West 55 BA starts How-To Guide

Every organization has a story and the West 55 Street Block Association is no exception. But sometimes it’s hard to pick just one story to tell.

So today, I’ll start with the one about our near-death experience and how it taught us that we could become a different kind of group.

The time was Fall 2008. You may recall that that’s when it looked like the entire financial infrastructure of the United States was going to crumble. Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy. The stock market tanked. The President and the Presidential candidates debated what should be done.

The scene was not Wall Street, however, but our humble little block in the Hell’s Kitchen section of New York City. For 30 years, the West 55th Street Block Association had strung holiday lights in long crazy loops in the trees on the block, delighting residents and the many pedestrians and others who travel through the area on their way from or to work, school and other activities.

But we had our own crisis in the Fall of 2008. The trees had gotten so tall and the volunteers who hung the strands of lights had gotten old enough that it was no longer safe to put up lights from the tops of ladders with long poles. We needed to hire a cherry picker—and that meant money.

Several people said it was impossible. It looked like the trees would have to stay dark. But a small group of us got together to give it one more shot. We didn’t want to let a 30-year tradition die.

We had a couple of meetings, a few people volunteered to contact professional crews, put up signs, ask for donations. We followed up with each other via email and text message. Within three weeks we had raised $7,000—enough to hire a professional crew to light half the 36 trees on the block—and have a little left over.

Everyone on the block rallied. When the lights went up, it brought a little hope to many hearts in the neighborhood. Sure the economy was in the toilet. Many of us had lost jobs. But at least we got the lights up.

We started to think that maybe we had done something kind of interesting. We worked together as a group—with no designated leaders. We took a quick inventory of our own skills—we had a photographer, a lawyer, a web person, a writer, a producer, a couple of artists, some entrepreneurs and several long-time residents. We divided up the work in the way that made the most sense. And we made sure to have some fun while we were doing it.

The lights went up. People in the surrounding are were cheered. We started to wonder what else we could. We expanded the email list. We created a website that was easy to update through RSS feeds from Twitter, Blogger and Flickr. We started reporting on a few Precinct meetings and other public fora. We talked about new projects and plans.

Only later—especially after some folks from the Parks department and other blocks come to us for advice—did we realize that maybe we had created something new.

Only later did we find out that maybe what we had done was to form something that management consultants call a “learning organization.” We were pretty informal and no one was getting paid, of course. (We’re still all volunteer.) But we had new ways and new tools and new approaches for organizing people and sharing information. And what we were learning could benefit lots of people well beyond a block or two of Hell’s Kitchen.

That’s when we decided maybe we should keep track of everything we’re doing and start reaching out to others more intentionally so that the larger public may benefit. That’s when the idea of creating a How-To book was born.

This is the first entry. It gives some background. We’ll tag each related post “how-to” and eventually gather them all together into some kind of online guidebook for other community groups.

Do you have ideas? Would you like to contribute to the guide? Send an email to west55ba[AT]gmail[DOT]com.

Let the journey begin!