The Community Foundation is one of the largest community foundations in the country. Together with its donors, it averages more than $75 million in grants annually to an estimated 2,000 nonprofit organizations, encouraging and strengthening multi-sector partnerships and strategic philanthropy as a whole. Here are some of the ways Future Foundation is benefitting from The Community Foundation’s support.
Grants to Green Initiative
At Future Foundation, we believe in setting a positive example in a number of ways—from our programs for youth to the environmental performance of our facilities.
That’s why we were excited to receive a grant from Grants to Green to assess our energy and water use. Grants to Green, a partnership between The Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta and Southface, provides environmentally focused knowledge and funding to strengthen nonprofits.
Future Foundation was granted an assessment award in 2014. We are now seeking an implementation grant from the Community Foundation to implement the recommendations that were made. The value of implementation grants is that they will help us produce gains and significant improvements in a number of areas, including:
- Better operating efficiencies.
- Overall reduced costs, which contributes toward our long term sustainability.
- Well-being and morale benefits to volunteers, students and staff as a result of improved lighting and heating systems.
- Professional development and education opportunities for staff and students to become more environmentally conscious.
- Modernization of outdated electrical and non-energy efficient systems.
Brittany Gray, Future Foundation’s Director of Planning & Strategic Initiatives, is also our Green Champion. “Our 2015-2017 strategic plan includes goals to enhance our organizational infrastructure to support long-term enhanced program development and to conduct a formal physical space audit to determine our long term space needs for administrative and programmatic effectiveness and efficiencies,” says Gray. “We are actively planning to address these goals and objectives in low-cost, innovative ways through partnerships.”
The key Grants to Green recommendations we hope to implement include lighting retrofit to LEDs; smart plumbing and air sealing of attic; and more efficient rezone and ventilation of HVAC systems to allow for more comfortable and effective air flow. “We believe these improvements will enhance organizational and employee health,” says Gray. “That’s why our board and stakeholders have bought in to this new initiative and are actively seeking additional funding to support these efforts.”
SIDEBAR
About Grants to Green
Grants to Green gives metro Atlanta nonprofits the opportunity to renovate or build healthier work places that are energy, water and 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 enough in operating expenses to enable it to provide additional services.
