Funds match. Get every large company that does business in your city to match it.
Can’t fence in my backyard for 10k. And it’s not big. But giving it to the food banks would be my plan.
Plant trees
I keep toying with the idea of gorilla planting trees in the neighborhood. Make them look like they were installed by the county, complete with mulch and a small fence.
If you’re in the US, you’ll probably get away with it. In the last two neighborhoods I’ve lived in we had people who planted trees of their own accord and no one lifted a finger to stop them. (Which I’m happy about.)
$10k isn’t a lot for city improvement, but it’d pay for an art installation or two.
I’d give out vouchers for getting stray cats fixed. We have a huge problem with feral cat colonies.
I like your idea. Though I think I would personally team up with a doctor who does human vasectomies and give out vouchers. Indoor cats have a life expectancy of 15-17 years, and feral cats have much less. Human males in the US however, have an average of 77 years of life expectancy. I personally believe we have a greater problem with the human population numbers than we do with cats or any other animal on this planet.
Human population numbers are fine. There are more than enough resources to sustainably support us, but distributing those resources isn’t profitable so it isn’t done.
Our town has a simple little amphitheater in a park, and it NEVER gets used.
For $10,000, you could set up and locally advertise a couple of fun movie nights, or music festivals with local bands, or a battle of the bands, etc. Sell refreshments and snacks, and use the money to generate the next one, etc.
Local entertainment, local participation, great for the community.
This amount is peanuts compared to the operating budget of the city I live in…
Realistically? I was pleasantly surprised by someone trying to make little tree pit gardens on the street where I live. $10,000 might be enough to make some of those on a few residential streets and kickstart a local initiative for the community to keep maintaining them. There may be some leftover money for acquiring a few communal trash bins to help with trash issues around the neighborhood as well
A common eagle scout project where I grew up was surrounding vulnerable trees with beaver wire.
Donate it to the library or a local food bank. Simple community building.
I’ll echo food banks. $10,000 isn’t much money for a municipality of more than 100 people, but a food bank might be where that money goes the furthest.
Knowing from my local outfit, while they would of course accept a donation of actual food bought with that money, they can do much more with the money than the food it buys in the grocery shops.
They do that by reaching out to vendors themselves and getting discounts that would put Costco out of business. I once heard that monetary donations being stretched 5x is typical, oftentimes going 10x or more.
From some unrelated nonprofit experience, companies seem way more cool with discounting goods and services than donating money. Probably something to do with contribution profit margin, where selling some more at a loss is still better as it covers some costs you have anyway. That plus creative tax write offs, and they probably earn money from giving you a huge discount AND feel good about it / get free PR
This is for sure the best option. Not only can they use it most effectively, but the money won’t expire like food, they’d be able to fetch staple foods that don’t get donated often.
I’m not feeling up to researching this statement for a broader audience (in this moment), but I can attest to what I learned many, many years ago while I was volunteering at my local food bank. I was informed by the gal who ran the food bank warehouse that monetary donations are by far the best thing you can give a food bank. You touched on it, that money doesn’t expire. So they don’t have to deal with the influx of food donations as often or as drastically.
Just like @JoshuaFalken@lemmy.world shared, an established food bank can easily stretch that same dollar for more food. I recall the gal at my local food bank informing me one day that she can buy food for 2/3rds of the store price with no sweat. I think she said the best she ever scored was 2/5ths of the store price on meat, as it was going to go bad in a week or so. And thankfully, they had plenty of county based food pantries that were able to distribute that meat to a lot of people in need. So not only could they save on purchasing, but they were also in the loop on overstock, near expiration food pushes, and also, farmers would donate whatever small amount of leftover food they had. Not to mention elderly people would had grown some squash, cucumbers, and even green onions in their garden, to be donated to the county food bank.
Sharing this actually has me remembering that there are plenty of unsung local heroes. Plenty of people who do good and don’t ask for recognition. So while the world seems like it’s all going to hell, there are plenty of good doers out there still. We just don’t hear about them. Fighting the good fight to keep us all progressing forward.
See if I can bribe enough local officials to pass an amendment making bike lanes mandatory on all new road construction projects. Sadly, even at the local level I don’t think $10,000 would be enough.
10k will cover your needs while you wage a gorilla war on the same local officials. Hard to run for office if you’re dealing with your house burning down and threats about not having bike lanes.
My town has $20 million of debt in our education department alone that we didn’t know about 😭 so I think 10,000 might not make too much of a difference to them. That being said I’d probably donate to a local foodbank
For that kind of money you’re really only talking about minor maintenance or beautification projects. Maybe funding the cleanup of a local area or two. Fresh coat of paint on a couple buildings. Maybe a mural. We’re talking small scale here. Which of course isn’t nothing. Small steps are what lead to bigger steps.
So personally I would probably spend it on a local park near me that needs heavy updating. Maybe redo the walking trail and if there’s enough money left over plant some more trees.
fill in some fuckin potholes
On a similar energy, I’d remove speed humps. They’re worse by design.
I mean, the design is to force drivers to slow down. Looks like they fulfilled their requirements.
Scatter random tire spikes on the roads. 10k would probably get you quite a few
Wow that would kill a lot of people where I grew up. Very efficient.
You are overestimating the danger of a punctured tire. It is easy to notice, usually gives you plenty of time (on the order of minutes) to come to a complete stop before the tire is deflated, and even after the tire is fully deflated it still allows you to stop relatively safely for a short while (until it is cut through completely). It would probably result in a few crashes (because in carbrained places many drivers don’t know how to operate a vehicle at all), but the worst outcome from this is ambulances/firetrucks being stuck in traffic jams.
I was thinking starvation, due to food deserts in the too-big suburbs. (lots of roads, so I’m not sure what cleanup time would look like. I guess with good prioritization maybe folks could get groceries along the highways?)
Ah yeah, that makes sense. However, if all roads are fully jammed, most people would be able to walk to a grocery store - it’s likely not insanely far away from you (quick search suggests average straight-line distance to a grocery shop in the US is ~4 km = 50 min, which sounds very far away from a non-US perspective but still not completely unreachable), it’s just that usually there’s a highway full of traffic between you and the store.
Or like a 10-15 min bike ride, probably use the pavement or go off road until the spikes are cleared up
I’m assuming not many suburbanites have bikes.
Well then buy one, you can probably get one that is good for a while for less than your monthly car payment.
My city is fairly large and their recreational projects usually have budgets in the 10s of millions. I don’t think there is much I can do on that front. That being said, I think this question could be better framed as “to make your community a better place to live”. From that angle, I would have to get in touch with my HOA (I know) and see about opening a community garden with that initial investment.
That’s likely the best anyone can do with that amount of money.
