KUPE Team Recounts Its Path to Success
“We need a new home. Ideally, a space we can call our own, and use how and when we need.”
A new home? This was a 48-hour initiative, and we weren’t real estate agents or homebuilders – and none of us knew Ty Pennington. But our charity partners were sincere – this was their greatest need, and they needed our help.
KUPE Arts Society is a Parkdale-based non-profit, which offers free music lessons to kids in the community. With inadequate music resources in local schools and limited extra-curricular afterschool programs for local kids, KUPE’s offering was one that played a huge role in the development of the community kids who took part. But working out of cramped conditions and around inflexible schedules at the local community centre was stunting their potential growth.
Despite the big ask, KUPE wasn’t looking for a big fix. Listening to Jarel and Alicia, our contacts at KUPE, it was obvious the community was integral to their success as an organization. We knew to help KUPE find a new home, we needed to have the community engaged.
So, the noteXnote campaign was born. Just like music unfolds note by note, we knew it was going to take a lot of small steps to develop a community micro-financing program that would both reflect the personality of KUPE and be effective in reaching their goals. The noteXnote campaign took us to three distinct places:
- To the real estate agency to home-hunt. Using our connections and a little cold-calling courage, we sourced local real estate agents to help and advise us on our search for properties that would meet KUPE’s specific needs. We knew signing for a property wouldn’t happen in 48 hours, but we could certainly find what was available that met KUPE’s requirements – and how much support we would need to raise to make a year’s rent. (more…)
