Toledo SOUP is a community effort that activates local initiatives with micro-grants.
(Info below is from an e-mail.)
- What: Toledo SOUP hosts "RAISING THE SPOON" fundraiser and Q&A session
- When: Saturday, February 11, 6-9 p.m.
- Where: Ottawa Tavern, 1815 Adams Street
- A new community micro-grant event that will literally serve Toledo is celebrating its introduction to the area this weekend. Toledo SOUP is new opportunity for local artists, activists, entrepreneurs and others looking to activate low-dollar projects with high-impact yields.
- During this time, Toledo SOUP committee members will be on hand to answer questions about this amazing new micro-granting opportunity in Toledo, as well as to assist with proposals. Committee members Rachel RIchardson, Eric Britton, and Ryan Bunch will be Guest Bartending during this time, serving up cold beverages and delicious food from the OT's brand new menu. Local jazz-rock outfit What's Next will offer up live music.
The proposal deadline for Toledo SOUP is Friday, February 17th. The inaugural Toledo SOUP meal will take place on Sunday, March 4 from 5-9 p.m. at the Davis Building in Downtown Toledo (enter on 10th Street). The top vote-getter that evening will leave with $250-$500 dollars in community grant money.
Here’s how SOUP works:
- Guests pay $5 at the door of a meal event
- That $5 gets guests a soup dinner, including side salad and bread
- While guests eat, they’ll listen to community project proposals
- After dinner, guests vote on their favorite proposal
- The top vote-getter wins the pot of door money collected that evening
Toledo SOUP encourages diversity. We hope to see a wide range of proposals from the realm of small business, the arts, urban agriculture, local food, as well as local charities and community groups from all over the Toledo region. For-profit and non-profit. Individuals and groups. All are welcome.
We are seeking proposals that enrich the Toledo community and that are likely to succeed given the amount of funding available and the purpose for which it is sought.
For more information, please visit www.toledosoup.com or email toledosoup@gmail.com.
For more information on national and international soup-style micro-granting events, visit www.sundaysoup.org.
Applying
For a chance to present your project to Toledo SOUP, please send an e-mail to ToledoSOUP@gmail.com with the following information.
Contact Name:
Email:
Phone:
Address:
Website (if applicable):
Project Name:
Project Description (3-5 sentences):
Answer These Questions:
- How will you use SOUP grant funding ($250-500) towards the realization of your project?
- Why does this project matter to the Toledo community?
- What is the time frame for your project, and how could you share about its progress/completion at an upcoming SOUP?
- If your project requires more than $250-500 in start-up cost, how much total funding do you need? What are your other sources of funds and have you secured them?
Please Note:
- Not all submitted proposals will be selected to present during the SOUP event. A proposal committee will pre-screen submissions for appropriate projects and content, feasibility in getting funded, conflicts of interest, and other guidelines.
- Proposals are due February 17th.
- Thoughtful but brief responses are encouraged.
- Selected finalist applicants must be present to pitch their project proposals during the meal on March 4th.
- By submitting a project proposal, applicant grants permission to Toledo SOUP to use applicant’s proposal in promotional materials for Toledo SOUP.
Toledo SOUP is supported in part by Devicious.com and The Ottawa Tavern
This sounds like a good idea.
Sounds promising, hope it's fruitful. We have a lot of inexpensive locations for startups. Just need some funds and a couple good ideas.
They should setup a paypal account for online donations.
There are some good people involved in organizing this. I wish them much success!
I am so excited about this. I can't go to the fundraiser tonight but I will definitely be at the initial event. It reminds me a little of the Pecha Kucha events that I've attended in other cities. http://www.pecha-kucha.org/
Can anyone give an update on the fundraiser? Meant to be there, but couldn't get off work. Lots of people?
Curious if they'll list what proposals were accepted. Would be neat to see funding patterns and the results of each project.
From http://toledosoup.com
Inaugural Toledo SOUP Dinner
Sunday, March 4, 2012
5-9 p.m.
The Davis Building
$5 for soup, salad, bread, and a vote!
Toledo SOUP received an astounding 32 submissions for this inaugural event! Out of those, five have been selected to present at the March 4th meal event.
The five finalists are as follows below, in no particular order. After the dinner at the event, those attending will vote, and only one top vote-getter will leave with the funds that evening.
1. tart::projects submitted by Kimberly Adams
tart::projects is a newly formed organization that is geared towards promoting excellence in the arts. The long term goal of tart::projects is to form a multi-disciplinary artist-in-residency program that would house approximately twenty emerging artists at one time from all over the world with lengths of stays varying. The artist-in-residence program has the potential house more than 250 artists in a year with residencies lasting anywhere from two weeks to six weeks with the average stay being four weeks. Before this can become a reality, tart::projects needs to build in a way so it can sustain. In order to do that, we will be holding a number of events (specifics below) yearly that promote our local artists along with artists in the Midwestern region.
2. Glass City Pedicabs submitted by Maxwell Austin
Glass City Pedicabs is a bicycle taxi company. The company runs three-wheel bike taxis to transport people. The bikes are non-motorized, fully pedal-powered, and completely “green.” Taxi drivers work for tips only to provide affordable means of transportation to the Downtown, Uptown, and Warehouse District neighborhoods for games, bars, lunch hour, etc.
3. Glass City Goat Gals submitted by Elizabeth Harris & Unique Jones
Glass City Goat Gals vision to start a vegetation management and weed control business. They provide services to public and private landowners. They will be capable of providing services to both small and large properties. The goal is to provide professional, quality, and eco friendly services to the community. The Goat Gals vision is to utilize this business opportunity to as a multi- faceted resource for Toledo.
4. Toledo’s Petbull Project submitted by Cindy Reinsel
Toledo’s PET Bull Project was founded by a group of dog owners, lovers and trainers in our community with three main goals in mind: to Prevent animal cruelty and dog fighting in our community, to Educate youth on how to treat animals humanely and to stay away from dog fighting, gangs and drugs, and also the advantages of spay and neuter and to Train pets and people on how to become responsible pet owners and good advocates for their breed in our community.
5. Force Within Community Garden submitted by Beth Lewandowski
The Force Within is a youth group that meets in ONE Village. The youth work to make a better community for themselves and the neighborhood. The group plans to build a community flower garden in a vacant lot at the corner of Lagrange and Bancroft. The youth hope to start the garden and then interest other youth from that area to join them in completing and maintaining the garden. This allows the youth to take pride in their neighborhood.
Good Morning,
I just wanted to keep this active. It's tonight.
They even promised one of the soups would be vegetarian. :)
Welcome to Toledo SOUP
Posted on February 1, 2012
Toledo SOUP is a quarterly micro-grant dinner series held in and around Toledo.
Inaugural Toledo SOUP Dinner
Sunday, March 4, 2012
5-9 p.m.
The Davis Building
116 10th Street (between Monroe and Jefferson)
Location of Pam’s Corner, Third Space, Sophie’s Sister and other retailers
Doors at 5:00pm
Proposals presented at 6:00pm
Dinner around 6:30pm
$5 for soup, salad, bread, and a vote!
There was a great turnout at the event ... I think $1000 was raised for one lucky entrepreneur. Does anyone know who won the grant?
Wow, with the discussions recently about moving Toledo toward a more bike-friendly environment, I wonder what impact this will have. I'd have to imagine after a baseball-season's worth of experience, the "in favor of a more bike-friendly downtown" slice of the pie will be substantially larger than it is now.
This will go well...
MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) — A car rear-ended a rickshaw Wednesday night in downtown Minneapolis.
The rickshaw, or PediCab, was carrying three passengers down Hennepin Ave. in Minneapolis around 2:30 a.m.
Two men and a woman in the rickshaw suffered minor injuries. Two of them were taken to the hospital.
The woman driving the car was fine.
She told police that she just didn’t see the rickshaw.
The city requires $1,000,000 insurance plus you need to registar it as a taxi cab. Not sure what company in town would give them insurance. Plus my guess is there is NO WAY they can make up the insurance payments to break even. Cab companies are not friendly about you riding on the streets and taking rides away from them either. You will have to go infront of the Cab Board(?) Also - are drivers employees or sub contractors. If the later...they need the insurance too.
If you don't have the stuff mentioned above, you can't ride on public streets.
OOPPS almost forgot...I think the drivers need a chauffer license - but I could be wrong on that. Also, the bikes need inspected and licensed.
I hope all that was in the business plan and answered.
Geez I am being a downer on Monday.
Glass City Pedicabs has already been in business for at least a year... they were operating last summer.
http://www.glasscitypedicabs.com
I'm looking forward to see what they do with the microgrant. ($1047.25)
Nice facebook page. They also need slow moving vehicle signs on their back.
justareviewer, so you found one instance of an accident occurring, and it was the result of a bad driver ("just didn't see the rickshaw" when she rear-ended it, another way of saying "I wasn't paying attention")
Since it happened half a year ago, I'm going to assume the digging you did to find it didn't turn up too many more instances, which would lead me to believe it's a pretty safe venture.
^ its an "award winning idea" - should really beef up the economy...hope the soup was worth 5 bucks
I heard it was soup, salad, and bread. Pretty good deal for $5 considering it was from Pam's Corner. Her soups are great. And the bread was from https://www.facebook.com/eggandhoney
Sorry I missed it, actually.
My guess is this (pedi-cab) was flying under the radar and when Ms. Green - Safety Director finds out...
June 22, 2011 Facebook post by Glass City Pedicabs: "Right now we are still hashing out the fine details on driver requirements for the city of Toledo. I would like to make it easier for people to rent and drive a Pedicab then it is at the present moment." Also, same date: " I will carry a million dollar liabilities insurance just to be safe. This is what the industry standard is on Pedicabs. The city of Toledo only requires Three hundred thousand be the most you need to carry. So I'm a bit above what they expect."
These people are not unsophisticated and are aware of the regulatory hurdles they are facing with the City. Kudos to those involved for not rolling over and giving up.
Reading their Facebook page made me cringe. You would think that a guy operating a Pedicab business would know how to spell "riding" correctly.
I don't know how to spell, and yet i run my restaurant's facebook page AND am in charge of putting up the specials on our chalk boards. it took me 10 months to figure out how to spell restaurant. give the guy some slack.
Ummm "These people are not unsophisticated" are not 100% accruate with their numbers. There are several different coverages they need and they only quoted one cost.
You must have had a reallllllly bad experience on a pedicab or something ;)
Hawaii. Waikiki Beach. Too many Blue Oceans at Moose McGillacuddys...:)
By the way...now that I had my little fun...I did this in the mid 80's when I was going to The University of Toledo. We did it downtown by Portside. Had 4 bikes That's why the laws are in the books in Toledo. The city made it impossible to do.
And now you know the rest of the story...
ah ha! i knew there was a twist! :)
and i totally remember your portside service from when i was a kid!!! :)
would you be interested in talking to the glass city people? i think they would very much appreciate your insight!
Sure. Let me know when they would meet and I promise to be positive. :)
email me your contact info: info@upso.org
and I'll put you two in touch!
awesome :)
If only there were a convenient meeting place where they could sit down and discuss over sandwiches...