Valley Regional Transit (Boise): Pollution Solution marketing thrust | Transit is/as the Pollution Solution

The transit agency in Boise is positioning its ongoing shift to electric buses as the "Pollution Solution" although this is more about the switch to electricity from diesel.

 

But I think that the idea of transit as "the" "Pollution Solution" vis a vis motor vehicles and the reality that most trips are of one person is a great marketing positioning regardless of the fuel source.

-- Great cartoon-based brochure, Pollution Solution, Valley Regional Transit

Autism Speaks Light it Up Blue campaign launches tonight (Thursday April 2nd)

Normally, it being outside of the scope of the blog's focus on urbanism, I wouldn't be writing about autism, although there is no question it is important, as autism currently affects 1 in 68 children in the United States and millions more worldwide.

But I am a sucker for temporary and permanent architectural lighting projects and tonight, the month-long awareness event,

Held every April, Autism Awareness Month is kicked off by their Light It Up Blue campaign event, where buildings throughout DC, Virginia, Maryland, across the United States and in other countries will call attention to autism through special blue night-time lighting treatments.

Shown in red in this Flickr photo by John Lovell, the Capitol Records Building in Los Angeles will be participating in tonight's campaign.

Autism Speaks worked with Bethesda-based real estate advisors, Bentall Kennedy, to recruit 50 area properties for the campaign, which was joined in by other real estate-related firms including CBRE, LPC, JLL, MRP, DTZ, Colliers, and Transwestern.

More than 15,000 iconic buildings and landmarks in cities across all seven continents are participating, including the Empire State Building, One World Trade Center and Rockefeller Center® in New York City; Niagara Falls in Canada, the Christ the Redeemer Statue in Brazil, the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt, Taipei 101 in Taiwan, the Tokyo Tower in Japan, Trafalgar Square in London, and even the British Antarctic Survey’s Halley VI Station on Antarctica.

Buildings in the DC area that are participating include:

• The Gannett Building and Tyson's Overlook, Tysons, Virginia
• in the Golden Triangle Business Improvement District, The Millenium Building at 1909 K Street NW, 1828 L Street NW, 1707 L Street NW, and 1111 19th St. NW
• Washington Harbor on the Potomac River in Georgetown
• Pike and Rose in the redeveloping White Flint district of Montgomery County, Maryland

Trafalgar Square in London is a participant. Photo by David Gutierrez on Flickr.

Throughout the month of April, residents in the area can lend their additional support and get involved by:

-- Light a Building Blue
-- Host a Blue Event
-- Donating

See the Light It Up Blue campaign website for more information.

Metropolitan-scale online fundraising initiatives: DC area and Do More 24

Many community foundations and organizations like the United Way, Catalyst Miami, etc., have organized community-scale initiatives focused on raising funds online through social media, organized around a single day.

This will be on June 6th in the DC area, called Do More 24, and is organized by United Way of the National Capital Area.

They have seeded the program with a number of "leading" donations by businesses--which is a good idea.  For example, Wegman's supermarket chain is donating 100,000 pounds of food to area food banks.  There are many sponsors and many many charities participating.

Online fundraising for charitable purposes has a mixed track record

A lot of writing on millennials says that they are very much focused on the here and now, outcomes, and of course mobile media.  General fundraising initiatives by individual organizations using social media have often been unsuccessful.

Although I think the issue is the type of organization and what they do, how well the campaign is executed, and whether or not the message/cause resonates with the target audience.  See "Keeping Your Online Fundraising Campaign from Stalling Out" from Stay Classy blog.

And while I think the MC5 band was great, probably most people under 35 years of age aren't likely to know about them.  See "MC5 movie in limbo after failure of online fundraising drive" from Ann Arbor.com.

... even if they know the song "Kick out the jams."

However, crowdfunding initiatives for both for profit and nonprofit projects have been incredibly successful.  See "Crowdfunding gives rise to projects truly in public domain" and "RocketHub, Kickstarter, other crowd-funding sites fuel creative ventures" from USA Today.

And a DC-based start up, Popularize and Fundrise, use crowdfunding techniques to generate ideas for mixed use real estate projects and to raise investment capital from residents.

Similarly, some political campaigns have also been incredibly successful in building online campaigns with a significant fundraising campaign.  Notably, the Obama Presidential campaign in both 2008 and 2012 gained volunteers, did organizing, and raised millions of dollars of campaign donations, mostly in small amounts, through social media.  

Interestingly, the University of Virginia is testing crowdfunding for research and development projects, in a fundraising campaign directed to alumni.  See "Universities explore crowdfunding, social media to raise money" from USA Today.