Neighbourhood Organization User Guide
This is a step by step guide that will allow you to register with The Lab and submit projects.
Eligibility
Your organization exists within a local governing structure like a Community Association, Community Benefit District, or Business Improvement Area. Depending on where you are located, the name of your local structure may be different. You can also be a nonprofit, charity or social enterprise. Ultimately, your organization has been established to meet the needs to local residents.
Our registration process has been split into two sections. If you already have a project in mind, you can fill out both sections at once. Otherwise, you can register your organization and fill out the project form when you have a project in mind.
Register Your Organization
The first step is to fill out this form to register your organization. This will create your account on our platform.
The second step is to fill out this form to provide background information about your organization. This gives our Community Partner a fuller picture of your neighbourhood.
Once your organization has been registered, you no longer need to fill out these forms unless information changes.
Register Your Project
Once you register your organization, you can submit as many projects as you would like. You can fill out this form to submit a project.
You can wait for one of our Community Partners to become interested in one of your projects or you can be proactive and find a Community Partner for your project. If you find a Community Partner, contact us at onboarding@imaginecities.com to let us know.
If you are looking for inspriation for a neighbourhood project, take a look here.
When to Submit Projects
You can submit a project at any time. When a project will be picked up is dependent on the schedule of the post-secondary.
Post-secondaries typically pick up projects in the fall (September), Winter (January) or Spring (June). Some post-secondaries have all 3 terms available and others have only 2.
While projects are picked up in the fall, winter and spring terms, post-secondaries prepare for each term month’s in advance. For instance, to be available for the fall term (September) you need to have projects in our system by May.
If you would like to learn about schedules of specific colleges and universities, click here.
Frequently Asked Questions
Q. Can I submit a project that spans two school semesters?
A. At this time, you cannot. This is because the students are committed to these projects for one semester. Our suggestion is to split the project and submit both to the platform.
Q. Will Imagine Cities assist with transportation to get students working remotely to our location?
A. We wish we could, but we don’t have the funding to support this request. We are a nonprofit organization and need to use our funding as efficiently and effectively as possible. We suggest indicating on the platform that your project is local and not remote. If we don’t have a school on our platform that is local to you, let us know and we’ll try to bring them onto the platform.
Q. Can we recommend schools and courses to add to the platform?
A. Yes! Send us an email to lab@imaginecities.com providing details of the post-secondary and course(s). If you have a contact at the post-secondary, that would be even better!
Feel free to forward them our Community Partner User Guide.
Other Resources
- Our user guide homepage
- User Guide for Community Partners
- Resources to develop your project
- Looking for a project idea? Get inspired a collection of ideas
