The Greater Northfield Sustainability Collaborative (GNSC) began in August 2013 as an effort to bridge and strengthen local sustainability initiatives at the City of Northfield, Carleton College, St. Olaf College, local non‐profit organizations and community groups.
With the support of a Southeast CERT Seed Grant, one of the GNSC’s first tangible actions was to develop a website to compile a comprehensive list of local sustainability organizations by focus area (energy, food, land, water, transportation, and waste), to advertise local sustainability events and to serve as a repository for local sustainability planning documents, projects and research.
“We expect this increased visibility and convenience to fuel engagement in local sustainability issues while fostering collective impact between groups with similar missions and agendas,” says Martha Larson, Carleton College Manager of Campus Energy & Sustainability. “We soon realized our basic website was not powerful enough to serve as a true database repository, so we used CERTs Seed Grant funds to hire a web developer to create a custom programmed searchable database with a multi‐layered filter function. Interested citizens can now sort through a database of planning documents, research papers, curricula, and project case studies organized by sponsor organization, sustainability focus area, or reference type.”
In just the first two months that the website was available to the public, they reached 522 people who visited the site 1,250 times and viewed 3,175 pages. That’s a nice bit of traffic!
To learn more, visit http://northfieldsustainability.org
Project Snapshot:
- Topic: Outreach on Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy
- SE CERT Seed Grant: $3,000
- Dollars Leveraged: $1,161
- People Involved: 20
- People Reached: 260 monthly
Want to learn how your community can get a CERTs Seed Grant to advance your work? Applications for the next round of grants are available and due October 26th. To get started, visit the Seed Grant page and see other awarded projects from past years.
