This is a CTP of initiative: Shareable‐ ShareBloomington (USA)
This CTP (CTP3) consist of the realisation that more consistent volunteers/members are needed at ShareBloomington in order to run different projects more smoothly (August 2015).
Since the start of ShareBloomington in June 2015, the organization has been growing with different projects, including a Tool library, a Timebanking and a Seed library. All this different projects need a consistent team of people to operate effectively and consistently. As Ryan explains: “People tend to cluster at Shareable (because of different projects). Some people are more interested in the seed library, some people are more interested in the Timebank, and some people are more interested in the tool library”(Ryan).
However, the operation of different projects is slowed down because the people are not active consistently. “If you say: We are going to be open every Wednesday and Sunday, you really have to be. And that is something that has not happened” (Andrea).
During the formation of ShareBloomington, there were many people who were interested to run different projects. However, with the time, many got out of town, got a new job, or did not have time anymore to be active a ShareBloomington for a particular reason. This made many project at ShareBloomington suffer and slow down. As Andrea Explains: “During the first meeting that was ever held to talk about the organization of ShareBloomington, there were probably 15 or 20 people who were interested and wanted to help. But it has just been a lot of work. And it has taken us so long, that we have been losing people. So, it is very hard to keep people, like involved in a project. I would say there are now four people who have been consistently involved.”
According to Ryan and Andrea the tool library demanded much of time and work, because there were many tools that had to be cleaned and replaced. After this project, Ryan noticed that many other people were needed to make different projects run faster. Also with the project ‘Timebanking’ it is noticed by Andrea that it has the potential to grow much faster if more people would be active at Shareable.
This CTP is mainly co-produced by Ryan and Andrea, as they are the co-founders of ShareBloomington. They have also been the only ones who have been consistently active since the formation.
A negative event that co-produced this CTP, is the brake up of a couple who were both active at ShareBloomington. The couple was very involved in the tool library. According to Ryan, their relationship became very abusive, unhealthy and toxic and one of them ended up having to leave town, because they had to get away from the situation.
“It was dangerous, it was harmful, and that caused a lot of tension inside of the projects, because some of us had longer standing relationships with the person that had to leave town. But the person who stayed in town was a good friend of the person that died and left us all the tools, and wanted to be involved in the project. So, it was just very murky for a time. That slowed things down a lot” (Ryan).
As a result, Andrea and Ryan have to play all roles, from tabling at events where they are invited to, doing graphic design to create flyers, doing web design and programming to create and maintain the websites, learn about data bases to start the tool inventory, plan events, write grants, do presentations at city commissions and neighbourhood associations, etc.
As Andrea explains: “Because of the lack of regular support or volunteers, the project has relied on a handful of people, Ryan and me being the most consistent” (Andrea).
This CTP is partly related to structural and demographic aspects.
As Ryan explains, structural difficulties are much related to the fact that not much consistent people are active at Shareable. According to Ryan, this is mainly due to the fact that people who want to be active at such organization are a certain type of people that by nature seem to be in economically precarious or socially marginalized positions. Their lives are not that stable.
As Ryan explains: “Sharing projects and even to some extend environmental projects, appeal to people of lower incomes or people that are not very stable, people that are on the margins that have the biggest struggles in their lives. These people want to see these things come to life the most.”
He continues: “Sharing time, sharing resources and building relationships, it is social capital that replaces the monetary and financial capital. “
However, as Ryan emphasizes, these people are the ones who need it the most. This is the most important driving force for Ryan to continue with the projects of ShareBloomington, even when it is tough sometimes.
Another reason why it is hard to have people consistently active at ShareBloomington is related to the following: According to Andrea, Bloomington is a small town, with less that 85.000 people. More than half are students, who are not often interested in organization such as Shareable: “The problem in Bloomington is that the group of people who are involved in volunteering and doing such things, is a very small group of people and they are the ones that are doing everything in town already. So, this group is very short on time, because people who like the project and want to help, have like ten other projects and so this is a problem and we are almost like kind of fighting for the volunteering resources, because every person who has good volunteering potential is probably already volunteering somewhere else*. It just becomes difficult to be consistent at one place.”
The third event that is related to the challenge of finding people who are consistently involved in the projects is an infrastructure project in Bloomington in the past year. It is called the Interstate 69 and it is supposed to be a large north-south American highway network. According to Ryan this has destabilized some of the geography in Bloomington. As Ryan explains: “A lot of people in the city and in the region are nervous about what will come with a mega-highway going through the town, because it will split the town in half and it will bring more commerce, but the type of commerce that we'll get is peripheral. Larger infrastructure projects like that also tend to increase drugs trafficking. And so, a large proportion of Bloomington has organized to try to fight this project for like 20 years. But the projects keeps moving forward” (Ryan). This nervousness mobilised people, but it also put a claim on their time, time that people otherwise could have spent on ShareBloomington.
In conclusion, events that are mainly related to the challenge in finding consistent people who can be active in ShareBloomington take place both on a macro and micro scale.
*This sentence was edited slightly to increase its clarity, the message remained the same.
The contestation related to this CTP is the fact that it is so difficult to find people who are consistent engaged and can run different projects at ShareBloomington. According to Ryan many people in town have their own social organization, and are not easily interested in this sector of the network of Bloomington (Shareable). Hence, there are very few people who are willing to do the hard work of keeping the organization alive. This slows projects down in town. Moreover it makes it harder to start new projects at Shareable.
According to Ryan the hardest challenge for ShareBloomington is to find people that have stable lives, or that are middle or upper class: “A lot of people that are better off economically and socially, already have micro-communities. They have their communities of people that play golf, or play tennis, or people that have already retired as well. Or people that are part of a church-group. And so the church-groups will play with people in their church. And each church does this and each social group plays with people in the social group and that is comfortable. And asking them to step out of that and work with people that have different identities, socially marginalized or that have lower incomes, you know, that is uncomfortable. And so that is the biggest challenge I guess” (Ryan).
Another challenge is finding consistent people for new projects. As Ryan explains: “Everyone likes to plug in to something that already exists, because it is defined, they know what they should and should not do. If they don't show up it is not a crisis. If they do show up that is nice. But for brand-new organizations it is a lot of work to figure out: Ok, how are we going to actually make decisions amongst each other? How are we going to use resources? How do we build a structure? Building the structure is so much different than plugging in to the structure. So, you know, I don't know how to encourage more people to do that, because it is very hard work”(Ryan).
As it appears from the conversation with Ryan, most of the board of ShareBloomington has burned out since the start. While they started with 15 people, who were interested to run the organization, they are now left with four people who are consistently active: “It has become our lifestyle, we don't do anything else, we barely do our school-work or feed ourselves. It is going back to meetings. It is meeting, meetings, and meetings all the time. And so for us the challenges, and for me the biggest critical turning point that I hope that we have, is an influx of people that are willing to do consistent organizing work” (Ryan).
During the formation of ShareBloomington, when a group of roughly ten people, including Ryan and Andrea, organized a meeting to plan different projects, everyone was very motivated. Thus, it was not anticipated that so many people would fall off. After the first project, the tool library, which needed a lot of time investment, Ryan and Andrea noticed that they were the only ones who invested time to make the tool library actually operate.
“I think I would have tried to get people who are more committed from the very beginning. We did not know it was going to be so difficult and so, we just like jumped into it, not realizing that it was just going to fall on us too” (Andrea).
They explain that it was predictable that the same thing would happen with the following projects; “Everybody loves it. And that is part of the problem, everybody is like: Oh, this is such a cool idea, we are so exited, we cannot wait for it to be like functioning properly. But then nobody shows up and helps.” (Andrea)
According to Ryan and Andrea it was not anticipated that it would ask so much energy to get people involved in different projects. Also they explain that it is just always hard to anticipate on who will stay and who will leave eventually. Ryan explains that this hurts the energy of the organization, because it is just so much work, which causes tensions internally.
“The people who had to do all that work, are tired and need a break before they do more work. But the people who are not as able to be consistent, they want to have another event really soon. And the people who have to be very consistent are like: No, please, we cannot do that now” (Ryan).
Even though it was not anticipated that the coordination of such an organizations asks a lot of time investment, Ryan And Andrea both have learned a lot during the past year, in order to improve the progress of different projects at ShareBloomingotn.
With the time, ShareBloomington has figured out how the town is shaped, demographically, and that it will always be a challenge to find people who are committed for a certain period. After the first project, when many people fell off, Ryan, Andrea and two others had to continue with it. Thus, Ryan explains that the most important learning point for him is to find people who are willing to commit to a certain project before they launch it.
“It is a fairly transient town, a lot of people travel a lot, and there are many students, and there is not a lot of commitments. So, if I had to do over again, I would have tried to find more people that were going to be in town long-term, that might be more willing to commit to co-organizing the organization and the event with me. Because ultimately the bulk of the organization like fell on me, and a couple of other people. So and that was just very stressful and it did not need to be” (Ryan).
For now ShareBloomington has decided to find different ways to get people involved in the projects. They have decided to send emails out regularly through an email-list of different neighbourhoods. They are also trying to attend different events and neighbourhood association meetings, to inform people about the value that Shareable has for Bloomington.
“Every neighbourhood has an association and we go to the meetings and we present about the projects. We have been going the commissions from the local government, to the environmental commission, a sustainability commission. There are all sorts of commissions and we have gone to and given presentations.” (Andrea).
Andrea and Ryan explain that they are also trying to get more volunteers through workshops, and through social media.
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