quickly. ioby’s powerful platform and wrap-around service model lets neighbors move at their own speed by design, unbound by grant cycles or restricted funding. This model allowed mutual aid groups to start projects and raise hundreds of thousands of dollars within weeks to purchase groceries for neighbors reeling from sudden unemployment, and offer speedy deliveries to elders and other vulnerable community members.

In June, as the national uprising demanding justice for Black lives grew in the wake of George Floyd’s murder, ioby’s services swiftly adjusted to meet the moment once again. Drawing on our commitment to anti-racism, we enhanced our 2018 Racial Justice Toolkit, used our platform to amplify Black-led projects, and offered webinars like “Racial Equity in Creative Placemaking” and “Right of Way: Organizing for equitable, walkable communities.”

Last year we listened to our neighbors who stepped up and met the moment, and our neighbors leaned on ioby to help them get the work done. We know there is much more work to do, but ioby believes that local action and increased civic participation help bend the arc of justice toward a more equitable future.

There are many different ways to define your community; from the folks you congregated with at your place of worship, to the people you play with at your local sports league. Wherever you find it, community is an essential building block to vibrant and strong neighborhoods, and we believe it's the best place to start making positive change.

Anyone with a great idea anywhere in the country can work with ioby, as long as their idea works to strengthen and benefit their own community. We also invest in on-the-ground staff to work alongside neighbors to lift up what makes that place special, and to support civic participation. Last year, we were thrilled to add Cincinnati to our places of focus that already included Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Detroit, and Memphis. In these cities, our Action Strategists work directly with residents to build trust and develop neighborhood leadership to make positive civic change, with a special focus on neighborhoods with histories of disinvestment and racist policies. They are the movers and shakers that neighbors can lean on for advice, support, and to help build connections with other changemakers and decision makers. Many of our Action Strategists have even led their own ioby projects!

Each ioby project jumpstarts a chain reaction. With each art project installed, mutual aid group organized, or community garden built, neighbors strengthen their civic muscles and set the stage for transformative change. We’ve identified four levels of impact that build on each other when neighbors lead an ioby project.

ioby’s commitment to racial justice and support for Black-led ideas is neither new nor perfect.

Though we’ve taken meaningful steps in the last ten years to become an anti-racist organization, we know that this journey does not have an end-point; it requires bold acts of listening, evolving, and improving indefinitely.

In 2020, we continued the work that we had begun in 2019—with the leadership of ioby Board Member Nadia Owusu—to co-create a Racial Equity Framework with ioby staff and board. To support our staff and increase transparency with our community, we also published a statement of solidarity for Black lives, launched a new accountability dashboard that includes a timeline of equitable steps we’ve taken as an organization, and shared what we believe is our strongest anti-racist policy—our hiring practices.

We believe that change only happens by moving at the speed of trust, and with strong support systems. Our Leader Success Strategists are key to that approach and help us adapt quickly and meet the needs of our neighbors where they are.

From the beginning of a campaign right up to its execution, ioby’s Success Strategists are there to walk alongside project leaders. They help leaders build their project page, strategize a fundraising plan, craft compelling pitches, and get unstuck whenever roadblocks appear. With thousands of projects under their belt, they’re seasoned experts in grassroots fundraising and movement-building and are a key reason that ioby campaigns outperform other crowdfunding platforms.

In 2020, our Success Strategists played a key role in ioby's response to COVID-19. At the beginning of the pandemic, they worked with project leaders to adjust plans so that projects could still come to life in a creative way, while following public health guidelines. They helped dozens of mutual aid and other rapid response groups set up fundraising pages quickly during a crisis. And, they boosted confidence and provided clarity on how to approach fundraising during uncertain times.

Reacting quickly while nurturing deep relationships, ioby helped neighbors raise more last year than ever before—and helped neighbors step up when they were needed most.

• Continue to provide resources and tailored, responsive support to make it easier for residents to take action and make positive change on a local level.
• Evolve our technology platform to provide the best possible, most user friendly and accessible tool for communities—including ioby project leaders, team members, project donors, and volunteers.
• Reach and support local resident leaders nationwide, while continuing focused work with residents in Cincinnati, Cleveland, Detroit, Memphis, and Pittsburgh.
• Finalize the work we started in 2019 to co-create a Racial Equity Framework with ioby staff and board.
• Mobilize communities to create and carry out a vision of a more just and equitable world in the aftermath of COVID-19, the uprising for racial justice, the contentious election, and more.