Grants to Green
Agnes Scott College has set forth a goal to be “Climate Neutral” by 2037. The Community Foundation’s Grants to Green program has supported its greening efforts. Last year, the school received an energy and water audit of its Woodruff Physical Activities Building. Following the assessment, the school applied for and received funding to implement the energy-saving recommendations.
A greater awareness of environmental issues and growing energy costs has virtually every industry looking to adopt eco-friendly practices into their work. The nonprofit sector is no exception. Going green is helping organizations reduce their environmental impact and at the same time improve their bottom line. Grants to Green has helped dozens of metro Atlanta nonprofits to do just that.
In May 2007, The Community Foundation received a request from The Kendeda Fund, a donor of ours, to implement a green building grantmaking program in partnership with Southface, a local nonprofit. This was a unique opportunity to consider how nonprofits can make an impact on the environment and how we can help them. A scan of national community foundations and other organizations reveals that this kind of grantmaking programming is a growing trend as citizens recognize the importance of the built environment on quality of life issues. We also recognized the opportunity to build the infrastructure of the nonprofit sector to understand the opportunities and to realize cost efficiencies by conducting environmentally-friendly business.
We launched the Grants to Green initiative in 2008 to provide environmentally focused knowledge and funding to strengthen nonprofits. This partnership between The Community Foundation and Southface gives metro Atlanta nonprofits the opportunity to renovate or build healthier work places that are energy and water efficient as well as environmentally efficient. The ultimate goal is to improve a nonprofit organization’s building structure to not only have less of an environmental impact, but also to increase the cost-efficiency of operations, ideally saving more finances to provide more services.
Nonprofits in the 23-county region of metro Atlanta can apply for Assessment Grants or Implementation Grants. Assessments allow the nonprofit to bring in experts to conduct an environmental efficiency scan of the building structure to determine areas for improvement. Implementation Grants allow the nonprofit to receive funding for specific environmental efficiency recommendations.
Click here to learn more about Grants to Green.