IDEAS For Us
Advancing Environmental Action Worldwide
Programs and results
What we aim to solve
Our programs
What are the organization's current programs, how do they measure success, and who do the programs serve?
The Hive: Orlando
The Hive Orlando is the longest running community action meeting in Central Florida. Since 2013, The Hive has been generating action projects through a monthly, inter-disciplinary, multigenerational "Think + Do Tank" that exists to bring together campuses and communities to advance sustainability. We follow month by month with the 17 global goals of the United Nations, focusing on a different SDG each month. The purpose of the Hive is to learn, develop, organize, and implement local action projects that address global environmental problems. Many of our action projects originate at Hive meetings; some become long-term campaigns like Fleet Farming and others are one-off efforts like habitat clean-ups or tree plantings.
Fleet Farming
The Fleet Farming model creates a decentralized Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) system that converts homeowner lawns and underutilized land throughout any neighborhood into mini organic urban farms. The produce grown takes a new spin on ‘sharecropping’ and provides 5-10% of the food to the homeowner. Fleet Farmers then use zero-emission transportation by using bicycles to maintain the farmlettes, harvest and process the food, and distribute everything to local restaurants and farmers markets in the surrounding neighborhoods. This ensures that the local economy is stimulated, and that the revenues from the sale of produce stay local. As a method of citizen participation, anyone in the community can be a Fleet Farmer. They simply attend one of our biweekly Swarm Rides, bring a bike and receive 1/2 off our produce at the farmers market. Fleet Farmers stop at 3-5 farmlettes to experience tilling, setting up irrigation, planting, weeding, harvesting, and processing.
The Solutions Fund
The Solutions Fund is the philanthropic arm of IDEAS For Us, providing microgrants to applicants from communities farthest from sustainability.
Where we work
Awards
External reviews
Photos
Videos
Goals & Strategy
Learn about the organization's key goals, strategies, capabilities, and progress.
Charting impact
Four powerful questions that require reflection about what really matters - results.
What is the organization aiming to accomplish?
IDEAS For Us (IDEAS) helps people develop their ideas into solutions that help solve the environmental crisis. We offer microgrants to help fund local action and also provide the education and technical assistance needed to develop actionable projects that work. By setting metrics and gathering data for all our projects, we are able to advise on best practices for our industry and help to further scale our projects to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations by 2030. A primary goal of IDEAS in 2017 is to grow an endowment for action called “The Solutions Fund”. This dedicated pool of funding can be distributed across our growing network to provide microgrants to our members. These microgrants are 100% utilized for project implementation and each project will be managed by IDEAS to achieve many SDGs while collecting locally based data that will be used to later measure our environmental, economic, and social impact - project by project. We aim to gather statistically significant data for 300 action projects funded by the Solutions Fund by the end of 2020. This key data set will then be used to inform our members and partners across our worldwide network. In particular, our work will be helping to achieve the 17 SDGs of the United Nations by addressing the 169 targets and 246 indicators. Since 2012, our work with the United Nations and other various member groups have informed us that there are significant gaps in data for sustainable development that need immediate attention. We have 15 years to achieve the 17 goals of the SDGs or the window of opportunity to stave off the worst of climate change will have passed us by, leaving an uncertain and grim future for generations to come. Therefore, we are active participants in helping to achieve these goals through our projects in public, private, and independent sector partnerships. Benchmark data is hard to come by and there is a complete absence of local data showing how individual communities develop sustainably. In 2015 we became a partner of the Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN) of the United Nations and in 2016 we became a partner of the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data (GPSDD). It is our goal for 2017 and beyond to work with these prestigious groups to build partnerships and secure funding to hit our goal of 300 projects developed, funded, and scaled by the end of 2020. From there, our unprecedented data set depicting best practices for local action can be used to inform the parties and partners of the United Nations of how to achieve the SDGs through local action during the 2020’s.Our impact will be scored by matrices of metrics and key performance indicators (KPIs) we have created. Each project has economic, environmental, and social KPIs.
What are the organization's key strategies for making this happen?
IDEAS For Us is top-notch at building strategic partnerships that help further our mission and build connections to progress our goals. Since 2012 we have been a member holding Special Consultative Status from the United Nations and IDEAS For Us (IDEAS) leaders have participated in and administered a multitude of workshops at the United Nations (UN) headquarters in New York City. These meetings connect us to large working groups that want to replicate our projects, they provide new connections to eager students and young professionals wanting to take action under the IDEAS brand, and they also help us devise our focus areas by hearing the needs of member state leaders, elected officials, and UN leaders. We further expanded our technical connections in 2019 by becoming a member of the Global Partnership for Sustainable Development Data (GPSDD), where are among the Champion Partners (entities like Facebook, IBM, NASA, Google, The World Bank, et al.) as resources and colleagues. We are also part of the White House Champions of Change network and the Pontifical Academy of Science - both provide extensive networks we can tap into.In addition to furthering our key strategic partnerships, we have re-launched (November2018) our online website platform (www.ideasforus.org) to drive the membership and revenue needed to fund our projects. Our website showcases past projects in an easily understandable and visual manner to help promote project replication in new places. In 2019, we will be adding more projects to our website and focusing on providing microgrants to our members to fund action projects that would otherwise not happen due to a lack of funding. Additionally, we will be posting gathering metrics and data based on our key performance indicators for all of our action projects and we will be posting them on our platform for the public to view our impact located on the “Impact” tab on the website.Lastly, IDEAS has built an extensive network of chapter groups at universities, colleges, and in communities around the world. In 2019, we plan to commit to monthly meetings with all 11 branches domestic and international. This includes face-to-face meetings, skype calls, training discussions, and content creation of our 11 social media platform accounts all to support environmental action world-wide. This strategy creates sustainability strongholds in communities who seek to come together for local action, helping to solve global environmental challenges.
What are the organization's capabilities for doing this?
IDEAS For Us (IDEAS) is a well positioned leader in our field having 13 years of experience advancing sustainability on campuses and in communities around the world. Since our inception, our work has garnered prestigious awards from non-profits like the Vatican, White House, United Nations, and academic entities. Our leaders have been recognized internationally by Pope Francis, the Association of Fundraising Professionals, the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, the Darwin Society, GreenBiz, the University of Central Florida’s 30 under 30 list, and the Rollins College Board of Trustees award for Young Alum of Significant Distinction.Our team is comprised of an intergenerational board of directors who are professionals in environmental project management, energy policy, sustainable development, and business management. Our staff is led by our Executive Director, an award winning biologist and educator, Clayton Louis Ferrara. He serves as our organizational leader for 2019 due to his extensive experience of on-site project implementation around the world. In 2016, we launched our Solutions Fund Platform and received a “Solutions Award” from the Vatican Youth Assembly at the Vatican in Rome in October of 2016 for presenting a solution for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations. Since then, it has been updated into the IDEASForUs.org website that engages 11 branches of action leaders domestic and international.In 2019, we will be building our capacity by advocating for the use of our platform among many of our partners. IDEAS spoke at the United Nations Youth Assembly in September 2019. There we ran a series of workshops for thousands of select youth leaders from over 22 countries to help them implement our projects in their communities and campuses. We are also seeking to expand our Board of Directors in 2019 to two additional board members.
What have they accomplished so far and what's next?
IDEAS For Us is an accomplished young organization but we are still struggling to secure funding for a full-time team. Since our inception (2008), IDEAS For Us (IDEAS) has been run by volunteer efforts. In 2016, we were able to hire our first full-time staff member, an Executive Director, and several part-time employees, and sourced funding for our 3 additional paid positions in 2018 including a Chief Operations Officer, Chief Administrative Officer, and Chief Communications Officer. In late 2018, we re-launched our new website and our membership for businesses and individuals. IDEAS is currently looking for family foundations and targeted funds to support the growth of our Solutions Fund. Additionally, we include many nonprofit sector specific accomplishments, such as complying with all current IRS non-profit laws, donor compliance, and filing our proper Form 990’s routinely.
Financials
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Operations
The people, governance practices, and partners that make the organization tick.
Connect with nonprofit leaders
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Connect with nonprofit leaders
SubscribeBuild relationships with key people who manage and lead nonprofit organizations with GuideStar Pro. Try a low commitment monthly plan today.
- Analyze a variety of pre-calculated financial metrics
- Access beautifully interactive analysis and comparison tools
- Compare nonprofit financials to similar organizations
Want to see how you can enhance your nonprofit research and unlock more insights? Learn More about GuideStar Pro.
IDEAS For Us
Board of directorsas of 04/01/2022
Mr. Christopher Castro
City of Orlando
Term: 2015 -
Christopher Castro
City of Orlando
John Sydel
City of Atlanta
Steve Goldman
Retired
Patrick Odoyo
Kylan McNemar
Jeff Benavides
Orange County Government
Reginald Burroughs III
City of Orlando
Joel A. Montilla Esq.
The Montilla Law Firm, P.A.
Lee Perry
Orange County Government
Board leadership practices
GuideStar worked with BoardSource, the national leader in nonprofit board leadership and governance, to create this section.
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Board orientation and education
Does the board conduct a formal orientation for new board members and require all board members to sign a written agreement regarding their roles, responsibilities, and expectations? Yes -
CEO oversight
Has the board conducted a formal, written assessment of the chief executive within the past year ? Yes -
Ethics and transparency
Have the board and senior staff reviewed the conflict-of-interest policy and completed and signed disclosure statements in the past year? Yes -
Board composition
Does the board ensure an inclusive board member recruitment process that results in diversity of thought and leadership? Yes -
Board performance
Has the board conducted a formal, written self-assessment of its performance within the past three years? Yes
Organizational demographics
Who works and leads organizations that serve our diverse communities? Candid partnered with CHANGE Philanthropy on this demographic section.
Leadership
The organization's leader identifies as:
The organization's co-leader identifies as:
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Race & ethnicity
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Gender identity
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Transgender Identity
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Sexual orientation
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Disability
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