Helping to support neighborhood projects!

Whether it’s a neighborhood garden, a community swap, or a tool lending library, New Dream knows that your block, street, or neighborhood has an exciting project just waiting to come to life.

That's why we launched the first-ever Neighborhood Challenge in 2013.



The Neighborhood Challenge served as an opportunity for New Dreamers across the country to raise funds for projects through ioby's online crowdfunding platform. The winners of the 2014 Neighborhood Challenge were able to raise more than $70,000 combined for their projects, using dollar-for-dollar matching funds from New Dream (up to $2,000 per project).

(Note: New Dream is no longer accepting applications for the Neighborhood Challenge.)

Past Neighborhood Challenge Winners

Asheville Tool Library: Asheville, NC

The Asheville Tool Library will provide access to a wide range of tools, literature, and knowledge to citizens of Asheville, NC, and Buncombe County while reducing consumer waste and strengthening community.

Baxter Community Center's Garden Lending Library: Grand Rapids, MI

The Baxter Community Center’s Garden Lending Library will create a neighborhood tool library in order to provide gardeners with access to the tools they need to succeed.

Building Community at the UM Campus Farm: Ann Arbor, MI

The University of Michigan Campus Farm will enhance community and education opportunities, fostering sustainable food citizenship through hands-on, experiential learning opportunities that grow not only food, but leadership, conversations, and collaboration.

Butterworth Discovery Park: Clendenin, WV

The Butterworth Discovery Park aims to increase opportunities for active play in their community by building a new and exciting natural playground in the heart of Clendenin for children and families to use and explore for many years to come. In a town where there are no public parks, this new playground will provide a safe place where children, families, seniors and others can have plenty of fun outdoors.

Chula Vista Community Garden Living Laboratory: San Diego, CA

Green Steam Communities, a project of The San Diego Community Garden Network, will develop a "living laboratory" in the Chula Vista community garden to demonstrate the value of hands-on community-based learning that encourages students, kids, and families to learn together about green technology, web skills, local food production, and environmental sustainability.

City Share Club: Cambridge, MA

City Share Club will expand access to household items, such as tools and kitchen goods, for the Cambridge community. Bonus: they will be delivered

The Cowry Collective Timebank: St. Louis, MO

The Cowry Collective Timebank (CCTB) is a network of people engaged in reciprocal exchange of services, skills, and goods through a timebank where the currency is an hour of time for everyone. Through membership in the CCTB people: create and strengthen community bonds, create economic freedom by providing an alternative means to get needs and desires met, and encourage creativity in redefining self-sufficiency, interdependence and valuation of time.

Fiesta Place Garden: Community and Educational Space: District Heights, MD

The Fiesta Place Garden aims to create a learning and edible community garden destination that provides a positive environment where children and adults gather and celebrate healthy, sustainable living through community engagement, gardening, education, and serve as a creative outlet through the integration of the arts.

Freret Neighborhood Tool Library: New Orleans, LA

The Freret Neighborhood Tool Library (FNTL) will provide community members, homeowners, and tenants with the tools and training they need to tend yards and gardens, perform simple home maintenance, build furniture and execute projects. The FNTL will be volunteer-run and offer membership at no charge.

The Giving Garden: Elba, AL

The Giving Garden is an effort to bring the community together through the planting, caring, and harvesting of a shared garden whose produce will be used to supplement the Elba Food Bank, a collaborative effort of multiple area churches. The City of Elba has provided a strip of land in the downtown area to be used as a garden space, as well as access to water on a neighboring city-owned lot.

LINC Foods: Spokane, WA

LINC Foods is the bridge that connects the local food service industry to locally produced food by forging strong cooperative relationships based on the shared values of a healthy economy, community, and ecosystem. LINC Foods buys fruits and vegetables from local farmers in the 7 county Spokane region, aggregates them into larger volume orders, processes them to specifications, then sells the finished product to large local institutions.

The Minneapolis Toy Library : Minneapolis, MN

The Minneapolis Toy Library is an idea which grew out of an eco-minded parent’s struggle to stimulate her child’s development in the first year while still being conscious not to buy toys that would eventually lead to more plastics being discarded into the environment. Always looking for ways to keep things simple and build community, this mom stumbled upon the brilliant idea to create a mobile toy lending program which seeks to reduce waste, foster child development, and build community in the Minneapolis area.

NOLA TimeBank Neighborhood Expansion: New Orleans, LA

NOLA TimeBank will extend their training and outreach activities into New Orleans neighborhoods that are currently underserved. They will acquaint and educate groups with the concepts and the computer skills needed to participate in NOLA TimeBank.

NW Philly Repair Café: Philadelphia, PA

Conceived as a way to help people reduce waste, build sustainable neighborhoods in NW Philadelphia, and teach people how to repair items they would normally throw away, the NW Philly Repair Café is a half-day event where neighbors pool their skills and labor to fix things at no cost. The café is sponsored by the Time4Time Community Exchange, an intergenerational neighbor-to-neighbor timebank.

Phoenix Tool Shed: Phoenix, AZ

Phoenix Tool Shed will put every tool and skill within the reach of our community members while promoting a stronger sense of community, hosting public service events, and teaching the teamwork and skills necessary for various projects.

Soulardarity: Highland Park, MI

The Soulardarity team aims to empower residents of Highland Park to build self-determination through the collective planning and cooperative ownership of 200 solar-powered streetlights. Their mission is to develop and launch a community cooperative that will own and manage the streetlights and help residents of Highland Park do climate resilience work on their homes and blocks.



Summit County Seed Library: Summit County, CO

The Summit County Seed Library will serve as a collaborative effort among community gardeners, local students, and farmers aimed at conserving the genetic diversity of our high-altitude seed stock while developing a regionally adapted collection of vegetable, herb, and flower seeds.



Funding for the 2014 Neighborhood Challenge was generously provided by Alex Honnold and The Honnold Foundation. For more information about their work, click here.