I would want to get homeless families set up with housing, this also requires fixing the problem that caused that for them in the first place. I think I could help 2 families
this post was submitted on 27 Oct 2025
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I live in New York so practically nothing
Man 10k..... Can't even afford to pave 1000ft of single lane road..... ummmm
I dunno, maybe like pay to install 2 ADA crossing ramps? Can 10k get me 2? I think it might....
Move out
Bike lanes and clearing brush around the dirt paths where sidewalks should be.
Spend 500 on a magician tutor(teacher? Master? Sensei?) and another 500 on advertising for a new show at the local park on Thursday October 30th where I will spontaneously burst into oodles of various coins and bills in the middle of a word in the beginning half of my initial hype speech.
I'd rather allocate that $10k to some kind of feasibility study, to see what really should be prioritized when a much bigger budget is made available, since I don't really trust myself to know what an entire town really needs urgently
But if I had to be selfish, maybe we could fund an OpenStreetMap mapathon to help improve the online map of the town
Could not only improve ease of navigation of the town, but also get a clearer idea of how the space is used, which may give better insight on what might be worth redesigning in a larger project
but the salary of one guy running the feasibility study alone is $15k. guess he will take your $10k and wait for you to pay for the rest of study instruments, PC laps, travel and accomodation reservations, hall rents, their time-off pay, and payments for the rest of $15k-salary team, then they will conduct a study that conclude things that everyone has known for decades but their decisions are beyond your and their control, and that water has been wet all along.
Donate it to the library or a local food bank. Simple community building.
I'll echo food banks. $10,000 isn't much money for a municipality of more than 100 people, but a food bank might be where that money goes the furthest.
Knowing from my local outfit, while they would of course accept a donation of actual food bought with that money, they can do much more with the money than the food it buys in the grocery shops.
They do that by reaching out to vendors themselves and getting discounts that would put Costco out of business. I once heard that monetary donations being stretched 5x is typical, oftentimes going 10x or more.
From some unrelated nonprofit experience, companies seem way more cool with discounting goods and services than donating money. Probably something to do with contribution profit margin, where selling some more at a loss is still better as it covers some costs you have anyway. That plus creative tax write offs, and they probably earn money from giving you a huge discount AND feel good about it / get free PR
This is for sure the best option. Not only can they use it most effectively, but the money won't expire like food, they'd be able to fetch staple foods that don't get donated often.
I'm not feeling up to researching this statement for a broader audience (in this moment), but I can attest to what I learned many, many years ago while I was volunteering at my local food bank. I was informed by the gal who ran the food bank warehouse that monetary donations are by far the best thing you can give a food bank. You touched on it, that money doesn't expire. So they don't have to deal with the influx of food donations as often or as drastically.
Just like @JoshuaFalken@lemmy.world shared, an established food bank can easily stretch that same dollar for more food. I recall the gal at my local food bank informing me one day that she can buy food for 2/3rds of the store price with no sweat. I think she said the best she ever scored was 2/5ths of the store price on meat, as it was going to go bad in a week or so. And thankfully, they had plenty of county based food pantries that were able to distribute that meat to a lot of people in need. So not only could they save on purchasing, but they were also in the loop on overstock, near expiration food pushes, and also, farmers would donate whatever small amount of leftover food they had. Not to mention elderly people would had grown some squash, cucumbers, and even green onions in their garden, to be donated to the county food bank.
Sharing this actually has me remembering that there are plenty of unsung local heroes. Plenty of people who do good and don't ask for recognition. So while the world seems like it's all going to hell, there are plenty of good doers out there still. We just don't hear about them. Fighting the good fight to keep us all progressing forward.
pay myself 10k to move
Can’t fence in my backyard for 10k. And it’s not big. But giving it to the food banks would be my plan.
Scatter random tire spikes on the roads. 10k would probably get you quite a few
Wow that would kill a lot of people where I grew up. Very efficient.
You are overestimating the danger of a punctured tire. It is easy to notice, usually gives you plenty of time (on the order of minutes) to come to a complete stop before the tire is deflated, and even after the tire is fully deflated it still allows you to stop relatively safely for a short while (until it is cut through completely). It would probably result in a few crashes (because in carbrained places many drivers don't know how to operate a vehicle at all), but the worst outcome from this is ambulances/firetrucks being stuck in traffic jams.
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For that kind of money you're really only talking about minor maintenance or beautification projects. Maybe funding the cleanup of a local area or two. Fresh coat of paint on a couple buildings. Maybe a mural. We're talking small scale here. Which of course isn't nothing. Small steps are what lead to bigger steps.
So personally I would probably spend it on a local park near me that needs heavy updating. Maybe redo the walking trail and if there's enough money left over plant some more trees.
My city is fairly large and their recreational projects usually have budgets in the 10s of millions. I don't think there is much I can do on that front. That being said, I think this question could be better framed as "to make your community a better place to live". From that angle, I would have to get in touch with my HOA (I know) and see about opening a community garden with that initial investment.
That's likely the best anyone can do with that amount of money.
This amount is peanuts compared to the operating budget of the city I live in...
Realistically? I was pleasantly surprised by someone trying to make little tree pit gardens on the street where I live. $10,000 might be enough to make some of those on a few residential streets and kickstart a local initiative for the community to keep maintaining them. There may be some leftover money for acquiring a few communal trash bins to help with trash issues around the neighborhood as well
Drop a bunch of solar meshtashtic nodes on roofs in waterproof casings.
Free Citywide Cell Service basically. Fuck the telecoms. 😁
Plant trees
I keep toying with the idea of gorilla planting trees in the neighborhood. Make them look like they were installed by the county, complete with mulch and a small fence.
Me too. We should just do it. The biggest issue is making sure landscaping doesn't mow them down imo
Hence the little fence
If you're in the US, you'll probably get away with it. In the last two neighborhoods I've lived in we had people who planted trees of their own accord and no one lifted a finger to stop them. (Which I'm happy about.)
bike lanes.
Funds match. Get every large company that does business in your city to match it.
Success! Now You have $170,000 to make your town/city a better place to live. What do you do with the money?
$10k isn't a lot for city improvement, but it'd pay for an art installation or two.
See if I can bribe enough local officials to pass an amendment making bike lanes mandatory on all new road construction projects. Sadly, even at the local level I don't think $10,000 would be enough.
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Our town has a simple little amphitheater in a park, and it NEVER gets used.
For $10,000, you could set up and locally advertise a couple of fun movie nights, or music festivals with local bands, or a battle of the bands, etc. Sell refreshments and snacks, and use the money to generate the next one, etc.
Local entertainment, local participation, great for the community.
Very little you could do to a city with 10k. Probably feed a bunch of people for a little while.
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Buy everyone tickets for our local independent cinema, and feed some unhoused souls.
I've run a lot of art workshops for mixed age groups and adults. No one is ever unhappy after making art together, it's a wholesome way to get out with friends or meet new people, or just learn a new skill.
Paid workshops charge $20-100, which is an unnecessary expense for people these days.
The initial investment in supplies can be as low as $5/person depending on the type of art, locations can be cheap to free (libraries, community centers, quiet nights at bars and restaurants,) and if you can't run the workshop yourself, many artists would be happy to do it for a small honorarium.
For 10K, you could run dozens of free art workshops for a year or two.
A common eagle scout project where I grew up was surrounding vulnerable trees with beaver wire.
If I also had a fair bit of time, community micro-grants are my favorite. Solicit ideas for improvements, offering 100-1000 bucks each. Select several, widely publicize what will be done.
Next favored, run a citizen assembly on a community issue (if you can do it cheap, have some money to allocate as an agenda item).
Finally, if the point is to ask what I want done... Right now it is probably homeless shelters and food pantries in the US. Lots of grants drying up.
Honestly right now food is at an all time high, finding local food banks would be top of the list.
Set up a stand and give away as much ice cream as I can get for 10K
The problem with 10,000 is that any contractor is going to want to make a minimum profit of 10,000 as soon as they know it's for the government.
So I'd have to pay myself that $10,000 and go around fixing dead traffic lights.
I'd give out vouchers for getting stray cats fixed. We have a huge problem with feral cat colonies.
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bike lanes and concrete instead of ugly asphalt and pedestrian crossing signals
10,000 is probably not enough. So:
- I would invest said money for a few years, in order to make it a lot more money and now:
- fund a trust for our local public library to become 100% independent from any power grab/censoring/book banning temptation. And, nope, it wouldn't matter the slightest from what political side or from what moral ground said attempt would originate from.
- Promote reading among the general population. Focusing on the younger generations, because they're our future and, even though it's starting to fade away, they're supposed to be the ones willing to make the effort of learning and be educated, but I would also not exclusively cater to younger people. I mean, unlike with kids, I tend to think that given a chance a vast majority of adults would hardly change their behavior/opinions, as they're already set in their path and most of them are way too proud to ever admit they could have been wrong, but I would still want to give them the opportunity.
Edit: typos.
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My town has $20 million of debt in our education department alone that we didn't know about until this year after a board of education administration change 😭 so I think 10,000 might not make too much of a difference to them. That being said I'd probably donate to a local foodbank
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