The Lab User Guide
Our Lab connects Neighbourhood Organizations with Community Partners to provide talent to support the execution of projects that propel real world impact. Consider the Lab as a matchmaking platform for neighbourhoods that want to solve problems and those with the skills to solve them.
Here is how to use our Lab.
Neighbourhood Organizations
We support neighbourhood organizations. These are organizations established to solve local problems. In Calgary, these are called Community Associations while in San Francisco they are called Community Benefit Districts and Neighbourhood Houses in Vancouver. These could also include charities and nonprofits established to meet local needs.
Examples of these organizations include Sunalta Community Association, Fernwood Neighbourhood Resource Group, Tenderloin Community Benefit District, and Bloor West Village BIA.
Click on this link to be taken to the user guide developed specifically for neighbourhood organizations.
Community Partners
As a Community Partner, you want to provide talent to neighbourhood organizations solve local problems.
While we intend to expand our talent hub to include private sector partners, at this time we only support post-secondary institutions.
If you would like to show your interest in The Lab as a private sector partner, fill out this form and we’ll contact you when it launches.
For post-secondary institutions, we provide your students access to real world projects with real world impact.
This not only allows them to get real world experience, but also use employable skills on projects that solve complex problems making them more attractive to employers.
Click on this link to be taken to the user guide developed specifically for community partners.
Collaborative Responsibilities
Just like any other community, we have some responsibility to care for the needs of each other to provide great experiences to participants and ensure the success of the program.
Our Responsibility to You
As Imagine Cities, we commit to being obsessed with improving your experience with our organization. Solving problems month over month, year over year to make your experience as seamless as possible.
Neighbourhood Organization Responsibility
Your commitment to us and our Community Partners is to put forward well thought out projects and guide Community Partner participants during the project to culminate in solving a meaningful problem. We encourage you to push the boundaries of what is possible. Be an inspiration to other neighbourhoods!
Community Partner Responsibility
Your commitment to us and our Neighbourhood Organizations is to provide talent committed to the hard work needed to solve problems. We must do our best in providing Neighbourhood Organizations with value.
We each play our part in driving real world impact in the neighbourhoods we support and the residents who live in them. At the end of each project Neighbourhood Organizations and Community Partners will have the opportunity fill out feedback forms detailing their experience to find opportunities for improvement for all of us.
Providing Feedback
We believe that incremental change leads to transformative change. We imagine a future where neighbourhood organizations can solve many local problems in fairly rapid succession. In order to get there, we need your brutally honest feedback.
We recognize that so many of our users don’t want to hurt our feelings. You won’t. We focus on the end goal, which is propelling our ability to solve more problems. That is our focus and is why we truly appreciate the honest feedback. Without it, we will not be able to achieve our goal.
You can find our feedback form by clicking, here.
If you need anything else, feel free to contact us: lab@imaginecities.com.
