Rule #14: Do not duplicate the efforts of others. Your idea is probably not brand new, so check out what others have been doing.
Through my work at SLHI, I have learned a lot about community organizations that I would not normally hear much about. One excellent example is the great work that Tanner Community Development Corporation is doing to fight African American Health Disparities. And for anyone thinking about community gardens, Tiger Mountain Foundation has been working on those for years, working to build community gardens in disadvantaged neighborhoods.
Outside of Phoenix, the Santa Few Alliance has been doing community building work, including “buy local” style campaigns, for quite some time.
It’s just a reminder that very few ideas are truly brand new. Some of these organizations have been working on these issues for years. These ideas might be back in vogue now, but that’s no reason we each need our own organization to make it happen.
On the other hand, sometimes the best ideas are the ones that everyone thinks, “of course!” I think Canalscape is one example. I have heard several people say, “why aren’t we already doing this?” And, in fact, Canalscape acknowledges and continues to recognize the precedents that contributed to the growth of the idea today.
I guess it just frustrates me at times that my generation is so bold to believe that we are the first ones to come up with a great idea for community work, and then not look further into it. The community garden idea, for example, may be hot right now, but it’s been ongoing for many years. And Tiger Mountain Foundation, for example, has experience working on this issue in parts of the west valley. They can’t build every community their own garden in Arizona, but let’s not reinvent the wheel.
That’s not to say that when a good idea works somewhere else, you shouldn’t bring it here. Yuri Artibise did this with Jane’s Walk, for example, or Parking Day. And I don’t know if Gangplank is a new idea or from somewhere else, but it’s new to the Phoenix area, that’s for sure. And it’s such a great organization.
Anyway, just a random frustration after hearing from people my age about their “brand new idea” that they start a non-profit to support. Don’t we have enough non-profits struggling for financing? I don’t know, maybe I’m just grumpy. But like the Beatles said, “come together, right now, over…a common purpose to help the community.” Or something like that, I don’t know, I have a good idea for a new song, so I don’t need to listen to that old stuff.
