What is the problem/challenge:

-How do you fund local sustainable innovation?

What are the barriers to solving this challenge:

-Relationships between agents, buy-in, source of seed capital

What are the opportunities or innovations:

-Opportunity to use a local coop to fund innovation

-Lower capital cost, local jobs, community investment ("sense of community"), model that can be duplicated

What resources exist or are needed:

-Variable Capital Structure

-Private Equity - Mezzanine Financing

-Local Bank - long term funds

-Advisory Board

-Risk Assessment

Next Steps:

Identify Similar Precedents

Local Organizers

Team Leader

Business Plan - Financial Model

Get Local Manufacturers, Schools, and Universities Involved

Stakeholder Meetings




Collaborating Effectively to Advance Sustainability Initiatives
How to activate effective community collaboration to implement energy efficiency retrofits.
(or overcoming barriers of sustainability initiative implementation)

- getting people to sign up for home assessments in suburban neighborhoods
- experience: 10 of 14 families having their homes retrofitted = crazy conversion rate! What worked?

- addressing the community - community organizers
..in order to garner and organize community support
- provider incentive: retrofit lottery

- the benefit of strength in numbers
- localizing the 'GroupOn' concept
- creating a wiki-like functional site to establish support based on location

-Barriers
people mis-perceiving cost analysis
a lack of awareness of incentives
a lack of community organization

- Opportunities
identify leaders/champions
utilize a social media campaign
local tools with local info/green