11-2B Archventures
Grant Round:
2011 Fall
Grant Program:
Boston Grants
Grant Type:
Other Grants
Grant amount requested:
5,925.00
Please provide a brief description of the project for which you seek funding.
Archventures is partnering with Boston Building Resources [BBR] as green design consultants and project managers. As a volunteer-run organization, Archventures integrates the practice of community engagement into its pro bono design services in the service of urban nonprofits in underserved communities. At BBR, Archventures is designing a project with a goal of using 100% re-used materials, that also reflects the values of the BBR and its Reuse Center and can serve as an example to the community of builders and homeowners who patronize the Co-op.
Primary Issue Area:
Environmental Health
Please break-down/categorize the program expenses:
| Proposed Item | Estimated $ Amount | Would grant funds be used for this item? | Type Of Expense |
|---|---|---|---|
| Volunteer Management (40 hrs @ $25); 1 volunteer manager per 15 volunteers | $1,000.00 | Yes | Materials |
| Advertizing/Promotion (printing, posters, paper) | $250.00 | Yes | Materials |
| Transportation of materials and/or volunteers | $250.00 | Yes | Materials |
| City Year Event rental rate (4 hrs @ $125) | $125.00 | Yes | Materials |
| Boston Green Fest registration (with electrical hookup) | $300.00 | Yes | Materials |
| Multimedia expenses (e.g. microphone, camera, editing software, cf. TechSoup) | $300.00 | Yes | Materials |
| Liability insurance (for volunteer build-days and event) | $1,000.00 | Yes | Materials |
| Instruction/Planning of Archventures Fellows and volunteers (96 hrs @ $15) | $1,440.00 | Yes | Materials |
| Materials and planning educational campaign to Roxbury nonprofits | $600.00 | Yes | Materials |
| Materials, transportation of materials for vertical gardens | $700.00 | Yes | Materials |
Whom does your group need to make this project happen?
Please explain how your group will engage members from your community in this project.
Archventures primarily serves as a nonprofit that organizes resources in the service of local, urban nonprofits in order to provide them with the healthiest, most sustainable physical spaces possible. With a team of recruited volunteer designers, Archventures engages the local organization in a collaborative, participatory design activity, known as a charrette. In this program, designers provide images and design principles to the community in a presentation and facilitates the community members in brainstorming activities about what they collectively want for their space. The charrette has already taken place this spring and the BBR community opted and informed the direction of the design phase to reflect the identity of BBR that coincided with its re-branding efforts.
During the second phase of community engagement, Archventures will reach out to the pre-existing network within BBR, which consists of nearly 4000 members, and neighboring community groups that will include Hyde Square Task Force and Roxbury Community College [RCC]. As a sidenote, RCC has developed a robust green job training program through its Dean Moriset St. Preux. When the construction has reached a point that permits volunteer participation, qualified construction personnel will lead teams of volunteers in build-days. Volunteers will not receive experiential training, and can conceivably, construct their own vertical gardens at their homes or businesses in the future. Archventures will also post instructional materials on its website for those interested.
Furthermore, this project will be the centerpiece of an August event at City Year headquarters in Boston that promotes green design on behalf of the nonprofit sector. In the Lavine Civic Forum, the capacity crowd of 400 individuals from the nonprofit, design and philanthropic fields will observe a showcase of local nonprofits in need of pro bono design services and the means to which we can provide them with green products and energy-saving techniques.
If your group receives a NEGEF Grow grant, how do you plan to pay for remaining expenses?
| $ Amount | Source |
|---|---|
| $15,000.00 | City Year Event/Fundraiser |
| $2,000.00 | Email Fundraising Campaing in conjunction |
Please list these materials or services
| $ Amount | Item |
|---|---|
| $12,000.00 | Volunteer Build-Days (8 hrs @ $15 X 100 vols) |
| $2,975.00 | Pro Bono Design |
| $2,400.00 | Adminsitrative Support: Archventures Fellows and volunteers (160 hrs @ $15) |
| $3,000.00 | Reused Materials from BBR |
Please describe what changes will occur in your community and its environment when your group's project is successful.
As a building co-op that consists of local contractors, architects and homeowners, BBR has a membership of nearly four thousand individuals. It has served the Boston community since 1978 and established as a sustainable business leader, leading the local movement toward energy-saving and green products. As of May 2011, BBR re-branded from its two related organizations, the Reuse Center and the Co--op, into one entity.
Accordingly, Archventures has worked to integrate its identity and social capital into design process. Archventures engaged in a collaborative, community-based design process that elicited these values into the design. As a result, Archventures is designing, building and managing a projects that has as its goal 100% re-used materials to build vertical gardens (or living walls), a shed and sustainable landscaping that . BBR stands as a symbol for social responsibility and leadership in the community. In an area of Boston that is defined as urban industrial, vertical gardening is a way to revitalize and create more green space in the community. Furthermore, this project also advances BBR toward its mission toward target reduction.
This project will also serve as an example of Archventures's guiding principle that architecture (infused with the values of environmental justice and sustainability) can be a vehicle for social change. The design-build project therefore also becomes a platform for greater community participation, through do-it-yourself styled trainings, and a forum to educate the general public on topics of green building.
Please list how many people in your community your group expects to actively engage in this project.
525
What relevant skills does the group need (but does not currently have access to) to help move the initiative forward?
Archventures is seeking financial support for its promotional campaigns that not only advocates for pro bono green design-build projects to the philanthropic and architectural communities, but also educates urban nonprofits on the value and need for carbon reduction and energy conservation.
In the past year, Archventures has effectively organizes and undergone capacity-building to improve its own structure and the ways in which it can serve its community. As a servant to the nonprofit community -- with a focus in Roxbury --, it hopes to develop a comprehensive educational package to the one hundred and fifty nonprofits that exist in Roxbury that promotes carbon reduction and energy conservation. As a vital stakeholder in the community, nonprofit centers can then be advocates for those subjects to their constituencies and pass along achievable green practices to its community.
In order to accomplish that goal, Archventures needs to maximize its role in the BBR project and to raise awareness to the broader community, as it has begun in the coordination of the event at City Year and participation at Green Fest. It has developed a marketing and development that can sustain itself once it has attained the funding to demonstrate its full vision in community engagement and environmental justice into its design-build projects.
What relevant skills do current members of the group have to help move the initiative forward?
Travis Anderson, the Project Manager of Archventures, has a M.Arch from the University of Washington and is the co-founder of TiLT, the Seattle-based design collective. He has ten years of building experience with a focus on sustainability. Steve Coté and Michael VanZandt Collins are two experienced nonprofit professionals with experience and interested in higher education. Concurrently, the two have designed a Fellowship program at Archventures that consists of ten university students who are interested in community development as a career (RootSkills attendee, Kimberly Burrowes, is one of those Fellows). They offer skills in areas that range from public relations, multimedia, event planning to community relations and architecture/design. That group of students receives supervision and mentorship from the Advisory Board, a body of fifteen professionals who passionately pursue the vision of healthy environments through all of our public spaces, which also include urban nonprofits and community centers.