About Us

Think of us as sustainability entrepreneurs and networkers. We connect world trends to local needs and interests to create innovative new programs and projects.  We find fresh thinking, identify exciting opportunities, and convene groups that will make ideas into realities.  With a comprehensive approach to sustainability, we work with all the sectors that affect our daily lives, including school districts, municipal governments, business communities and neighborhoods.

We connect people to new ideas:  If a corporation wants to go sustainable, we act as a resource broker--we find existing potential and opportunity and help to advance it, support it, facilitate it. Read more about our Sustainable Business Initiative.  For the Madison School District, we act as researchers, advisors and facilitators through our Sustainable Schools Program.

Some examples: 

* The Ideal Backyard Workshop gives residents the skills to grow and preserve their own food, capture rain water and reduce energy costs. In creating it we drew on our experience advancing the rain barrel.  We supported the group that invented a rain barrel diverter that harvests water without flooding or attracting insects.  We incubated the rain barrel and patent-pending diverter as an eco-business, which we recently transferred to the engineer entrepreneur who developed the diverter.  A website for his business, called Sustain LLC, coming soon.

* We helped introduce the city of Madison to The Natural Step, a Swedish sustainability framework that ensures accountability for future impact.  Sustain Dane worked with the city to create education and workshops for employees, which led to many changes including solar water heaters being implemented in the firehouses, significant carbon reductions across the board and a campaign to ban bottled water.  Plus Madison will soon become home to the nation's first Sustainability Research Center to research, develop and market new forms of renewable energy--creating a new engine for regional economic development.

* We brought to  Wisconsin the Bioneers Conference that highlights visionaries and innovative practices  in every field on a national and local level.  Check out the update from our most recent Badger Bioneers Conference.

* We co-founded the Badger Rock Charter School, the first school in the country to be built on a Growing Power farm run by Milwaukee urban farmer Will Allen, a MacArthur Genius Award recipient. The school will act as a demonstration and incubator for sustainability for the Madison School District's Sustainability Initiative. It will also be an engine for green jobs in the region.

* Through our Mpower Program, businesses meet monthly to learn from each other how to increase energy efficiency, incorporate renewable energy, reduce water usage and waste, and invest employees in the process. The first cohort of our Mpower ChaMpion Businesses saved 13,400 metric tons of carbon dioxide. This group will form the core of our Green Business Network, an association of businesses working to advance sustainable practices across the region.

Where We Are

We're headquartered in Madison, Wisconsin and work throughout Dane County, home to many towns and villages including Middleton, Verona, Fitchburg and Sun Prairie.