Alliance News Colorado Gives Day The aim of Colorado Gives Day is to increase philanthropy in Colorado through online giving by providing incentives to donors to make gifts to their favorite nonprofit organization on one day every year. Last year the goal was to raise $1 million for all nonprofits taking part in the Colorado Gives Day initiative, and the actual dollar amount raised was $8.4 million! This year Colorado Gives Day is December 6, and during the 24-hour period starting at 12am that morning, all gifts to the Alliance for Sustainable Colorado made through the GivingFirst.org portal will be matched through an incentive fund provided by First Bank and other donors. There are few models of communities working together to address sustainability issues like the Alliance, and we believe this is a very exciting time to be involved with our organization. Global sustainability solutions start at home and require the efforts of all sectors of society working toward the development of policies and the implementation of sustainability practices. To do the work we do, we need your help. Thank you for choosing to support the Alliance for Sustainable Colorado. Annual Statewide Roundtable Deemed a Success On Wednesday, November 16th, the Alliance convened our annual Statewide Sustainability Roundtable in Colorado Springs, at the forefront of the Colorado Sustainability Conference. With just over a hundred attendees, we started the day off with a Keynote address from Assistant Secretary David Sandalow from the U.S. Department of Energy. The majority of the rest of the day focused on effectively messaging sustainability to people who are not yet engaged in any sustainability initiatives in their communities. One of the main goals of this year’s Roundtable is to provide Colorado’s sustainability network with clear and simple ways to talk about the work we do and get people interested in that work. A final Roundtable Report will be released in mid-December outlining the various messages developed collaboratively at the Roundtable. Anyone and everyone is welcome to use the messages and share them with their networks. All the presentations from our various speakers are on the website and video clips will be available soon. We would love to have your participation in next year’s event. If interested, please email us at education@sustainablecolorado.org. Alliance Center Renovation The Alliance Center renovation project passed a major milestone in October, when project staff issued a Request for Qualifications (RFQ) to the design-build community. The Alliance renovation team put together a demanding RFQ that included a challenging mix of items specific to the Alliance Center and those designed for relevance to the widespread upgrading of other existing buildings. The Alliance was extremely pleased with the quality of the responses from design-build teams, allaying concerns that the project’s size ($2–5 million) would be too small to attract top-quality thinking. The submissions we received had many strengths and good ideas, and demonstrated clear understanding of the Alliance’s goals for the project, relevant experience with similar past projects, creativity, and a deep grasp of the importance of high-performance and sustainable buildings. Final selection of the winning team is expected soon. The RFQ included the following points: - Explore and document the business case for improving resource efficiency in a historic building.
- Investigate innovative technologies that save resources while enhancing the building’s character.
- Investigate the intersection between high-performance building features and occupant behavior.
- Preserve the sense of place and history of a century-old building by integrating the wisdom of historical design into modern high-performance building technology.
- Utilize in-kind donations, phased construction, the application of cutting-edge technology and integrated design in a framework of performance-based contracting.
- Demonstrate the effectiveness of a performance-based request-for-proposal and construction process in renovations of existing building stock.
Teams were asked to do all this while “continuing to provide a supportive and collaborative environment in the Alliance Center for all 38 nonprofit, sustainability-focused tenants during and after the design-build project.” Stay tuned for the announcement of the winning team. Wells Fargo and AT&T Colorado Become New Alliance Partners The Alliance is very pleased to announce two important financial developments that will accelerate our work on some key fronts. In September, we concluded a loan refinancing agreement with Wells Fargo that gives us over $1 million toward our Alliance Center renovation fund. The renovation, which will likely begin early next year, aims to explore ways to boost the building’s performance in terms of energy and resource efficiency and the productivity of our tenants. Wells Fargo’s strong interest in the renovation project and in partnering with the Alliance on the loan shows their understanding of the role that major business organizations can and must play as drivers for achieving sustainability—including banks that grasp the critical importance of investing in a sustainable future. As Alliance founder and Board President John Powers put it at the Heroes of Sustainability fundraiser—which Wells Fargo helped sponsor—“they’re the real deal.” Also, AT&T Colorado has awarded the Alliance a generous grant to advance our work in promoting regional and statewide sustainability roundtable events and Colorado’s Regional Sustainability Councils. The roundtables and Councils are fertile venues for collaboration and connection-making, bringing together critical stakeholders on a variety of issues. Some of those issues, such as rural access to high-speed Internet service, are often not on the public radar as matters of sustainability, but actually have major implications for the long-term health and viability of education, small business and other sectors in the underserved rural parts of the state. AT&T is another example of a major business that understands the stakes in achieving a sustainable future, and their grant will boost collaboration toward that goal. What if… young people were literate about sustainability concepts and issues by the time they graduated high school? They would generally be better able to apply abstract academic concepts they’ve learned, such as probability or chemical properties, to real world issues. They would be more prepared to pursue careers requiring science, technology, engineering and math. They may even be physically and mentally healthier because of regular exposure to the outdoors and more engaged in community and civic affairs. The Alliance for Sustainable Colorado has initiated a project to support environmental literacy for the next generation of community leaders. Already, we have: - Enlisted dozens of organizations to join the coalition to support environmental literacy, hosted by the Colorado Alliance for Environmental Education;
- Selected three graduate students from the University of Colorado Denver School of Public Affairs to conduct capstone projects on environmental literacy to document case studies of successful environmental literacy efforts in Colorado schools;
- Created a growing database of schools that have implemented some kind of sustainability literacy efforts, from waste reduction programs led by students to energy conservation competitions among schools across an entire district; and
- Collaborated to adopt a green ribbon school recognition program that will be used statewide by the Colorado Department of Education (CDE), Colorado Department of Health and the Environmental Leadership Program.
Several efforts slated for 2012 will move sustainability literacy efforts forward. First, CDE will adopt a Statewide Environmental Literacy Plan. With public input, it has the potential to provide an effective, multidisciplinary framework that will support all school districts in using environmental education to teach required concepts. At the same time, CDE is reviewing public high school graduation guidelines, and the Alliance is recommending that environmental literacy be part of a well-rounded education. A related effort is the database developed by the Colorado Alliance for Environmental Education to track high-quality environmental education programs. At the national level, educational reform that incorporates environmental education will be considered in 2012 through legislation such as the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, the Healthy Kids Outdoor Act, and the No Child Left Inside Act. Green schools construction and operation will continue to explode. Already seven schools in Colorado have received U.S. Green Building Council LEED certification for green building construction or operations and maintenance (already-existing buildings), and 34 other projects are registered. The Governor’s Energy Office and CDE will continue to provide significant support to green schools in 2012. Finally, the Green Schools National Conference, “Growing Green and Healthy Schools,” is coming to Denver on February 27–29, 2012. If you support sustainability education for youth, or if you know of a cool sustainability literacy effort, please contact us at literacy@sustainablecolorado.org. Join Our Team Join our team to help with the Green Schools Database. The temporary project begins now and runs through January. Learn more. What will the Alliance work on in 2012? Alliance Board members and staff have begun to lay out the organization’s 2012 goals. Some are new and others are extensions or enhancements of current goals; all are ambitious yet achievable. On the policy front, we plan to continue our work in introducing and supporting legislation that advances sustainability. Specific bills are planned for enabling Benefit Corporations in Colorado and work on efficiency in the built environment. We also aim to support our tenants’ initiatives and groups that are focused on TABOR and climate change. The Alliance strives to be the hub for sustainability in Colorado, and in 2012 we plan to enhance that role by strengthening the five Regional Councils established this year and helping to launch four to six more, as well as hosting or co-hosting Sustainability Roundtables for each region and the annual Statewide Sustainability Roundtable. In order to reinforce the Alliance Center as a physical hub for sustainability, we will work to increase tenant collaboration and the use of the building for events such as monthly Dine-a-Logues, classes, speakers and other presentations. Promoting the Center as a hub is closely related to advancing the Alliance Center renovation project. The project, which will enhance the Center as a replicable, high-performance collaborative building model, encompasses the physical renovation and upgrade of the building’s systems as well as rethinking the use of space and various aspects of tenant behavior that affect the building’s performance. We will continue to use the building as an educational tool for a variety of audiences and ensure that the project does not compromise tenants’ productivity and effectiveness while it is under way. A new strategic goal for 2012 is to chart the impact of our work by advancing sustainability in a measurable way. This will entail identifying and measuring tangible outcomes for each of our program areas and activities, and tracking key existing statewide indicators and measures of social, economic and environmental well-being. 2012 will be an important year for Colorado and its citizens, from the political climate of being a swing state in the Presidential election to the state budget cuts we will continue to face, next year will be a pivotal year in our state’s history. Let’s make it count in our journey to a sustainable society!
Thank You to our recent Sponsors!
Upcoming Sustainability Activities
We wish you a happy, healthy and sustainable holiday season and look forward to working with many of you in 2012!!
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