Turning Climate Concern into Action

After a successful career in consumer products and marketing, I transitioned my career to my values, shifted to the nonprofit world, and now work to save the planet. I sit or have been on the boards of the Environmental Defense Fund, the Sierra Club Foundation, Duke Energy’s Energy and Environment Council and World Bicycle Relief. In the for-profit world, I was the President of Cornerstone Brands, Smith+Noble, Joanna Western Mills, and VivaTerra LLC, and served on the boards of SRAM, Inc., and Firebrand Partners, LLC. 

Outside of my professional work, I am a distance cyclist and enjoy spending time with family, especially my wife Lisa Renstrom and my grandkids.  

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The climate crisis poses an existential threat to human civilization if we don’t act immediately. Many Americans report being concerned about climate change (source), but they get scant reinforcement from their media and social circles to activate climate action. 

We are proposing support for ecoAmerica which has partnered with trusted U.S. institutions and leaders (doctors, clergy, community leaders) providing guidance for climate change mitigation and advocacy. Our partners influence their membership of 50-60 million Americans. In 2019 ecoAmerica established an Ambassador Training Program to build momentum for climate advocacy, and make our programs more impactful.

ecoAmerica seeks an inflection point where enough Americans support climate action to shift society toward meaningful solutions. We will achieve this when a critical mass (25%) of leaders, institutions and citizens make climate a top priority, lead in mitigation and advocacy, and reach a point when denial/inaction are politically and socially unacceptable. 

Our planet is warming and becoming unstable. We are not moving fast or far enough to stabilize the situation. The negative impacts of climate change have grave consequences on a global scale because temperature increases directly impact water, food supplies, ecosystems, coastal stability and public health. This is contributing to and complicated by domestic and geopolitical destabilization. 

We are not addressing climate change at the scale and speed required. Public support for solutions has been undermined by legacy polluting industries which have sewn doubt and polarization into the issue. So people are not getting clear and accurate information that would lead them to climate action.

People act on social identification – tribes – more than self-interest or values in their political decisions. Society changes when social institutions change. Trusted institutions provide unattainable leverage, scale, credibility, and reach into local communities all across America. We need trusted leaders to make climate change a visible top priority – reduce their impact, advocate for solutions, and activate their constituencies.

Americans want guidance for climate change solutions, but don’t know where to get it. ecoAmerica’s aim is to deliver actionable climate solutions to all Americans. We began our work in 2006: In 2009, 44% of Americans considered global climate change a major threat to the well-being of the U.S. and that number increased to 60% this year (source). 

Now the largest climate change program in the U.S., we mobilize our member institutions of trusted messengers (doctors, clergy, community leaders) with strategic guidance and support to engage their millions of constituents to advocate for meaningful climate action.

To accelerate change, ecoAmerica recently shifted its focus from talk to action and launched its Ambassador Training program. The program works to move our partner’s regional networks, to empower members to advocate and act on climate change. With 12 trainers we plan to conduct over 1200 regional, state and local trainings on climate mitigation and advocacy to 60,000 Ambassadors per year. As Ambassadors they agree to a minimum of three climate talks and three advocacy actions per year reaching potentially 6 million Americans per year when the program is fully up and running.  

Americans want action on climate. ecoAmerica finds that 3 in 4 Americans believe we need to take action now to reduce the pollution that causes climate change. They also feel personal agency for climate action (source).

Through ecoAmerica’s health, faith, and community programs we catalyze and empower partners and their members in every city, town and county in America to make climate action relevant and practical to all Americans. We reach Americans of all races, political affiliations and creeds outside the scope of traditional environmental groups with three core programs:

• Climate for Health (CfH): Guided and supported by 41 prominent health leaders, CfH has 42 partner organizations. These organizations represent 1,500,000 health and medical professionals across America.
• Blessed Tomorrow (BT): With 48 prominent faith leaders, the BT program has 38 participating denominations and faith organizations, and reaches more than 104,000 congregations, 200,000 clergy and over 50 million Americans.
• Path to Positive Communities (P2P): The P2P program is led by a 26-person Leadership Circle and 20 partners. Our National League of Cities partnership has reach into 19,000+ communities in America.

We have assembled a powerful coalition of 132 leaders and 94 national institutions in the faith, health, and communities sectors in the U.S. Our partners have over 3 million professionals and over 40 million total members reaching into every community in American multiple times. 

If partners agree to a) visible national leadership, b) engage all stakeholders, c) mitigate, and d) advocate for climate solutions, ecoAmerica works with our partners to develop tailored climate programs including policy statements, websites, guides, webinars, convenings, marketing and assistance. 

They in turn, empower their members to reach many millions of Americans to inspire climate action. 

Quite frankly, it was my wife, Lisa Renstrom. She is a big leader in the conservation and sustainability movement and was President and Chair of the Sierra Club among other things. Climate and nature were not high on my priorities, I wasn’t even paying serious attention. But over the years with Lisa, I came to realize from her that climate was an overarching issue that impacts everything, and that I had the capabilities and responsibility to do something about it.

We launched ecoAmerica in 2006. We knew we had to get the messaging right, but we really wanted to work to change institutions and behavior. The concept worked well for the programs we started back then, like the American College and University Presidents Climate Commitment, the Sustainable Education and Economic Development (SEED) Center and Nature Rocks. Today, we have programs for leaders in three sectors – health, faith, and communities – who want to take action on climate change. We give them information and resources they need to make a difference in their organizations, and engage their stakeholders to do the same. 

Climate change impacts are now recognized as the 21st century’s greatest public health threat (source). Globally, people are conflicted about climate change because it is a huge, critical issue fraught with economic and political implications. 

Pollution has made communities of color even more vulnerable to COVID-19 and policy has placed communities of color in the path of pollution, flooding, and extreme weather. There is an urgent need to protect the people in disadvantaged communities most vulnerable to harmful impacts. Increased air pollution, more extreme weather-related disasters, more frequent and intense heat waves, decreased water quality and quantity, food shortages, the spread of vector-borne diseases, longer allergy and asthma seasons, and greater exposure to toxicants top the list. Children are also at heightened risk of experiencing malnutrition, infectious diseases, allergic and respiratory diseases, mental disorders, poverty and displacement. 

These challenges motivate me. Through ecoAmerica’s programs Blessed Tomorrow, Climate for Health and Path to Positive Communities, we provide our partner organizations with the resources they use to make a difference to build leadership on pragmatic climate and sustainability solutions that will grow our economy and provide all Americans with a healthy and secure future.

Through our people and experiences, ecoAmerica is well positioned to further expand its reach to make climate change a top priority for Americans. We began our 2nd generation program in 2014 (Blessed Tomorrow, Climate for Health, Path to Positive  Communities). From 2015-2016, we signed 12 MOU agreements to build tailored programs for and with our partners. 

After the 2016 national elections, demand surged and we now have nearly 100 coalition partners, 40+ of them with MOU agreements. ecoAmerica offers psychographic and values-based research, topical research on trends to consolidate social science into guidance, communications research, and tested messaging guidance for effective climate conversations that apply to the real world helping leaders connect with people and inspire them to act. Examples of our tools include:

• Communications: Our “Let’s Talk Climate” series of several sector guides, webinars, and videos grounded in our psychographic and communications research.

• Action and advocacy training: ecoAmerica’s sector specific “Moving Forward” guides, webinars, and videos provide direction and resources on climate ambition, restoration, and justice. Our Climate Ambassador programs provide direct support for partners to build internal trainers and capabilities to reach their tens of thousands of affiliates.

• Research including psychographics (American Climate Values), polling (American Climate Metrics, American Climate Perspectives Survey), focus groups, and meta research (e.g. Mental Health and Our Changing Climate, How Faith Communities Lead Social Movements) ground our work in field-tested realities.

• Summits, conferences, and forums to share best ideas and practices to educate Americans on initiatives and candidates that promote solutions.

In 2019, ecoAmerica launched its Ambassador Training Program with several partners across our three program areas. These trainings were held at physical locations across the U.S. For 2020, the goal was to launch the training with all of our sector partners. 

However, with the COVID-19 pandemic, we were unable to hold these training sessions at physical locations. To continue the momentum put in motion in 2019, ecoAmerica and our partners collaborated to produce several successful virtual Ambassador webinar trainings:  

• May 8, 2020: American Baptist Churches USA
• May 27-28, 2020: Conservancy of Southwest Florida  
• June 6, 2020 and April 4, 2020: Evangelical Lutheran Church of America 
• June 27, 2020: Disciples' Ecumenical 

To further overcome the obstacle of the pandemic, ecoAmerica implemented its “Let’s Talk Climate” virtual webinar series to provide guidance and support to climate activists as they seek to expand public support and political resolve for equitable and effective climate solutions. Let’s Talk Climate features seven topics: nature/science, health, communities, faith, politics, people, and leadership in rotating weekly sessions with empowering information and fresh ideas. 

When the COVID-19 pandemic struck America, there was a lot of uncertainty and confusion about what individuals and organizations should do, and how it would impact work for climate solutions. My team and I organized three virtual meetings for 140 CEO’s to share learning and best practices and best ideas on dealing with the crisis. We published this in an extended blog which was widely shared on at least three continents.

Traditional environmental groups and grassroots movements are essential. However, we need Americans from across the political spectrum and throughout society to voice demands for solving the crisis. Our research on successful social change—e.g., gay marriage—shows that people listen to trusted leaders in their circles, especially when the message is positive and speaks to their values and concerns. 

Our publication, Let’s Talk Climate: Messages to Motivate Americans exemplifies this work. Using sophisticated research, it offers easily understandable strategies and messages designed to start new conversations on climate, from “amplify the power of ‘we’” to “evoke lived experiences, use visual language.”  

ecoAmerica leverages these principles to create strategic communications and organize initiatives for climate solutions. This is the essence of the Ambassador Program’s tiered training system: See one, do one, teach one. We work in three key sectors: health, faith, and communities. We recruit major national institutions as well as local and national leaders from these sectors and provide them with the rationale, resources, and communications guidance to inspire their constituents to act on climate change. No other nonprofit is focused on targeting Americans who are not currently active on climate.    

ecoAmerica’s Theory of Change

ecoAmerica’s goal is to build a tipping point of public support and political will for climate solutions in America.  We make climate change real and actionable so they can make it top priority in their households, work and their communities. This begins with sector change. By getting their trusted leaders and influential institutions to make climate change a visible top priority – reduce their impact and advocate for solutions - we can inspire and empower their constituencies to do the same.

Inputs: 

1. Trusted Leaders: clergy, health professionals, community leaders

2. Influential Institutions:  denominations, national health and communities associations, aligned NGOs

3. Resources and Support: research driven websites, guides, training programs, webinars, support materials, summits and forums

4. Commitments to Action: Commitment to common Vision, Principles and Commitment & Partnership commitment agreement between ecoAmerica and influential institutions 

Outputs:

1. Sector Change, Societal Change

2. Strong Climate Policies and Programs that Solve the Problem.

Current number: Through ecoAmerica’s three programs - health, faith and communities - we serve eighty coalition partners who have over 3 million professionals reaching into every community in America. 

With ecoAmerica’s new Ambassador Training program, we expect to serve an additional 831,650 professionals each year.

Number served in one year = 3,831,650 professionals 

Number served in five years = 7,158,250 professionals

ecoAmerica is evolving from building awareness and engagement to empowering action. We are moving our national partners to mitigation and advocacy at state and local levels with our customized Moving Forward suite of guidance and resources and our Ambassador training program. 

In addition, our newly monetized American Climate Leadership Awards (funded by a major donor) recognizes and rewards individuals and initiatives that demonstrate success in mobilizing public support and political will for climate action. 

We seek to rapidly scale the minting of new, diverse climate advocates, solidifying existing sector gains and move sectors – ecoAmerica partners and beyond – toward making aggressive climate action the norm. This would require expanding our network outreach, marketing and program management capacity.   

Our goals within the next year and next five years are to Broaden the Base. We propose to develop 12 “train-the-trainers” shared by or embedded at our partners and implement targeted advocacy efforts segued with major climate initiatives. 

The trainers would convert 1% of the professional class at each partner organization (16,633 professionals total) into Ambassadors who would reach out to a minimum of 50 of their peers (831,650 peers total) with training and ongoing support to embed climate action into the institution and affiliate priorities. The Ambassadors pass qualification tests, agree to outreach guidelines, report back on each training, and follow up with trainees to determine impact. The goal/impact of the program is to get a minimum of 5,000 local organizations active in climate mitigation and advocacy each year. 

External barriers:

• The recent UN-IPCC 1.5  and US-NCA4 reports crystalize the fact that climate change is an existential threat if we don’t act decisively NOW. We are not moving fast or far enough to stabilize it. All this is contributing to and complicated by domestic and geopolitical destabilization. 
• Societal change is hard; people make decisions based on their network or “tribe.” Barriers include education and awareness of climate change, lack of perceived control over the issue and resistance to change.
• ecoAmerica donors and prospects are uncertain about their financial recovery due to the global economy and COVID-19 pandemic. There is great concern that until the economy recovers, ecoAmerica’s revenue from donations may decrease. 
• ecoAmerica operates consistently on a tight budget and the high cost of up-to-date technology prohibits us from improving operational efficiency through high cost technology improvements. We know this growing performance gap is limiting our potential. 

Internal barriers:

• ecoAmerica operates with minimal staff and lacks a fully specialized staff to expand its programs and support more high-level fundraising efforts such as engaging its board members and identifying new prospect opportunities. This limits our progress — with little time to focus on capacity building.

Overcoming External barriers: 

• Continue to build our constituencies through the Sector Leaders and Ambassador program to create a broad base of climate champions throughout the country.
• Provide guidance and support to climate activists as they seek to expand public support and political resolve for equitable and effective climate solutions through ecoAmerica’s Webcast Series: LET’S TALK CLIMATE.
• Expand our fundraising with new or previous major gift funders who are dedicated to overcoming climate change. We are currently seeking major funding that will bring us to state-of-the-art technical status and allow us to retain key technical counsel.

Overcoming Internal barriers: 

• Advocate for a whole-community approach to learning about capacity building among staff, board and stakeholders. This will include the expansion of our Board to bring in new and more expansive funding prospects. We have already begun this process, with the recent addition of four new board members in the past year. We also created an adjunct committee “The ecoAmerica Leadership Council” of donors who are invested stakeholders expanding our reach, and we have already added nine members to this group. 
• Actively seek major gift funders and seeking to close those gifts. With more funding, we can continue to amplify our capacity. 
• Also, we are seeking to expand program support and have already hired a half time coordinator to assist with this work.

ecoAmerica works with 88 national coalition partners across three sectors - faith, health and communities - providing them with strategy, tools and resources to elevate their climate leadership. Following are examples of our sector partners and their reach. Our full partner list is available here.

Blessed Tomorrow (Faith Program)

• African Methodist Episcopal Church (2.5 million members; 7,000 congregations)
• American Baptist Churches USA (1.3 million members; 5,000 congregations)
• The Episcopal Church (1.7 million members; 6,473 congregations)
• Interfaith Power and Light (6.5 million members; 20,000 congregations)
• Islamic Society of North America
• National Latino Evangelical Coalition (8 million members; 3,000 congregations)
• United Church of Christ (880,000 members; 5,000 congregations)

Climate for Health (Health Program)

• Alliance of Nurses for Healthy Environments (3,500 nurses)
• American Academy of Pediatrics (66,000 professionals)
• American Public Health Association (25,000 public health professionals)
• Kaiser Permanente (79,200 physicians and nurses)
• Medical Society Consortium on Climate and Health (500,000 clinical practitioners)
• The Nature Conservancy (1 million members; 600 scientists)
• Planetary Health Alliance (140 member institutions from over 30 countries)

Path to Positive Communities (Communities Program)

1. C40 (15 major North American cities)
2. ICLEI USA (1,000 local government officials)
3. Institute for Sustainable Communities (54 corporations, foundations, governments, and NGOs)
4. Local Government Commission (101 California-centric communities)
5. National League of Cities (1,600 national; 19,000 through state leagues)
6. Conservancy of Southwest Florida (5 counties across Southwest Florida)
7. Urban Sustainability Directors Network (1,200 sustainability staff in 200 US cities)

ecoAmerica acts as a catalyst to build public support, and political resolve for climate action. Through our health, faith, and community programs we catalyze and empower partners and their affiliates and members in every city, town, and county in America to make climate action relevant and practical. We reach Americans of all races, political affiliations and creeds outside the scope of traditional environmental groups.

We activate our partners to change social norms in their organization, sector and society. Informed by our deep social science and communications research, we help them develop strategic and operating plans, raise funding, and lead development and implementation of the programs. Our unique model of engaging a diversity of people through their familiar institutions and social identities enables tremendous leverage, scale and credibility. 

Once the programs are fully established – a 2 to 4-year process – they become a part of our partner’s DNA and we revert to an ongoing supporting role. 

In 2013, ecoAmerica developed, with a dedicated staff position, our F.R.E. (Full Representation and Engagement) initiative including goals, vision and tactics to retain and support employees, diversify our Board of Directors, over-represent under-represented constituencies in our Leadership Circles, and to partner and collaborate locally and nationally to support organizations working with or representing diverse constituencies. ecoAmerica’s composition includes:

• ecoAmerica Board: 25 members, 40% women, 24% people of color, 4% LGBTQ

• ecoAmerica Staff: 15 staff, 80% women, 13.4% people of color

• ecoAmerica Leadership Circles: 117 total members, 46% women, 25% people of color

ecoAmerica uses the system of Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) to set, define and measure our goals. ecoAmerica’s objectives for developing our financial resources in 2020/2021 include:

Increase cash reserves and current commitments to minimum one-year budget

• 25% increase in donations (total $ amount) over 2019 by 4Q20
• Secure at least one new multi-year 7-figure grant by 4Q20
• Achieve 45% year-over-year donor retention rate by 4Q20
• Double program-specific funding to double scale of Ambassador program by 3Q20
• Identify 3 new funders whose priorities align with sector, regional, front-line, and/or programmatic opportunities 2Q20

Increase high net-worth donors to support half of ecoAmerica’s financial needs

• 25% increase Major Gift prospect pool by 4Q20
• Solicit 10 new Major Gift prospect referrals by 4Q20
• More clearly articulate theory of change, impact, and return on investment to inspire giving by 2Q20

Inspire and develop a fully engaged, diverse ecoAmerica Board

• 100% Board financial support and participation in +1 by 4Q20
• Develop Board with greater financial capability and commitment
• Add 3+ new directors, prioritizing diversity, High Net Worth and ability to connect by 4Q20
• 100% Board funding and +1 participation in 4Q2019
• Advance engagement of Board with inclusion in Friendmaker receptions and one-on-one solicitation meetings

Design and implement Planned Giving Program for future funding

• Create Planned Giving Program and materials by 2Q20 
• Meet with counsel to advise on Planned Giving Program
• Solicit 3-5 prospects for planned giving funding by 3Q20
• Secure commitments from 2 prospects for planned gifts by 4Q20

ecoAmerica’s revenue stream is primarily through donations and grants from individual donors, foundations and NGOs. Over the past 12 months, the total revenue raised was $2,691,953. Below are donors who gave $5,000 or more to ecoAmerica from 6/1/2019-5/31/2020:

African Methodist Episcopal Church

African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church

Allergy & Asthma Network

Marcia Angle and Mark Trustin

Anonymous 

Bonwood Social Investments

The William K. Bowes Jr. Foundation

Camalotte Foundation

Conservancy of Southwest Florida

Craig A. Craze

F. K. Day

Leah Missbach Day

Emmett Foundation 

Environmental Defense Fund

Flora Family Foundation

The Samuel Freeman Charitable Trust

Friedman Family Charitable Trust

Mark T. Gallogly and Elizabeth B. Stricker

Goldman-Sonnenfeldt Foundation

Susan Harris

Hartfield Foundation

Sharon Kempner

Kresge Foundation

Lorie Peters Lauthier

Dale and Frank Loy

Richard and Judith Morrissey

Mountain Philanthropies

Matthew C Mullenweg

National Audubon Society

The Nature Conservancy

New Visions Foundation

Jan and Robert Newman

Caroline Niemczyk 

Outrider Foundation

Carl Page

Gloria Page

Stacy Pulice

Guy Saperstein

Frederick D. and Karen G. Schaufeld Family Foundation

Philip R Sharp

Stephen M. Silberstein Foundation

Anne Slaughter Andrew

Fred and Alice Stanback

Edward Stern 

Thomas Sturgess

SunLight Time Foundation

Mark and Amy Tercek Foundation

John and Carol Walter Family Foundation

Wildbasil Fund

Through significant grant funding we could make existing programs more robust, accelerate our pipeline programs, and open programs to new members. This would solidify existing sector gains and move each sector – ecoAmerica partners and beyond – toward making aggressive climate mitigation and advocacy the norms in each sector. It would require building our network outreach, marketing and program management capacity. 

Our goal is to onboard an additional eight partners per year. The total cost to increase the network from 44 MOU partners to 68 would be $4,453,032 over 3 years. This includes $1,920,000 on direct program costs (outside contractors and suppliers for website development, video production, materials, conferences); $1,505,860 for internal staffing (Marketing Manager, Marketing Associate, Blessed Tomorrow Program Manager, Path to Positive Communities Program Associate and  Program Coordinator, including benefits and expenses); and $742,172 for indirect costs.

ecoAmerica’s estimated expenses for 2020 are $3,059,395. These expenses include: 

Personnel Cost: $1,878,837

Contractual & Professional Fees

• Consulting/Legal: $9,000

• Accounting: $27,295

Partner Support & AmbassadorTraining: $84,569

Research: $59,700

Marketing

• Partner Marketing $34,000

• Printing and Reproduction: $29,300

• Forums and Conferences: $466,050

Travel & Entertainment

• Meals and Entertainment: $45,200

• Travel: $81,000

Occupancy: $231,623

General & Administrative: $112,821

Three reasons:  1) It would demonstrate the Elevate Prize’s commitment and concern about climate change, making it more salient for all your stakeholders. 2) It would directly help us in our work -ecoAmerica is a small, tightly run organization and a gift of this size would make a tremendous difference for us. 3) the Prize itself would draw more attention to our work and help us increase our partnerships and funding from other sources.

Our core costs are covered, and all of Elevate’s support would go to expanding our work supporting our partners as we develop climate programs with them.

ecoAmerica has opportunities to expand its programmatic capacity, but has to make some necessary changes to do so. To do this, our partnership and support goals include:  

• Expand our Program to reach the maximum number of partner organizations in the critical next five years. 
• Funding and revenue model: Work with partners to gain qualified leads to help build ecoAmerica’s donor pipeline. 
• Build program management capacity: Make our existing programs more robust, accelerate pipeline programs, and open programs to new members. This would solidify existing sector gains and move each sector – ecoAmerica partners and beyond – toward making aggressive climate mitigation and advocacy the norms in each sector. 
• Build marketing capacity: To strengthen ecoAmerica’s brand visibility with marketing efforts that cross support fundraising needs through more media exposure. 

We would like to enlist the Roman Catholic Church, the Southern Baptist Conference, the American Medical Association, the American Nursing Association and the U.S. Conference of Mayors in robust climate programs for their members and the public. These five organizations would represent a tipping point for their sectors (even three of them) and help shift public perceptions on the salience and importance of climate solutions.

We would also like to partner with a few large, climate-oriented foundations including the William & Flora Hewlett Foundation, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, the Energy Foundation, Bloomberg Philanthropies, the Bezos Earth Fund and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. They would elevate our standing in the climate community, as well as provide critically needed support to expand and advance our work.