CityFund... community fundraising platform

[deep6ing]

Looking to get some opinions on an idea I've been working on. CityFund would be an online donation tool to facilitate giving to municipalities, starting here in Toronto. Canada Revenue allows tax receipts to be issued for gifts made to municipalities, so in theory, you can make a donation to a project in your city and it would be tax deductible.

Toronto has sort of dipped their toe in this to date. A couple years back, the City included a flyer with your property tax bill suggesting a donation and listed a bunch of places it could go to. I believe that netted about $24k. They have also built an online donation platform that you can see here: https://donations.toronto.ca/. I believe the only thing you can donate to is animal services.

I come from the fundraising world... have spent 12 years working for the University of Toronto, Royal Ontario Museum and consulting for dozens of charities. I think if you could build a cutting-edge platform for marketing city projects and build in the ability to take donations, you could be doing the city a real service. I've seen how fundraising shops work... I don't think the city is set up to compete with most of them. A 3rd party service I think would do much better.

Personally, I would like to make this happen because I want to see a big ticket item like the Rail Deck Park happen in my lifetime (I'm 39). Philanthropy isn't the solution to everything, but it could be the shot in the arm a project like this needs. The Bentway, for instance, is doing in 3 years what would ordinarily take 5-10.

To date, have met with a couple of city councillors and the Toronto Office of Partnerships and conversations have been encouraging.

That's my idea... what do you guys think?

 

[jje1000]

I wonder if this is not unsimilar to the public subscription and fund-raising back in the 19th and early 20th century that gave many cities their public spaces and programs.

A new system could perhaps be structured like IndieGoGo or Kickstarter. in which a variety of projects (from small, local ones to large city-building ones)from a variety of organizations (non-profits, environmental groups, the city) would be present.

It might also work best as an arms-reach organization, to avoid the bureaucracy inherent in municipal structure.

 

[deep6ing]

I wonder if this is not unsimilar to the public subscription and fund-raising back in the 19th and early 20th century that gave many cities their public spaces and programs.

A new system could perhaps be structured like IndieGoGo or Kickstarter. in which a variety of projects (from small, local ones to large city-building ones)from a variety of organizations (non-profits, environmental groups, the city) would be present.

It might also work best as an arms-reach organization, to avoid the bureaucracy inherent in municipal structure.

I will have to look into the history. I don't know much about that. I had thought a lot of the public parks and things came from land donations but I assume there must be a lot of financial investments too.

There are some sites like Citizinvestor, Patronicity, Spacehive that are doing interesting things but more from a crowdfunding model. I think if you want to do some big projects you would have to present them better. There is a Canadian company called FundRazr.

Agreed about other kinds of initiatives intersecting with this. I also agree about administering projects directly but that would be more of a Phase 2 as I don't think you would be allowed to until you have a bit of track record in this space. It's not easy to get charitable status.

 

[Johnny Au]

There should be incentives for donating funds to the city, not just tax receipts.

As @jje1000 mentioned earlier, there's IndieGoGo and Kickstarter, which have perks/rewards, respectively.

For example, donating tens of dollars would allow a subway wall tile imprinted with the donor's name on it. Donating a few thousand dollars would allow for the donor to have dinner with the mayor. Donating a few million dollars would allow for the donor to have naming rights to a major institution.

 

[deep6ing]

There should be incentives for donating funds to the city, not just tax receipts.

As @jje1000 mentioned earlier, there's IndieGoGo and Kickstarter, which have perks/rewards, respectively.

For example, donating tens of dollars would allow a subway wall tile imprinted with the donor's name on it. Donating a few thousand dollars would allow for the donor to have dinner with the mayor. Donating a few million dollars would allow for the donor to have naming rights to a major institution.

Yeah... there's issues with perks and donations. IndieGoGo and KickStarter won't give you a tax receipt which is why it's not relevant there. You would only get a tax receipt for the amount less the value of the perk. Buying dinner with the Mayor might not be viewed very well by the ethics officer. I wonder about naming rights... people don't like it in the moment but once time passes it's just the name of the park, for instance.