More than just crowdfunding.
Community-led positive change.
ioby stood for “in our backyards,” but it also stood for taking care of each other, for civic participation, and for trusting neighbors to know what’s best for the neighborhood.
ioby gave local leaders the ability to crowdfund the resources they need to build real, lasting change from the ground up. Our crowdfunding platform helped connect local leaders with support and funding from their communities to make our neighborhoods more sustainable, healthier, greener, more livable, and more fun.
Our Mission
ioby mobilized neighbors who have good ideas to become powerful civic leaders who plan, fund, and make positive change in their own neighborhoods. We aspired to create a future in which our neighborhoods are shaped by the powerful good ideas of our own neighbors.
ioby helped neighborhood leaders raise over $21 million in small donations. Since lasting change takes more than money, we helped leaders recruit volunteers, grow and strengthen support networks, network with local decision makers, and start conversations around key issues in their communities that lead to long-term, broad-scale change.
ioby's high success rate for crowd-funded projects was rooted in a unique model of fundraising coaching. With ioby, you didn't just put up a page, you worked with our team to craft the most effective campaign whether you were working on a $500, $5,000, or $50,000 goal.
ioby was a 501(c)3 driven to help you make lasting positive change in your neighborhood. We offered fiscal sponsorship so that you could accept tax-deductible donations whether or not you were incorporated as a nonprofit.
When you worked with ioby, you’d join a community of thousands of leaders and change-makers, and share knowledge, challenges, and experiences. You could rely on our years of experience to help craft step-by-step plans that you can follow to successfully raise resources. Our team could also connect you with experts in fields like urban planning, green infrastructure, community organizing, communications, and for help implementing your project.
Total projects supported
Total hours of coaching & support provided in 2022
Black, indigenous, and people of color (bipoc)-led projects in 2022
Total raised for local projects
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Our Values
ioby believed that it should be easy to make meaningful change “in our backyards” - the positive opposite of NIMBY. We believed:
local is best.
We support our neighbor-leaders as experts, truly listen to them, offer guidance if they ask for it, and connect them with resources to help ensure their success.
learn, experiment, share.
We invest in and support efforts to experiment, learn, and share solutions, challenges, and insights through documentation, storytelling, data transparency, feedback, and network building.
small is big.
We approach our work, and the work of our neighbors, as if no project is too small and no interaction too insignificant. Even as we work on the small scale, we keep the big picture in mind.
we’re whole people.
We honor the diversity within our team, and respect all individuals as equal members of a collegial community and as people with lives outside ioby. We nurture our whole selves through pursuit of our own passions, knowledge sharing, fun, and active involvement in our communities.
inclusivity is key.
We seek out and elevate those whose voices have been historically repressed or underrepresented and actively encourage their ideas. We remain conscious of the social and economic barriers to action that our neighbors and team members may face, and offer our support in overcoming them. We work toward inclusive solution-building by striving to dismantle inequity in all its forms. And we build upon, rather than duplicate, the great work of others.
More about us
Read more about who we were, how we worked, what we believed in, and the impact we were on a mission to make.
