I recently attended a SF Chamber of Commerce forum with Rec & Parks Director Phil Ginsburg. Phil shared the impressive work of he and his staff  to keep our city’s parks and recreation programs from crisis.

The bottom line: San Franciscans LOVE their parks, but federal, state and local budget deficits trickle down to mean millions of dollars in cuts, meaning fewer gardeners, plantings, and programs and a lot less maintenance.

In a dense urban environment, our parks are our backyards. Our parks are where our children play and learn to ride their bikes, our dogs frolic, and we jog, skate and hike. The Rec & Parks Dept. is responsible for maintaining and improving San Francisco’s numerous parks (most notably Golden Gate Park), and for  recreation programs that serve as after-school care and summer camp programs for thousands of our city’s youth and families.

photo by the_tahoe_guy

Our community would be missing a RICH resource if these classes and camps were cut or the parks were closed or unusable.

Here’s how we could all help:

1. Give your time. Volunteer with one of several programs listed below to beautify our parks.
2. Give your money. Join a local org that resonates for you and your family, such as Trust for Public Land, City Fields Foundation, Friends of the Urban Forest or Neighborhood Parks Council. Money from these programs secure land for future parks, build sports fields, plant trees, and care for parks in our neighborhoods.
3. Show up and speak up. Often the only people who show up at Rec & Park Commission meetings and Board of Supes hearings are NIMBYs and those in opposition to any new ideas. If you love our parks, show up and tell those in charge what you think!
4. Share our ideas. Parks are funded in part by revenue raised from recreation programs, picnics, concerts, etc. Phil’s staff are coming up with great new revenue ideas and are learning from best practitioners like NYC’s Central Park Conservancy. If you have others, and you support these, share them with his team and tell us what they are.
5. Enjoy and use our parks. Attend a concert, bring visitors to the botanical gardens, sign up for a team sport, and send your kids to summer camp!

A bonus idea: 6. Stay informed. Keep up with Phil Ginsburg and The San Francisco Recreation and Parks Department on Phil’s blog. And please share with us:

- How do you enjoy and use your local parks?

- What ideas do you have for improving our parks while generating revenue to keep them going?

Over the weekend, Rosa Parks Elementary, a school in the heart of the San Francisco’s Western Addition, hosted a group of volunteers who planted trees alongside the school. The SF Chronicle highlighted the good work of Friends of the Urban Forest, the efforts of neighbors to beautify their streets, and the power of volunteerism to transform communities.

Three years ago, as part of Leadership San Francisco, I got to be “Principal for a Day” of Rosa Parks at a time when the school was anticipating the changes that would come from merging with the Japanese immersion program — it’s great to see it’s thriving and that families are committed to this gem of a school.

Does your neighborhood need more trees? How can we all do more to plant roots in our communities?

This week the micro but mighty team at IfWeRanTheWorld.com launched their microactions site at TED2010. Our friend Cindy Gallop debuted the site in its alpha state to an audience whose likely seen it all.

IWRTW promises to keep track of all those little things we want to do for the world and connect you to other like-minded individuals, organizations and brands.

In their own words…
“We want to tap the single largest pool of untapped natural resource in the world: human good intentions that never translate into action. We need adventurers like you to generate actionplatforms and microactions, and then invite people to microact.”

Last week, I had the privilege of getting a sneak peek of the site by the IWRTW team in their NYC lab. The product tour and our conversation was a great lesson to me in humility and transparency practiced by a group who’s looking to help you change the world.

Please help Cindy and her team build a macro-ecology based on microactions.

You’re the expert the world is looking for — now go get involved!

http://ifwerantheworld.com/

The folks in Bloomberg’s office are doing great things to lead a prominent service initiative as part of the nationwide Cities of Service effort. We love this because it’s so closely aligned with our Foundation’s ongoing participation and support of AllforGood.org.

“Last spring, Bloomberg introduced NYC Service, an office that coordinates 38 separate initiatives that “aim to improve the city through service and volunteerism.” The initiative went largely unnoticed until last month when City Hall announced the launch of a Time Bank available to all New Yorkers who choose to take part in volunteer activities. New Yorkers will be able to create online profiles at www.nyc.gov/service where they can list their talents and abilities and trade them with other users. Registered users will receive a “time dollar” for every hour they spend volunteering their services; these “dollars” may in turn be used to “purchase” volunteer services from another user.”

Check out more on Oh My Gov!

If you know of friends, family or colleagues in the NYC area interested in volunteering, point them to: nyc.gov/service.

It’s essential that every nonprofit organization have something akin to a “theory of change.”  After all, we are all held in the public trust and granted special privileges and tax breaks because we are doing something for the public good somewhere.

At Craigslist Foundation, for example, we believe that engaged communities and neighborhoods are the cornerstone of our society — that where we actually live, work, and play on a daily basis has significant influence on our well being as a people and a culture.  We also believe that attention to local communities, and the public good at this level, has been overshadowed in recent decades by increased focus on communities of interest, geographic mobility, and globalization.

Our theory of change is that place-based communities and neighborhoods must be strengthened if our society is to flourish and our democracy advance — and that Craigslist Foundation can play a catalytic role in assembling the talents of key partners and collaborators capable of offering people in communities the tools and resources they need to take greater responsibility for where they live, work, and play.  This translates into a role for us in convening successful organizations and people across all sectors — nonprofit, government, business, philanthropy — to work intentionally and together toward building stronger local communities and economies.

It also translates into the creation of programs, services, and internet applications that can develop community leadership and stewardship capacities, give broad access to success stories and promising practices from one locale to another, offer people ways to articulate priorities and aspirations for their communities on a regular basis, establish simple ways to measure the impact of individual and organizational contributions to community building and progress, and provide opportunities for community journalism to fulfill its potential to lift up the assets, stories, and narratives on a hyper local basis.

The staff and board of Craigslist Foundation, along with our partners and collaborators, believe we see a significant fulcrum for change in our society — engaged communities and neighborhoods — and we have offered possible ways we can be involved in strengthening the places where we live, work, and play.  We are now eager to have input to our thinking, and to be stretched with additional ideas, recommendations, support, and constructive criticism.  Ultimately, it will take a vast and inclusive community of community builders to bring new health and vitality to one of our longest lived institutions — our local communities — and we invite you to tell us how you’d like to participate.

This week we had some guests. Amazing, brilliant thinkers who joined us to share ideas about…ideas. Specifically, can stories and ideas about successful community change help others achieve success in their own communities? And, is that information currently getting where it needs to go?

This was part two of a dialog we began in Washington DC a few weeks ago at The Case Foundation. There, we were joined by Michael Smith, Kari Dunn, Cindy Gallop, Jessica Kirkwood, Marsha Semmel, Michael Karpman, Rhonda Taylor, Ron Carlee, and Siobhan Canty. We chatted about the need of organizations with libraries of unpublished case studies and ideas, connecting local changemakers with the big picture of systemic change, bringing essential info to people at exactly the time they need it most, and using storytellers to communicate long (or boring) case studies in more entertaining and inspiring ways.

This week, twelve more friends came together in San Francisco for a different take on the conversation: Beth Kanter, Chris Gates, Craig Newmark, Frank Schulenburg, Gwyneth Borden, John Lyman, Kate Stahnke, Matt Garcia, Pamela Wheelock, Peggy Duvette, Rob Miller, and making it all amazingly fun was our facilitator Allen Gunn. Here, we talked a lot about the importance of people over information, how to reach those who aren’t online, what motivates people to tell their success stories, which organizations have already been doing work in this area, and what audiences might be most in need of improved information flow.

We think it’s important that those engaging in community change have access to the information that helps them be especially impactful. We were flattered that these great minds took time out of their busy schedules to spend time with us and share so many ideas. And, we’re excited to continue learning about projects that share success stories and whether Craigslist Foundation might play a role in the information flow.

What do you think?

I get frustrated with the seemingly intractable problems of local government — why are Muni fares going up while on-time rates are so poor? Why is it hard for families to get assigned to great public schools they like? I complain and debate with friends about these and other challenges of our great city, but sometimes feel the voting booth is the only place to affect change. Then I heard about the Civil Grand Jury.

At Craigslist Foundation, we believe that strong communities and neighborhoods are the cornerstone of civil society. We think local governments have a critical role to play in how we participate in and improve our communities. It turns out that the Civil Grand Jury is a little known and very cool way to impact local government.

In California, Civil Grand Juries in each county are groups of volunteers who look into the conduct of the public business of our government and:

• can investigate all government agencies, officers and departments;
• choose the agencies or issues they will scrutinize;
• may subpoena reports or individuals through in-person interviews, audit reports, and facility inspections; and
• report their full findings publicly each year, keeping their work confidential until then.

The findings of the San Francisco Civil Grand Jury get the attention of our elected officials and the media and can lead to real improvements and changes. For example, the most recent jury found millions of city dollars wasted each year from pension spiking in the police and fire departments. As a result, one supervisor is proposing a charter amendment to remedy the problem. Other 2010 findings include no plan for school truancy, lack of oversight for nonprofits receiving city funds, and more. You can read the full reports here.

Being on a Civil Grand Jury is a big time commitment (about three-four hours a week for one year) but can be deeply rewarding. Civil Grand Juries are impaneled in each county of California (and you can find yours here).

I love the idea of giving time to your community by helping to ensure your government does its best by its citizens. The jury needs members and you can apply now to start this July. You can also tell the jury what you think they should investigate.

What a great way to turn our concerns and complaints into meaningful action.

“Life’s most persistent questions is: What are you doing for others?” — Martin Luther King, Jr.

Service is a really important aspect to our mission here at Craigslist Foundation. Everyday, we work to connect people and organizations to the resources they need to strengthen communities and neighborhoods.

Over the past year, we’ve volunteered our time to help create and lift up All for Good. Inspired by the call of President Obama to engage more Americans in service, we joined a great group of individuals (including Craig Newmark) from the technology, marketing and public sectors to help build an open source application that allows you to find and share volunteer activities.

How do you plan to spend January 18th?

On MLK Day January, 18, 2010, I plan to volunteer for the great folks in SF at St. Anthony Foundation.

1. Find a volunteer opportunity on All for Good

2. Create and/or register a project

3. Help The Corporation for National and Community Service (CNCS) recruit and spread the word for the 2010 MLK Day Technology Challenge by installing their widget onto your website or blog

The folks at Build-a-Bed are doing great things. We met Melissa from Build-a-Bed last year at the National Conference on Volunteering and Service. Their project was one of 50 chosen for the Clorox Clean Up Facebook Challenge. The top five projects will receive $10,000 and a spread in People magazine.

In May of 2009, Build-A-Bed hosted 5 sites and nearly 158 volunteers. Along with agencies and donors, 57 beds were built and delivered to children in need. Inspired by stories of those who received the beds and the enthusiasm of volunteers, Build-A-Bed is approaching 2010 with bigger goals. They will recruit 2,000 volunteers to build 500 beds and bedtime bags.

Check out their FB Cause for more info and consider helping them build more beds!

The 2010 Purpose Prize is now accepting nominations for innovators 60 years or older who are creating new ways to solve our most pressing social issues. Ten awards of up to $100,000 will be given.

Nominations are open until March 5, 2010 – and you can nominate yourself!