Year 2 of NESEA’s Capacity Campaign is off to a great start. Between the sustaining and lead donations we secured in October, and the response we have received so far to Phil Kaplan and Lauren Brust Moss’s letter, we’ve already raised $51,000. We’re over half way to this year’s goal!

If you haven’t yet had the chance to donate, I hope this rundown of our 2018 accomplishments will inspire you to support your high-performance community and give today.

I’m delighted to report that we’ve made significant progress in implementing the strategic plan. Here’s a list of some of the things we’re most proud of:

• We bolstered our jobs board and launched a resume bank to serve emerging professionals better and to help our members meet their hiring needs.
• We offered 13 BuildingEnergy Pro Tours in 6 states. These tours involved the widest variety yet of building types, from single family deep energy retrofits to institutional Living Buildings to affordable multifamily Passive House projects, and provided 634 practitioners with affordable opportunities to network, learn from their peers, and receive continuing education credits.
• We hosted a BuildingEnergy Bottom Lines Center Live event - a day-long opportunity for members of our 5 BuildingEnergy Bottom Lines peer networks to meet and learn from each other’s experiences with respect to topics such as employee ownership, hiring and retaining great talent, succession planning, and more.
• We settled into our new home for BuildingEnergy Boston - the Westin Waterfront Hotel - and received rave reviews about the changes in venue and conference format.
• We expanded our offerings and our community in NYC by piloting pre-conference workshops before BuildingEnergy NYC and offering a sold-out BuildingEnergy Pro Tour in the Far Rockaways.
• We provided event scholarships and one-year NESEA Memberships to 45 emerging professionals and students, and invited them to participate in a career forum to introduce and welcome them into the NESEA community.

This year has also been remarkable in that 10 members made an enduring investment in our community by becoming NESEA Lifetime Members—a record number! I’ve had the chance to talk with almost all of these new “Lifers” and the stories they shared with me were inspiring and diverse. Almost all of them were motivated to join in with an esteemed group of their peers to “give back” and support a community that has benefited them greatly.  You can read more about what motivated their commitments and learn about NESEA’s new, flexible monthly installment plan for lifetime membership here.

We also have big plans for 2019, including:

• Launching a sixth BuildingEnergy Bottom Lines network, to allow 10 more NESEA Business Members to optimize their triple bottom lines with the help of their peers
• Expanding our community in New York City and State by launching a New York BuildingEnergy Pro Tour series of 5-7 tours throughout the year.

We invite you to support your high performance community so that we can continue to meet our mission to advance the adoption of sustainable energy practices in the built environment by cultivating a community where practitioners share, collaborate and learn. Please donate today.

Sincerely,

Jennifer J. Marrapese, Executive Director