Crowdfunding Campaign Aims To Bring Community Laundry To Lower Price Hill

Over the summer, Charitable Words Scholars collaborated with Community Matters, a Cincinnati nonprofit serving the Lower Price Hill Community.  The they produced a video and crowfunding campaign to help Community Matters bring a community-based laundromat to the neighborhood to provide access to safe, affordable local laundry to serve 600 families – 90 percent of its neighbors are renters with an average annual salary of $9,600. Residents will be able to work with an Americorps member, who will provide assistance in connecting them to jobs and resources – an added benefit, in addition to access to clean clothes.

The Charitable Words Scholars team included Brittany York (University of Cincinnati), Emma Wahl (Ohio University) and Erin Hinson (Xavier University).

Here’s the Community Matters campaign, with links to how you may help them:

Why Laundry?

The Lower Price Hill neighborhood is located on the west side of Cincinnati about 2 miles from downtown and separated from the Ohio River only by River Road. The neighborhood developed rapidly in the 19^th century fueled primarily by the transportation and industrial industries, and many of the stunning homes from this time period still stand today.

The community is also home to the former base of the Price Hill Incline, where in July of 1875, the Highland Mary and Lily of the Valley connected Lower Price Hill to its neighbor “upstairs,” Price Hill. This incline helped the economy to blossom and helped both neighborhoods to grow.

With the advent of the automobile, the incline later found itself fighting for business and finally closed down in 1938. Housing values in Lower Price Hill dropped, and the neighborhood found itself in new territory. With the decline of industry and mass transit, many of the jobs left the area as well.

With an average household income of $9,600 and high school graduation rates registering an F on the Ohio State Report Card, this neighborhood is searching for new opportunities.

That’s where organizations like Community Matters come in. Opening in October 2015, Community Matters rallied for over $8 million in investments to spur the renovation of the historic Saint Michael Campus. With their support, the community also fought to allow the formation of the first neighborhood Girl Scout troop in decades, and then, against all odds, sold over 1,500 boxes of cookies so that every girl in the troop could go to camp.

These wins were welcome, but there is room for so many more opportunities to develop. More than half of the community does not have access to a car and is instead reliant on public transportation. In a neighborhood with few amenities, this increases the costs for basic necessities like traveling to work, groceries, and laundry.

Community Matters is working to bring one of these necessities closer. Thus, the Washing Well was created as a nonprofit-backed laundry facility designed to help those in the community through providing jobs and affordable, convenient access to laundry.

The launch of the Washing Well is made possible by an amazing grant from Impact 100, which will cover a lot of the major operating expenses for the first three years, ensuring stability of the project. However, we need to build from these funds to meet the full need in the community.

How you can help

The cost of doing laundry is expensive. As a nonprofit, Community Matters will need help in covering these costs for our community. You can help by making a donation at your discretion to the Washing Well through this crowdfunding campaign or through sponsoring the costs of doing laundry at one of the levels below.

Thank you in advance for any donation, small or large, as each one truly helps our families. If you want to help, but cannot donate at this time, we want to say thank you, and please feel free to share this link far and wide.

$25 – Will provide Washing Well credits for washes and dries for an average family of 4 for 1 week.

$100 – Will purchase a Washing Well re-usable laundry bag for you, and also sponsors one for a Lower Price Hill community member.

$250 – Will purchase laundry care products for an average family of 4 for 1 year.

$500– Will purchase five re-usable, rolling laundry carts for Washing Well customers.

$1,250 – Will cover the utility costs of providing laundry services for a family of four for one year.

$2,500 – Will sponsor a front load commercial dryer.

$5,000 – Will sponsor a front load commercial washing machine.

Click here to support The Washing Well project

Since 2012, Charitable Words has connected more than 70 Charitable Words Scholars and more than 30 nonprofits. The outcomes of this collective action has been of exponential value in student learnings and nonprofit benefits, as is evident in many of the blog posts – increased funding, volunteers, awareness, for sure.

Thank you for supporting Charitable Words Scholars and its nonprofit partners. Your engagement in this collective action exponentially leverages the impact of your giving to causes you care about.

Click here to support The Charitable Words Scholars Fund

 by