The People's Money (2022-2023)
Your Money, Your Community, Your Voice.
What problem would you like to solve?
Nonprofits provide disproportionately impactful benefits to their communities, but are usually bottlenecked by a lack of reliable event, storage, and office space. Even when affordable or donated space is found, the short duration such space is usually available means their mission is interrupted and resources are diverted until another temporary solution can be found.
Why is it important to solve? Why is it relevant for the community?
When resources are diverted away from their mission of actually helping their community, nonprofits become inefficient and their communities suffer. A person or family without a safe home can’t be healthy or productive. Nonprofits that serve the public interest face the same challenges. Conversely, a community service organization with a reliable home can devote resources to helping people and fulfilling their mission, which in turn provides disproportionately powerful benefits to their communities.
What idea do you have to address the problem?
The House of Good Deeds seeks funding to take over an entire building within NYC and turn it into a collaborative community nonprofit hub, with all capital expenses including repairs, maintenance, and taxes paid for by the nonprofits involved. A building takeover (could be a former church, fully or partially vacant building, NYC property, etc - or even multiple floors within an existing property) would provide long-term event space, basement storage, office space, and possible frontage, for dozens of community-service nonprofits sharing common resources to benefit the community. It would be a charitable version of the WeWork model, facilitated by the House of Good Deeds but run in conjunction with NYC’s best and most potentially helpful smaller nonprofits.
Who would that help?
Smaller nonprofits would benefit from reliable, year-over-year event, storage, and office space. The communities and neighborhoods they serve would receive the paid forward benefit of free or subsidized event, educational, and community service space, not to mention the benefit of the actual services those nonprofits would provide.
What NYC borough would benefit from your idea?
This initiative can be launched in any borough, but would be most likely to flourish in Brooklyn, Queens, and Manhattan.
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