Crowdsourcing Reality: How Can We Sponsor a 3/4 Ton Pickup Truck for Beacon of Hope?
Mr. Okra by Rhys.
| 3/4 Ton Truck for the Beacon of Hope | $8,000 |
Beacon of Hope is a nonprofit organization in the Lakeview neighborhood of New Orleans. The Beacon of Hope concept is simple. It is a rebuilding hub. For people rebuilding there homes, a Beacon of Hope is a library of recovery resources, it is a tool shed of physical resources. Rebuilding a home in a flooded neighborhood in New Orleans is an easily overwhleming task. A Beacon of Hope is a place to go to get your bearing, learn the hard won lessons of your neighbors who came before your, and even borrow the tools necessary to get your family’s recovery underway.
One of those resources is a truck. Each Beacon needs a truck.
The Beacon of Hope is reaching out and asking for a truck. A typical full sized pickup truck, 3/4 ton, V8 and automatic. They are seeking a truck and a sponsor who will run the truck.
Let me tell you more about the Beacon of Hope after the jump.
Beacons of Hope
The first Beacon of Hope was created by Lakewood South residents Denise and Doug Thornton. They ran the Beacon of Hope out of their flood damaged home.
While the city was dragging us from one recovery meeting to the next, they promised recovery centers. Denise and Doug delivered. Then they took the model that worked so well in Lakewood South, and began to replicate it across the city. Their Lakewood South rebuilding home went from being the Beacon of Hope to merely a Beacon of Hope, one of eight centers across the city.
But Can It Scale?
The Beacon of Hope concept is one that was so powerful and so obvious, but it took a hapless citizen to make it happen. The Beacon of Hope concept was initially a desire just to get the neighborhood as orderly as possible, so that returning families would have a sense of hope. The Beacon of Hope was mowing lawns and picking up debris, to give the neighborhood a sense of normalcy, to the returning families hope and a direction to rebuild their neighborhood.
The Beacon of Hope was a success. What is impressive is that they didn’t respond to their success by trying to grow a central organization, a clearing house or the like. They purposely kept their hub small, the right size to be serviced by on hub with one truck. The created a template. They established a second Beacon of Hope in the same neighborhood.
The system replicated in Lakeview, expanded to Gentilly, now there is a Beacon of Hope in, yes, you guessed it, the Lower 9th Ward. It is unusual for a neighborhood organization to have this sort of geogrpahic diversity, to have an organization founded in Lakeview reach out East toward Gentilly and then across the Industrial Canal.
They created a system that is replicable. They created a system that can scale.
How Can We Sponsor A Beacon?
If you are interested in helping New Orleans, here is an achievable goal. Sponsor a good used 3/4 pickup truck. I’m trying to figure out how Think New Orleans could help make this happen.
My thought is that I could tell you stories about this homegrown nonprofit born of necessity that has developed into a scalable rebuilding hub network that has achieved some of the most illusive goals of the recovery. They have created a system for knowledge sharing and building a knowledge base. They have replicated their system in neighborhoods across the flood zone that are as diverse as diverse can be.
Maybe by telling the story of the Beacon of Hope, people will want to find a way to keep the story going.
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This is a great story. Love decentralized models like this.
As far as suggestions, from my own social media fund-raising experience, I’ve learnt being very, very specific helps as it seems folks want to know concretely how to help.
The vaguer I am, the less money and support I garner (a lot less). So it’s good you say it’s for a 3/4 ton truck, but as casual reader I have few more questions:
1) Can it be used? And if so, if I turned over my truck and title to Beacon of Hope, is it tax-deductible? (I’ve no vehicles, just saying.)
2.) Are you/BoH okay with buying said truck (used or new) if you raised the funds from donors? Or are they preferring donation in-kind?
I suppose any of these options could work for BoH. But the thing is someone has to decide one one option, and really go for it. Then you can rally and spread a specific actionable message, like:
“We’re raising $5,500 for a used truck. Please donate here.” (ChipIn is great for pooling contributions for a goal, and also distributes Widgets so others can post on their sites/blogs and there is URL for Twitter/email spreading word.)
Or, maybe: “Here’s URL to our Craigslist ad seeking in-kind truck donation. Please spread word…”etc. etc.
My point is somewhere focus on whatever goal chosen (collectively, or whatever). Learning people come through when I’m particularly clear on request, and not so much the other times.
BTW, seems like matching funds are compelling…if you get an organization/business to agree to match each dollar that comes in individually - seems to spur momentum of contributions when they’re doubled– a lot.
Also twitter.com/@kanter has a lot of experience with social media fundraising. Google for her posts and slides on her Cambodian non-profit.
I’m suspecting that David Herrold will be here soon, because we’re exchanging thoughts in IM. We’re talking about lazyweb trucks versus lazyweb other things.
The idea behind a lazyweb truck is that it is a tool that an entire neighborhood will use, so the lazyweb truck can become a source of stories for the web. You can do a short story about each house that the truck helps.
Using the web and social media to sponsor tools strikes me a good fit, because people can track how the tool is used. Social media to sponsor a family or a school uniform, that would be too intrusive, too much like reality TV.
There are a lot of tools that could be sponsored in this fashion in New Orleans. We could replicate the TCC computer center, which is an amazing resource for Hollygrove. We could spur the use of social media by raising money for digital cameras or digital camcorders to feed into the coworking project spaces that we’re developing.
Beacon of Hope has a great, working model. So, that’s for Dave when he shows up. Remember that the people we’re talking about in Lakeview, Gentilly and the Lower 9th are not destitute. They generally have insurance and Road Home grants, but economics of the recovery, the delays in payment combined with the demand pressure on a limited supply of contractors, drives up the costs. Beacons of Hope help to mitigate those costs and spur neighborhood recovery.
You are so right Evelyn, that this needs to be better defined and refined. What sort of truck donation could the Beacon of Hope accept. How did the receive their other trucks? Discussing these sorts of specifics, thank you very much, is the first step down the path to a lazyweb truck.
I can see your points! Let me fill in the blanks.
1.New would be great, but too much money to raise in short time. appx $17,000.00 plus TTL.
2.3/4 ton truck chassis(due to roads and loads)and automatic transmission.
3.We have a 501c3 status.YES,In kind donations get a tax deduction based on market value of vehicle. Sign over title!
4.We have found the perfect truck,it is $8000.00 plus TTL.2006 with appx 50,000 miles on it.Great buy!
5. Our previous truck was borrowed from a staff member who is leaving in 2 weeks. Not to mention it was a half ton chassis and we have repaired it many times due to its lightweight chassis and our “heavy duty work”!
6.This truck will be used to haul our main equipment trailer to big project sites for large volunteer groups. Ex: 40-100 volunteers to clean a community park or 2 blocks of a neighborhood.This truck will travel to different areas of the City unlike our satellite beacons that only move equipment from block to block.
Automotive dealers are welcome to donate truck or donate dollars for a spot on fender, hood,or tailgate for advertisement and roll thru the City of New Orleans with us!
We have sent letters to all members of the New Orleans Automotive Dealers Associationm but not response other than a few offers of “$500.00 over invoice” on a new one. Still over $17,000.00. The used ones that were suggested all had an excess of 100,000 miles and cost $6-7000.
A rental will cost us $95.00 a day because we need a 3/4 ton and are considered commercial rates/usage because we are hauling equipment.We will have do it till we get a permanent fix or not utilize our large volunteer groups nor tackle the big projects. ouch!
Tina and Evelyn
Tina and I have spoken. Tina has created a donations page for the Beacon of Hope truck.
The $8,000 truck sounds like the right truck for Beacon of Hope. I’m going to use the noontime run on Twitter tomorrow to draw attention to the new donation page at the Beacon of Hope, amend this post to include and link, and ask that people who donate via our various online social networks add a penny, so you might get an idea of who sent who.
We might be too late by tomorrow afternoon, since Beacon of Hope is almost halfway there. If there is still halfway to go, the hope is that the web will join the momentum. I’m going to create a little HTML progress bar, that we can use to track donations.
When we get the truck, I’d like to get photos of it arriving at Beacon of Hope and working for Beacon of Hope. It would make for a nice, illustrative story, even if our little push didn’t help much, it’s obvious that there is a grass roots outreach story to tell and learn from here.
Tina did note, Evelyn, that you’re questions helped shape he Beacon of Hope donations page and strategy, so thank you for your attention.
Alan, you are one amazing guy! Thank you so much for helping us get the word out. We have already gotten 3 paypal donations amounting to about $200. Not enough, but it’s a start. I just know we’ll get there as you seem to have an extensive following and network so thanks in advance. Any monitary donations made will be confirmed by us as a tax deductible donation.
Thank you for the kind words about our incredible organization. It’s been a joy to watch it grow. BTW we have 12 centers now. On behalf of Beacons everywhere I THANK YOU with my favorite quote by Margaret Mead: Never doubt that a small group of committed citizens can change the world; indeed it’s the only thing that ever has.