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Members of the Downtown Denver Partnership (DDP) recently launched an on-line campaign to raise $36,000 in funds towards a protected bike lane in downtown Denver.
According to a Fox31 Denver news report, once built, this would be the fourth protected bike lane for downtown Denver, the latest one having just been installed in May 2014.
Crowd source funded campaigns like this, which seek investments from corporations and individual sponsors are becoming more and more common. Last year, supporters from Memphis Tennessee succeeded in raising a total of $70,000 to build one of the country’s most innovative bike projects.
The idea is to get people vested with the success of this project early on, said DDP senior manager Aylene McCallum, in a PeopleForBikes blog. This way people are more likely to see it through until completion.
Prior to the launch of this campaign, the DDP received $85,000 from the Gates Family Foundation, which helped kickoff the fundraising process and another $35,000 from the Downtown Denver Business Improvement District. The city government has also agreed to pitch in, by covering construction costs for the new bike lane on Arapahoe street.
“Maybe we could have gone to get the other $35,000 from another private grantmaking organization or another quasi-governmental organization, but we really wanted to get the public involved,” McCallum said in a PeopleForBikes blog. “…”It’s their opportunity to say, ‘this matters to me.’ It’s so important to me that I’m willing to put some money down in hopes that the city will follow suit.'”
When asked whether crowdfunding such projects could lead to unequal distribution of resources, McCallum said that such campaigns would actually have the opposite effect, prompting more grassroots efforts aimed at improving things like bike infrastructure.
Read the full story here.
By The Numbers
33
percent
of Latinos live within walking distance (<1 mile) of a park
