causeway is a startup, in nearly every sense of the word.

causeway is a new kind of charity-- one whose goal is to make it easy for chattanoogans to help other chattanoogans and, perhaps more importantly, to help the community help itself. it’s also a startup and a work in progress (thus the “beta” language), and, with your help, it will keep getting better.

who

causeway is supported by a growing network of chattanoogans who believe in an entrepreneurial approach to everything, including community service.  we believe that if things are going to improve, chattanoogans need to take ownership, as if chattanooga was our business, because it is. read more >

what

causeway is a civic engagement hub-- a platform for pairing worthy causes with ways to address them.  our goal is to support civic entrepreneurs-- the civic equivalent of the scrappy, hard-working small businessperson who sees an opportunity to make something work better.  and in this case, the community is the one who profits.

when

now (in beta form). after 10+ years bouncing the idea around, we’re now officially a 501(c)(3) organization and, like a startup, we’re doing what we can with what we've got (which is not a lot).  when we say it’s still in “beta”, we mean that it is not in its final form yet, but we decided to get it started anyway.  with the community’s help and feedback, causeway will continue to improve over time.

where

chattanooga. local local local.

why

simply put, we believe where there’s a cause, there’s a way (thus the name...).  we want to help connect community causes with the best ways to address them, efficiently.  we also want to focus on results, good and bad-- so the community can learn from both, and chattanooga can keep getting better and better.

how (watch a quick intro here)

chattanoogans can create a profile, then post causes that are important to them on causeway.org and a way to address them.  other chattanoogans can weigh in with their ideas, contribute to their favorite causes, and choose the projects they think are best.  basically, it is a place to rally behind and contribute to things that matter locally, and a place for chattanoogans to help ourselves.

anything else?

causeway is a 501(c)(3) public charity.  this basically means that your contributions are tax deductible.  when you contribute to a cause, our goal is to pass 100% of your contributions to the cause, and let you track results, transparently.   

as for causeway itself, you are free to give directly to causeway, which will help us stick to our goal of being an efficient, transparent, results-oriented civic engagement platform.

finally, since we are a scrappy startup, we are going to make mistakes-- the website may have bugs, our language may be obtuse, and we may need to go through 2-3 different iterations of our model before it really makes sense to you.  let us know.  like a startup, we plan to listen to you-- our users-- to get better, all the time.  

so don’t be surprised if you see some goofy stuff for the first 6 months or so.  we figure it’s better to start, imperfectly, than to never start.  our ultimate goal is to help chattanoogans help themselves, and we may need some of that help early on to get it right.  

thank you, chattanooga.  let’s see what we can do.