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Mini-grant wrap-up: Belmont

In 2019, Collective Impact Lincoln awarded $4,000 in mini-grants to Lincoln organizations and individuals working to improve their neighborhoods. Today, we’re taking a closer look at Belmont School and Neighborhood Advisory Committee (SNAC), one of our grant recipients. Recently, we spoke with Lindsay Limbach, who wrote the grant application, about their neighborhood scavenger hunt.

Civic Nebraska: Why was this project started?
Lindsay Limbach: The idea originally came from a Belmont Community Cafe where one of the Belmont residents thought it would be a great idea to have a scavenger hunt to help bring the neighborhood together. The team divvied out roles and truly divided and conquered.

There was someone who managed the Belmont Neighborhood Organization Facebook page, ensuring that participants had responses to their posts and answered any questions in a timely fashion, someone who managed the lists at the Belmont Rec Center and someone who made the connection with Eiseley library, as they also were a pickup and drop off location for the scavenger hunt lists. This team also helped plan the culminating event and worked hard to help promote the event and scavenger hunt, some did this by doing the scavenger hunt with their families themselves.

How did Collective Impact Lincoln help you?
Without the grant, the team wouldn’t have been able to support the local businesses which were another large part of the scavenger hunt: coming together and supporting the community.

How did the program go? What success did you have?
It didn’t gain traction like we’d hoped, however, there were some other successes and we were happy about that. Because of this, at least one boy met his neighbor. He had to get his wisdom teeth out the same night as the celebration/drawing winner announcements and his neighbor, who he’d met through this scavenger hunt, went in his place and picked up his prize for him.

We were able to support businesses directly through the mini-grant (used the grant to buy gift cards at our local businesses) and those businesses, in turn, were excited, felt respected, and wanted to do more for the project the next summer. People learned more about the neighborhood such as there are two parks in the neighborhood and they are blocks from one another. We also have a tennis court 🙂

What was the impact of your project on the community or neighborhood?
The businesses were excited to be included, thankful for the use of their gift cards, and want to be more a part of this in the future. And neighbors met one another when they otherwise may have not and little neighborhood landmarks and assets were visited.

What are your plans for the future?
The team hopes to do this again this summer and wants to start planning sooner to help spread the word. Other neighborhoods also are aware of this scavenger hunt and hope to do something similar in their neighborhoods, too.

Learn more about how Collective Impact Lincoln is building democracy by lifting up neighborhoods.