Archive for June, 2010

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Help Pick SCI’s Pilot Cities

Wednesday, June 30th, 2010

In May during the Congress of New Urbanism meeting in Atlanta, we were very excited to launch a new program for The Home Depot Foundation, the Sustainable Cities Institute (to read more about this program, see my prior post).  The primary purpose of SCI is to provide vetted best practices and useful resources as well as a hub for communication to city officials and staff to help them think about what they are doing now that will impact the long-term health of their community.  The issues covered run the gamut from housing and transportation, to water and waste management to land use, energy and economic development.  The goal is to help cities to take a long-term, integrated and systematic approach to developing and achieving  healthy communities by simultaneously addressing economic, environmental, and social issues.

We understand, though, that we can’t just be talking about these things, we also need to be doing them.  So a critical piece of SCI is the Pilot Cities Program, which is a way for SCI and our partner organizations to demonstrate how cities can move through the process of defining what sustainability means for their residents and communities and use that shared understanding to implement real change on the ground.  We will do this by investing $1 million in two cities over two years and by bringing appropriate experts in different aspects of sustainability to provide hands on assistance.  One of the most exciting parts of this program will be that the two winning cities will be posting their progress - good and not so good - on SCI within the City Program pages.  We believe that this essential if we are going to achieve our overall goal of helping all cities move their sustainability programs forward.

We invited an array of cities: large and small; hot and cold; those that had thought about sustainable development for many years and some who are coming to it more recently, and asked them to tell us how they are thinking about sustainability and what their plans are for moving forward through the expansion or implementation of a city-wide initiative.  We also asked them how they would use those plans with regard to a specific project that would create or rehab homes or an entire neighborhood for people of modest incomes.

When we extended that invitation to about 40 cities, we weren’t sure what responses we would get - we knew we were expecting them to do a lot and we were asking them to tell us a lot.  We were truly and honestly amazed at the quality of the work going on across the country - and not just in the large cities like Boston and Atlanta, where you would expect it, but in Burlington and Savannah as well.  Because of this, it was difficult to narrow the list to 4 finalists, but we’ve done it.   I know that after visits to these cities, it will be even harder to select the 2 pilot cities.  Here is information on the finalist cities and the nonprofit partners they are working with. We are scheduling trips to see what’s happening in each of them, but if you have a reason why you think we should pick one over the others, please let us know!

Ann Arbor, MI (pop. 114,000) and the Graham Environmental Sustainability Institute of the University of Michigan:  In 2007, Ann Arbor adopted 11 Environmental Action Plan Principles and 10 Environmental Action Plan Goals.  They are now working to integrate these into their Master Plan and Capital Improvements Plan.  Their proposed project would focus on making rental housing in Ann Arbor and its sister city of Ypsilanti more energy efficient by providing incentives to landlords owning a total of 500 units.

Charleston, SC (pop. 124,000) and The Sustainability Institute: Charleston adopted a sustainability plan in February of this year, which focuses on six specific areas: better buildings, cleaner energy, sustainable communities, improved transportation, zero waste and green education.  Charleston SAVES is a city-wide initiative to provide energy efficiency services to any building owner who doesn’t qualify for the federal weatherization program.  They have proposed that SCI help implement the Green Collar Workforce Program, which would professionally train workers to conduct energy audits and to complete retrofits while makign energy efficiency upgrades to about 200 homes owned by low-t- moderate income families.

Fayetteville , AR (pop. 67,000) and the National Center for Appropriate Technology: While Fayetteville doesn’t have a sustainability plan, they have done great work in adopting Fayetteville Forward 2009, which sets policy across a broad range of issues, including transportation and light rail, green economy, local food, land use and green infrastructure.  The city has over 100 miles of stream, so water protection is a high priority.  Accordingly, they are proposing that we would work with them to create a manual for low impact design for drainage and that the guidelines developed in the manual would be used in the development of a new subdivision of about 50 green, affordable homes.

Salt Lake City, UT (pop 182,000) and NeighborWorks Salt Lake: The city adopted its sustainability plan in 2008 along with publishing the Blueprint Jordan River, which outlines an initiative to preserve 300 acres of habitat along the river, create transportation connections to the river and revitalize the housing along the river by making green improvement grants to homeowners.  The goal is for several local governments to coordinate efforts to increase housing values, preserve the river and promote healthy neighborhoods and sustainability within an urban setting.

By Kelly Caffarelli
Posted in Environmental Responsibility, Sustainable Cities | Leave a Comment »

Nonprofits Earning Profits: What’s the Right Definition?

Thursday, June 24th, 2010

The Home Depot Foundation partnered with the Georgia Center for Nonprofits this week to hold a conversation about social enterprises in Georgia.  The basis for the discussion among about 70 nonprofit leaders was a survey GCN conducted of charitable organizations that yielded responses from over 750 groups.  GCN also produced a white paper summarizing the results and highlighting several considerations we should think about as we move forward into this somewhat blurry mix of business and philanthropy.

But before we get into any of that, I want to back up to point out that the terms “social venture,” “social entrepreneurship,” “social enterprise,” (or whatever we call it) aren’t really self-explanatory.  According to the Social Enterprise Alliance:

A social enterprise is an organization or venture that achieves its primary social or environmental mission using business methods. The social needs addressed by social enterprises and the business models they use are as diverse as human ingenuity.  Social enterprises build a more just, sustainable world by applying market-based strategies to today’s social problems.

That’s a lot of words, but to me it simply means that we are talking about nonprofit organizations that start a business to support their cause.  That may mean 1) that they are in business to raise money to support their work or 2) that they are creating a business to fill a gap they have identified that makes it hard from them to accomplish their goals.  It’s pretty easy to come up with examples of the first kind of social enterprise: look no further than the little girl next store selling Girl Scout cookies or the Salvation Army or local church’s thrift store.   The second kind often involves starting a business to provide jobs for people who are hard to employ, such as former felons, people with mental or physical disabilities or young people who don’t yet have skills or work experience.  In the survey of Georgia nonprofits, organizations are doing everything from running restaurants and landscaping companies to managing warehouses and recycling centers to radio production.  There’s even a nonprofit beverage bottler!

In a time when government and private support is shrinking, I applaud all of these nonprofits for thinking about creative ways to do more.  There is a hitch with that, though, in that 32% of the groups surveyed said they were losing money through their efforts, and perhaps even more disturbing, fully 30% said that they weren’t sure if they were making money or not (in their defense, most of these had been up and running for less than a year).  Although we want to encourage groups to take risks and try new ways of doing things, we also hope that they do it in a fiscally responsible way, that they know when to cut their losses (particularly when their goal is fundraising).

Interestingly, for almost 15% of the groups turning a profit isn’t even a goal for their venture.  This made more sense to me after talking to the director of the Georgia Justice Project, which says on its homepage that it is “an unlikely mix of lawyers, social workers and a landscape company. We defend people accused of crimes and, win or lose, we stand with our clients while they rebuild their lives.”   So you may question whether a bunch of lawyers should be in the business of running a landscaping company, they only do it because it’s difficult to find employers who will hire ex-offenders, and without jobs, their clients can’t move their lives forward.  Accordingly, GJP’s mission always trumps profits when they are making business decisions.  Their primary goal for the venture is to help their clients acquire a marketable skill and establish that they are dependable, trustworthy employees, and so that dictates how they make decisions.  For example, when Georgia experienced a severe drought, their business fell off, but they kept all of their employees by raising grant dollars to cover their losses.

You would hope that that would always be the case - that a charitable organization would always look to its overarching purpose to guide its decision-making, not the dollars and cents calculation of the bottom line.  If that’s true, maybe the line between philanthropy and business isn’t so blurry.  Maybe there aren’t really any “nonprofit” organizations.  Maybe we just need to think differently about what we a group needs to achieve to say they’ve turned a “profit.”

By Kelly Caffarelli
Posted in Philanthropy | Leave a Comment »

Fill in the Blank: I am proud of _______

Friday, June 11th, 2010

Last week, I posted some thoughts on the things that I would change about what’s going on around us - the things about the world that make me embarrassed and that we could change.  This week, I want to look at the other side and talk about the situations I see that make me proud of us all.

First, I want to talk about a few things close to home - our home at The Home Depot Foundation.  In 2007, we pledged to invest $400 million to build and rehab 100,000 homes and plant three million trees over ten years.  Just three years in, we’ve contributed $163 million, touched 64,000 families by helping them live in safe, healthy homes and planted 732,000 trees.  That’s a lot of numbers, but it’s also a lot of people and neighborhoods changed for the better and many, many great partners with whom we have worked.

Speaking of which, I am exceptionally proud, as well as humbled, to have worked with each of the nonprofit partners who made those numbers a reality in communities across the country.  Seven days a week, passionate professionals spend their days pouring out their energy working to help others.  They aren’t just thinking about making a difference (or writing about it), they are actually changing the way people are living their lives: building healthy homes where a policeman can afford to raise his family; teaching a mom how to program her thermostat to save money on her utilities so she buy new sneakers for her son; planting a garden where a family and neighbors can plant vegetables, watch with anticipation as the tomatoes turn red and enjoy what they have grown together, creating a healthier meal and a stronger community.

I’m proud of the thousands, actually the millions, of volunteers who give their time to do things for others without asking for anything in return.  They paint homes, plant trees, mentor kids, cook meals and visit veterans’ hospitals.  They understand that by giving of themselves, they will be happier and more fulfilled, and all of us will benefit.  And they often do this when they have no idea who will ultimately be helped by what they are doing.

I’m astounded that even as we are bombarded with bad economic news, Americans donated over $300 billion to charities in 2009.

I am proud that an average person laughs 15 times a day.  I am proud that usually if you trust people, they won’t let you down.  I’m amazed that there are scientists who are creating medicines to fight horrible diseases.  I’m awed that anyone has walked on the moon.  I’m proud that we can each do so many things - big and small - to make life a little easier, a little happier or a little healthier for someone else.  And I’m even more proud of us because we actually do so many of those things every day.

By Kelly Caffarelli
Posted in Healthy, Affordable Housing, Philanthropy, Uncategorized | 1 Comment »

Embarrassed to be Human?

Friday, June 4th, 2010

I was talking to someone whom I greatly respect about some of the pressing issues facing us all right now, and he said that some of our current affairs made him embarrassed to be a member of the human race.  I hadn’t heard that phrase before, and it struck me as humorous at first, but if you take it literally, he’s completely right.

Pause and create your mental list of the realities that exist today that make you cringe inside.  My list includes the facts that:

I could go on, but that’s enough.  And this is in no way meant to be depressing - I hope that this is a very loud wake up call.  This list is embarrassing, not disheartening or overwhelming.  According to Webster’s dictionary, embarrass means to cause self-conscious distress.  We should be distressed, and we should each be looking inward to think about what we are doing about it because these are circumstances that we should not accept.  We should not allow these situations to continue to exist - and make no mistake, through our action or delay, we are allowing these facts to be.  We have the ability to change them; we just haven’t chosen to do that so far.

I believe strongly that there is no reason that almost 15% of Americans aren’t sure that they’ll be able to pay their mortgage or rent this month, that they’ll be able to feed their kids dinner tonight or that they’ll be able to fill a prescription the next time they get sick.  It is inexcusable that any child should try to go to sleep or to school with a stomach grumbling for food.  Why on earth don’t we recycle paper or think about what chemicals we are putting into our homes?  Perhaps part of the problem is that we aren’t being honest with each other - or with ourselves - about what we can do to change what’s going on around us.

This is my list and my commitment is to put my time, energy and resources into scratching them off, so instead of having a list of embarrassments, I have a list of things that make me proud to be a member of the human race.  I hope you’ll add your thoughts and tell me how we can work together to change what we see when we look at each other.

By Kelly Caffarelli
Posted in Environmental Responsibility, Healthy, Affordable Housing, Philanthropy | Leave a Comment »