Building Vibrant Communities Patronicity

CreatINg Places - The Challenges and Opportunities in Embracing What's Weird
Joined by Ryan Hamlett, the Placemaking and Environmental Review Manager at the Indiana Housing and Community Development Authority, we talk about the challenges of managing a statewide #crowdgranting program, CreatINg Places. We also share what makes a project a good one. Hint - It's a good sign when a community embraces what's authentic and weird.

Streets For Pandemic Response And Recovery
A challenge facing communities right now is how to reopen while keeping residents safe through physical distancing. In a time when we’re required to maintain physical distance to protect public health, streets need to do more than ever.  Streets must be configured so that people are able to move safely and provide space so people can safely access food, essential services, and businesses.

Bridget and Jonathan talk with Allison Burson of the The Lawrence and Lillian Solomon Foundation about how quick, affordable and flexible adaptions can make public spaces safer for people, while increasing mobility and carving out new space in streets, parking lots and other public places.

In the summer of 2020, bench consulting partnered with the Solomon Foundation to assist with their "Streets for Recovery," a grant and technical assistance program for communities in implementing safe social distancing measures to reopen their local economies.  Read more at https://www.solomonfoundation.org/streetsforrecovery/

The Building Vibrant Communities podcast was the brainchild of Patronicity and Bench Consulting, but what is Patronicity and what is bench? This week we’re asking co-founder Ebrahim and one of the first program managers Mahala, to tell you more about Patronicity. We chat about the early days of the start-up and how it has grown to have impacted more than 935 projects, engaged more than 100,000 patrons and generated more than $36M of funding for better communities.

Beyond crowdgranting, they've also created Bench Consulting to take the learnings and experience from those projects to consult communities and organizations around the country on how to make more livable, lovable and supportive public places.

This week you'll hear from John Bry, the principal planner of Main Street Oakland County, the only county-wide Main Street organization in the country. You'll learn how John helped his Main Streets respond to COVID-19 with our Main Street Oakland County COVID-19 Small Business Relief Program. You won't believe how quickly these communities came together to support their small businesses or how much they were able to raise. John also shares tips for how Main Streets continue to adapt and build community in the current climate.

In this episode, we chat with Bud Tymczynszyn, a program manager at Community Builders, a

company focused on creating livable communities. Bud shares his experience in helping

communities solve real challenges and we dive deep into how it's not enough to ask your

community for input, it's important to "expand the tent" and provide real leadership opportunities.

We're sharing our conversation with Geng Wang the co-founder of Civic Champs, a platform designed to support nonprofits. He shares how their technology is helping organizations focus on what matters rather then getting bogged down in paperwork to make volunteering as seamless as possible. We also talk about what engagement means and Geng shares how Civic Champs is responding to COVID19 with their Helping Hands initiative.