Are you “In Search of” a fresh way to get the stuff you need or get rid of the stuff you no longer want? There are the traditional methods – thrift stores, consignment shops, eBay, Craigslist – but they might leave you unsatisfied. In the past year, three Seattle moms have come up with creative, community-minded alternatives.
One, the Buy Nothing Project, is a gift economy, which means nothing is bought or sold, just given freely and taken gratefully. The creators say it is a great way to meet and really get to know your neighbors, to build community and pay forward the good feelings that come with giving someone something they need.
The other, SwopBoard, is probably a more familiar service, in that money changes hands – but some of that money goes to your child’s school (or any school you designate). It’s an easy way to replace at least some of the traditional fundraising that parent-teacher associations do, and you’re likely to meet other parents at your school in the process.
The Buy Nothing Project
Leisl Clark and Rebecca Rockefeller of Bainbridge Island have been working together for years on a variety of eco-friendly projects, including a cataloguing of plastics found on the beach, Plastic is Forever, and a database of solutions for reusing products, Trash Backwards. The Buy Nothing Project was a natural outgrowth of that mindset, said Clark, “getting people to rethink their relationship with stuff and with other people right from the beginning.”
Although the project launched in July as a way to help friends and neighbors rely less on newly manufactured goods, it was quickly apparent that a major benefit was an increased feeling of community.
“In a gift economy, the real wealth is the connection that grows between the people who are doing the giving and receiving, lending and borrowing,” Rockefeller said. “That’s the real hunger that people have; it’s not so much for stuff.”
Clark said that members especially enjoy the conversations that evolve around requests to give or receive items. She notes that a stronger sense of community with your immediate neighbors is also great emergency preparedness; you build trust with them should a disaster hit either your family or the region.
The Bainbridge group now has close to 2,000 members, the North Kitsap group 800 members, and other groups around the Seattle area are quickly forming. Clark and Rockefeller are running the Buy Nothing Project as a nonprofit, with volunteer administrators for each group and an eye toward fundraising to continue building the enterprise.
SwopBoard
It was when she was redoing her 11-year-old daughter’s room that Magnolia mom Natalie Angelillo had her brainstorm. An oversized American Girl doll tree house that was relocated to the basement kept taunting her, and she realized that the most likely recipient of it would be a third-grader at her daughter’s own school. But she had no easy way to let that little girl or her parents know it was available.
With the idea of a school community having an online buy/sell/trade board, it was an easy jump to figure out how to have that board benefit the very school that brought buyer and seller together in the first place. And so, early last summer, SwopBoard was launched.
“It’s about the parents and PTA coming together to do something they already do, in a way that benefits the school,” Angelillo said. A minimum of 10 percent of each transaction is donated to that school, though sellers can designate up to 100 percent of the proceeds to donate. The average so far is 47 percent, she said. A small fee based on the cost of the item goes to support the site, which is also funded by an angel investor.
Schools get a check each month, and can use the funds in any way they like. At Our Lady of Fatima in Magnolia, the school received $900 between May and August, and is expecting another $400 soon. Parent Teacher Club President Jennifer Baklenko said those proceeds will go toward the purchase of math manipulatives, and iPads to familiarize eighth graders with the technology.
“We’re in a spot right now where it’s really hard to get volunteers. (SwopBoard is) something we don’t have to put in extra hours for to raise money,” Baklenko said. “It’s kind of a no-brainer for us.”
There are 180 schools so far that have SwopBoard pages, most in the Seattle area but some in other states. Angelillo said she hopes to see the idea expand to every school in the nation. “It’s truly powered by the parents, the PTA, the ones who are doing the work anyway. (Buying and selling) is something they’re already doing, but if they do it here, their school can benefit a little bit,” she said.
