Dear Friend,

Do you ever experience looking up at the clock and realizing that you’ve been at work for 10 hours? And not believing your eyes because the work you’re doing, and the people you are working with are so fun, engaging and productive that you’ve been consumed by it all day? I experience that routinely at NESEA.

We are wrapping up an INCREDIBLE year at the Northeast Sustainable Energy Association — thanks to you, our most engaged community members.

Among the many things to celebrate, we have:

• provided more than 50 practitioners the skills they need to begin their own zero net energy building projects by enrolling them in Marc Rosenbaum’s 10-week course BuildingEnergy Masters Series course.
• provided more than 10,000 practitioners and educated consumers with the information and connections they need to undertake their next (or maybe their first) high performance building project, by educating them in NESEA’s Green Buildings Open House program, and directing them to NESEA professionals in our Sustainable Green Pages.
• worked with GreenHomeNYC, our New York City Chapter, to educate 150 building owners, operators, facilities managers, and other professionals on how best to approach energy efficiency projects in NYC-based multifamily buildings.
• started building a robust infrastructure for collaboration, including a new website and online platform that you, our members can drive – to develop your own communities of practice to support your work and grow your business year round

And there’s so much more in the works for 2013. We’ll be inviting you to continue our work in several new working groups to shape NESEA’s future – reinventing legacy programs and launching new ones that help us advance the adoption of sustainable energy solutions in the built environment.

If you are as excited as we are about the momentum we’re building, please support us with a tax deductible contribution to NESEA. Your investment of $50, $100, or even $250 will help us ensure that NESEA remains “the shelter of our community.”

Donate Now by clicking here, or simply return the pledge card contained in our recent fundraising letter in the enclosed pre-addressed envelope.

Thank you. I look forward to working with you in 2013!

Warm regards,

Jennifer J. Marrapese, JD, MA
Executive Director
Northeast Sustainable Energy Association

p.s. – We are grateful to a group of your peers, Kate Goldstein among them, who have agreed to match, dollar for dollar, all contributions to our end-of-year appeal up to $13,000. Please give as generously as you can!

Dear Friend,

NESEA’s year-end giving campaign is off to a great start! Thanks to a group of your peers, we have a generous $13,000 matching challenge to help us grow a critical group of supporters—donors who commit in advance to a regular gift to support NESEA’s work.Consider building on the promise of a more sustainable future, and having your contribution matched, dollar-for-dollar!

NESEA board member Kate Goldstein, engineer and unapologetic cowboy, has this to say about NESEA:

“NESEA sustains me. Above all, it has been a place of shelter and a place of mentorship. And I have watched so very many others my age, and those in all stages of their journey, find this solace and guidance here. I believe that the NESEA membership guides every single day, that we are a group that sustains because we foster the developmental growth of our own kind, young and old. However, I would have never been exposed to any of these guides without NESEA. We can only live in so many worlds at the same time. The diversity of NESEA’s membership is a gift for us who have not yet found our own path. NESEA is the shelter of our community.” 

If NESEA sustains you too, if you’ve built a valuable professional network due to your involvement with us, if you’ve learned important things from this community that have enhanced your practice, please participate in our annual appeal. Help us network sustainable energy practitioners with each other, and with the information they need to create a more sustainable built environment.

Become a sustaining donor right now with a one-time, monthly or quarterly donation and your gift will be doubled to leverage it for greater impact. Please, donate now!

With gratitude,

Jennifer J. Marrapese, JD, MA
Executive Director
Northeast Sustainable Energy Association

p.s. – Of course, all donations are tax deductible to the extent allowed by law. Please invest as generously as you can.

Last week we shared our annual appeal letter on the NESEA blog. There’s no doubt that we’re still operating in a very challenging financial environment. But I’d like to share a few very recent “leading indicators” that leave me feeling very optimistic:

• On October 1st we launched our second set of BuildingEnergy Masters Series classes – one on Zero Net Energy Homes by Marc Rosenbaum, one on The Future of Passive House in the US by Paul Eldrenkamp and Mike Duclos. The two courses combined have attracted a total of 50 participants – more than three times as many as we had expected!
• We offered our first-ever “pro tours” on October 13th in conjunction with our Green Buildings Open House program. These tours provide in depth opportunities for people like you to learn, peer-to-peer, from NESEA members who are building some of the best high performance buildings in the region.
• We were recently invited by a large foundation to propose a new program to help transform the market for zero net energy homes in the Northeast. Although we haven’t secured the funding yet, we are delighted that others who have not historically been a part of our community recognize that NESEA members have been involved with the vast majority of the zero net energy projects in the Northeast, and that we are well positioned to help our members share what they know.
• We offered our first one-day Building Energy conference in New York City on December 1: BENYC – High Performance, Low Cost Multifamily Buildings. The housing and energy efficiency worlds came together for BuildingEnergy New York City with over 150 professionals from 7 states converging on Hunter College to learn about understanding energy usage and City policy requirements to make better multifamily buildings.

I am confident that the investment you have made, and that you continue to make, will produce even stronger results in the coming year. And I am excited about sharing our success with you as the year progresses. Please consider investing in our future – investing in making NESEA a vibrant community year round.

Dig deep. Your $50, $100, $250 or $1,000 investment will go a long way toward helping us serve you better.

In this day and age community is a priceless commodity. It’s not every day that you get to make such a clear and simple investment in the connections that matter.

Sincerely,

Jennifer J. Marrapese, JD, MA
Executive Director