November 8, 2013 Update: We're Back!

We are back!

We were unable to pull together a weekly update for you last week because of  legislative action in Ohio.

Ohio

 The legislation we have been anticipating in Ohio came to fruition on Halloween. SCR 25 is a senate concurrent resolution that pushes the State of Ohio to exclude LEED as a building standard for public buildings and for public schools. Even though it is a resolution, there is language in the "Resolved' sections that implies LEED was not properly adopted by the Ohio Facilities Construction Commission (OFCC), which would make the case for agency rule review, with an eye to repealing the use of LEED to achieve Ohio's goal of energy efficient buildings.

This past week, Doug Widener from the Community Advancement team, Nate Allen from the Center for Green Schools team, and Christina Kuo from Advocacy, along with 12 volunteers from the 4 Ohio chapters made legislative visits to educate lawmakers about the impact of SCR 25 and the success of Ohio's green schools program. We met with the following state senators: Widener, Hite, Coley, Patton, Seitz, Hughes, Schaffer (cosponsor), Lehner, Jones, Manning, Kearney, Oelslager, Schiavoni, Gentile, Taveras, and Bacon. The resolution now sits in Energy and Natural Resources and as of time of publication, it has not been scheduled for a hearing.

We have sent emails and phone calls into the senate offices to ensure the whole senate knows that this resolution is happening and they have the full information. We will have more ways you can get involved later this week. Please contact Christina if you have additional questions.

November Advocacy Call

Please join us for the November advocacy call. We have a special guest, Erin Skene-Pratt, who will talk to you about nonprofit advocacy strategic development and how it can help achieve your organizations overall goals. Here is the link to the Webex or to call in only 1-650-429-3300 code: 752935317#. 

Erin Skene-Pratt

Erin Skene-Pratt is an independent consultant with 15 years experience as a leader and catalyst for program design and implementation in the areas of advocacy, organizational development, and capacity building efforts. Erin provides a strategic outlook on work of the nonprofit sector, and a proven track record of results having assisted thousands of nonprofits to better serve their communities.

Erin is also an affiliate consultant with Public Policy Associates (PPA) providing facilitation services and working with PPA’s clients on training, policy, and communication strategies. As an adjunct faculty member at Grand Valley State University, Erin teaches a graduate level course on nonprofit advocacy and public policy covering the roles of government and nonprofits in serving society and basic advocacy tactics.

Prior to forming Skene-Pratt Consulting in 2009, Erin served as Senior Director of Public Affairs at Michigan Nonprofit Association (MNA). At MNA, Erin crafted curriculum and trained thousands of nonprofits on how to effectively advocate for public policy change and authored the first Michigan-specific how-to-guide on effective advocacy. Erin also successfully developed and implemented MNA’s first statewide public policy agenda for the nonprofit sector, built and mobilized a grassroots network of 2,000 nonprofits, successfully fundraised for MNA’s policy work, developed and staffed a committee to provide input to the Michigan attorney general on charitable matters, formed the first Michigan nonprofit legislative caucus, advocated on policy issues relevant to the nonprofit sector resulting in passage of legislation to enhance fundraising efforts of nonprofits and to increase nonprofit accountability in Michigan, and founded/staffed the Michigan Participation Project to enhance the voter engagement efforts of Michigan’s nonprofits.

Erin holds an MPA from Western University, BAs in Journalism and English from Michigan State University, and a Certificate in Fund Raising Management from The Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University.

Chapter Corner

Thank you to NE Ohio-USGBC, Central Ohio-USGBC, USGBC-Cincinnati, and NW Ohio chapters for all their hard work in helping us with turning out grassroots support at the Ohio capital last week.

Northern California Chapter honored Green Building Super Heroes.

USGBC Gulf Coast honored Tony Richardson, Highlight Green Homes Campaign Co-Chair, for his work in greening the MLS. Congrats Tony!

Greenville Technical College in South Carolina has started to seek bids for architectural and engineering work on its planned enterprise campus, a project that will cost up to $25 million. The building is designed to achieve LEED Silver or Green Globes.

USGBC North Capital Region held a successful Energy Summit on October 30th. They brought together utilities, local government, NGOs,and building owners and managers

Campaigns

Leadership with LEED

Common Ground Around Green Schools

Mainstream Building Benchmarking

Improve Energy Data Access

Build Better Codes

Value Healthy and Efficient Affordable Housing

Highlight Green Homes