In the first few months of the pandemic in 2020, the residents of Istanbul, Turkey — like the rest of the world — were struggling. Many people lost their jobs or had their hours scaled back. Families couldn’t afford to buy enough food or pay utility bills.

Here in the U.S., residents racked up $27 billion in unpaid electric bill debt, and that did not include unpaid water or gas bills. Pennsylvania residents alone owed $808 million in unpaid utilities — a 70 percent increase from 2019, The Inquirer reported.

So, Istanbul’s problem wasn’t unique, but their solution was: In 2020, the city launched Pay-It-Forward, a website where residents could donate funds to pay off the utility bills of their neighbors. The program has since broadened to encompass a wide range of other assistance, including food and resources for people displaced by earthquakes — giving out $12 million in aid to residents. Last year, as one of 777 cities worldwide to join the inaugural Bloomberg Cities Ideas Exchange program, which helps cities share and adopt innovative ideas, Istanbul brought the idea of expanding Pay-It-Forward around the globe.

“It was originally born to respond to the immediate need of the poorest people in Istanbul,” says James Anderson, government innovation program lead at Bloomberg Philanthropies. “As different issues or needs come up, they repurpose the platform to help citizens help one another.”

Neighbors helping neighbors

The idea for Pay-It-Forward comes from a longstanding Turkish tradition of askıda ekmek, or bread on the hook, where patrons can buy extra bread to donate to those in need. Bakers put these loaves onto hooks, so people in need can take them, hence the name. For Covid, the city essentially created a digital version of that practice, except for utilities.

“One of the things that I have observed over the years is that building solidarity is often a secondary or a tertiary benefit of a city initiative. [Pay-It-Forward] is one that really articulates solidarity as its first objective.” — Bloomberg’s James Anderson

In the wake of Turkey’s February 6, 2023 earthquakes, city officials in Istanbul expanded the program to allow people to send care packages with food, hygiene supplies and other essentials that the government distributed to families living in temporary shelters. Since its inception, government officials have distributed 17,416 packages.

Now, the system offers eight areas of support: for utilities, families, mothers and babies, students, public transit, kindergarteners, retirees and aid parcels. When potential donors go to the site, they can choose which category they want to give to. One hundred percent of the funds go to people in need — the government doesn’t take a cut to manage the program’s administrative expenses. People who want to receive aid can upload documentation of their financial challenges for the government to vet in order to qualify. Both donors and recipients remain anonymous throughout the process.

Expanding Pay-it-Forward

After the success in Istanbul, 36 other cities in Turkey adopted Pay-It-Forward programs of their own. In 2021, the program won funding from Bloomberg’s Global Mayors Challenge program to grow and replicate Pay-It-Forward for other cities.

“We think it will be able to be used by other mayors in other places, for a wide variety of needs that are super local and super pressing,” says Anderson.

The program does more than just get people the help they need. It empowers those who’d like to help with a safe, verified and efficient way to do it. Here in the U.S., we’ve seen that happen in the past year with the demand to help people in Los Angeles after the wildfires this winter and those in North Carolina after hurricane Helene. Outsiders — even neighbors — want to help, but may not know how. GoFundMe and other crowdfunding pages spring up in the aftermath, but it’s difficult to determine what’s legit and what’s not, what’s effective and what’s wasteful.

Pay-It-Forward lets donors know that the money they give is going directly and specifically to people in need. What’s more, the platform encourages city residents to be neighborly and help one another, connecting people in meaningful ways.

“When you when you look around the world today and you talk with city leaders in Africa, in Europe, in Latin America, and certainly here in the United States, you hear from city leaders that political polarization is hitting them back home, that the political divides that play out every night on social media or the nightly news are actually also coming home to roost in our cities,” Anderson says. “Mayors are deeply concerned about keeping cities safe and cohesive and building community in response to that polarization that we see tearing people apart.”

Istanbul’s participation in the Global Mayor’s Challenge brought Pay-It-Forward to the attention of The Bloomberg Cities Ideas Exchange. It’s one of 11 ideas featured in the program’s inaugural year. Other ideas include using sustainably farmed produce to reduce the environmental footprint of school lunches and reducing city corruption by digitizing construction and business permits and licensing.

Istanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu has already spoken at a few events, including at Bloomberg 2024 CityLab in Mexico City about the success of Pay-It-Forward, generating considerable buzz. So far, more than 210 cities the world over — from Reykjavik to Melbourne, Buenos Aires to Pittsburgh — have expressed interest in adopting the program.

Brendan Babb, chief innovation officer for Anchorage, Alaska, is one city official who is curious about implementing Pay-It-Forward. When he heard İmamoğlu speak about how the program assisted earthquake victims, he thought of Alaska’s own troubles with earthquakes. Babb appreciates that Pay-It-Forward can be easily integrated with systems Anchorage already manages, like utility bills.

“If someone wanted to pay someone else’s water bill, that’s something that the City of Anchorage controls,” Babb says. “I’m just excited to work with other cities, and learn from experts and steal ideas, because a lot of cities have the same challenges. There’s no need to reinvent the wheel. There’s a solution that might work well in your city.”

Pay-It-Forward … in Philly?

Philly, too, is part of The Bloomberg Cities Ideas Exchange. We’ve already worked with a number of Bloomberg Philanthropies programs, including the Bloomberg American Sustainable Cities and the Public Art Challenge. If our government wanted to adopt Pay-It-Forward, all City officials would have to do is fill out a short form to indicate what ideas interest them.

What’s more, Philadelphia already has a number of mutual aid programs — there’s Mutual Aid Philly, The West Philly Bunny Hop, Homies Helping Homies, Germantown Supply Hub and many, many community fridges. These programs, much like Pay-It-Forward, gained popularity during the pandemic, though mutual aid programs broadly have been around since the 1800s.

“If someone wanted to pay someone else’s water bill, that’s something that the City of Anchorage controls.” — Brendan Babb, Anchorage

If the City of Philadelphia were to formalize these programs and collect and distribute mutual aid like Istanbul does with Pay-It-Forward, citizens could help one another in the face of natural disasters like Hurricane Ida, global crises like Covid, freak accidents like the medical transport jet crash in Northeast Philadelphia, or everyday struggles like utility bills, similar to what Anchorage might use the program for. Here in Philly, that could translate to residents chipping in to alleviate overdue water bills, which, The Inquirer reported, more than 154,000 Philadelphians have.

The way the Ideas Exchange works is that participating cities are able to consider all 11 ideas. The City of Philadelphia declined to comment about its participation in the program when approached directly by The Philadelphia Citizen. Through the Bloomberg Philanthropies team, Mayor Cherelle Parker confirmed that they are excited and that they’re already learning a lot.

“One of the things that I have observed over the years is that building solidarity is often a secondary or a tertiary benefit of a city initiative,” Anderson says. “[Pay-It-Forward] is one that really articulates solidarity as its first objective.”

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