Our Services

CESI supports government agencies, nonprofits, developers, utilities, and small businesses in grant proposals, setting up their programs, managing their contractors, and documenting and reporting on their achievements. We are now working in fifteen jurisdictions from the Virgin Islands and Cincinnati to Massachusetts and from Marin County, CA to the District of Columbia. 

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Monday
Aug222011

Chicago Environmental Law and Policy Center

Services Provided:

  • Strategic Planning

Engagement Began:

  • November 2010

Chicago’s Environmental Law and Policy Center (ELPC) is the Midwest’s leading public interest environmental legal advocacy and eco-business innovation organization.  In the fall of 2010, the Policy Center realized that many non-profits were not keeping up with energy efficiency investment in their facilities, resulting in higher-than-necessary energy bills and poor occupant comfort.  To support these non-profits and their various missions, ELPC wondered if they should expand their mission and move into energy efficiency retrofit service delivery and financing for Chicago’s non-profit organizations.  After seeking recommendations on an advisor to help make this decision, ELPC met our team in late 2010.

We walked through a step-by-step strategic planning process with ELPC to understand if and how they should offer energy efficiency services to the non-profit sector.  To answer this question, we:

  • Created a clear mission statement and program goals for the new service offering
  • Researched non-profit energy efficiency programs across the nation, and realized that non-profits are often underserved with regard to energy efficiency investment
  • Identified target markets for ELPC, both by neighborhood and by building characteristics
  • Decided on a design-build-verify system in which a network of contractors is supervised by ELPC and paid through an ELPC-managed revolving loan fund

CESI also helped ELPC to target its offerings to non-profits that would benefit the most from receiving energy efficiency investment and assistance, since effective use of funds is central to ELPC’s mission.  We focused on “community aggregators” – non-profits active in multiple areas of the city and in multiple sectors – that are also 1) important in ELPC’s target neighborhoods and 2) host or partner with other agencies with similar missions to their own. 

Because of our expertise in start-up financing for energy efficiency programs, we were able to move beyond strategic planning and also assist with financial planning for ELPC’s new program.  This involved identifying a financial partner in Ballice-Scott, crafting an attractive financial product (since non-profits are often ineligible for traditional bank loans, we set up a revolving loan fund with a loan-loss reserve), and making 5-year projections of the management fees needed to service the loan fund.