Flip the script

Are you an entrepreneur?

A tech guru?

A marketing specialist?

If you fit any of those roles, or are anyone who is interested in making Indiana communities better places to live, Indiana Bond Bank wants you.

The bond bank is seeking “innovators” for its second Flipping Finance Challenge, an “18-hour design sprint” scheduled for Feb. 28 and 29 at VisionLoft and Market Tower Collaboratory in Indianapolis.

It’s not limited to any specific sector or area of knowledge.

“This is open to anyone who would be interested in coming,” said Brian Carman, the bond bank’s program development director.

Those interested can sign up for the free event by visiting eventbrite.com and searching for Flipping Finance Challenge.

Jay County, led by Jay County Development Corporation, is one of three Indiana communities participating in Flipping Finance along with Starke County and Bloomington. Each has already been through a brainstorming session to narrow down a menu of challenges for the innovators to work on during the event.

Those challenges, 19 of them, include how to revive downtown, providing opportunities for youth, overcoming geographic limitations, confronting the lack of grocery stores and providing early childhood education.

“We get to make a lot of contacts from across the state which will be really helpful to giving us another vantage point for our challenges,” said Travis Richards, executive director of Jay County Development Corporation.

“I’m excited to see the solutions not only to our challenges but the ones that are being brought forward by the other communities too.”

Innovators can bring their own team, join with others to create a team at the event or work solo on any of the challenges from any of the communities. The goal is to get a wide variety of perspectives from thinkers from across the state in order to provide creative solutions.

After having 33 innovators participate last year, the bond back is already well on the way to its goal of tripling that number this time around.

“We took a leap of faith last year in putting this on, believing that there was a community of civic-minded, just regular people, who would be willing to spend some of their free time to work on problems that would help Indiana communities,” said Mark Wuellner, executive director of Indiana Bond Bank. “What really resonated with me was 30 minutes into the event last year people were so fired up they were asking when the next Flipping Finance Challenge was going to be. That, for us, let us know we were onto something.”

The event will kick off with registration and networking at 5 p.m. Feb. 28 with a kickoff dinner to follow at 6 p.m. Leaders from each community will present the challenges and then be available for questions and collaboration from 7 to 10 p.m.

At 10 p.m., innovators will shift to Market Tower Collaboratory just down the street for an overnight session to design solutions to the challenges. The event returns to VisionLoft for a breakfast at 8:30 a.m. Feb. 28 followed by sharing solution concepts and finalizing details, with final presentations scheduled for noon. Community leaders will select the winners, with awards — a total of $5,000 in prizes will be given away in the form of Amazon gift carts —to be presented during a luncheon at 1 p.m.

Despite the title and the fact that the event is run by Indiana Bond Bank, it’s not really about finance.

Wuellner and Carman noted that they often worked with communities that were several steps away from being ready for funding. They wanted to find ways to help outside of that bond bank “bucket.”

“We are constantly turning people away if they don’t fit into very strict guidelines and policies,” said Carman, “which is really tough to do from a public servant mindset. This is a bucket with no bounds, so to speak. There really are no limitations on who can provide a solution or what that solution can be.”

“It’s an event full of optimism,” Wuellner said. “We really believe if we bring a diverse group of people with diverse skill sets together and turn them loose and challenge them to think creatively … that we’d be surprised and come up with more amazing solutions than we could do sitting here in an office in Indianapolis.”

For Jay County specifically, they see Flipping Finance as a way to continue to build on the community collaboration from last year’s effort to earn the state’s Stellar Communities designation.

Locally, leaders hope having an outside perspective can help spark ideas to move projects forward.

“This is completely different than anything else I’ve ever been involved with or heard of in my 15 years here,” said Ami Huffman of Jay County Community Development. “I’m excited that they came up with a way to do this and that they’ve chosen us to be one of the three communities. … I’m excited to participate.”