Insights
Insights
Many communities are not working for the people who need them the most.
Problems like homelessness, crumbling schools, and brain drain persist for years. When a disaster happens, it increasingly causes huge impacts. Recovery money takes years to arrive. Even windfall opportunities only seem to go to a select few and not the community as a whole. And the small-town resident, the inner-city neighborhood, the homeowner and small business owner pay the price.
ISD exists to fix this. Our Fellows care passionately about the people and places that we work with. Many work pro bono and provide free expert counseling to people who would otherwise get little to no support at all. Your contributions keep us going, and with your help, we can help many more communities get access to more resources they vitally need, not just to recover from past disasters, but to flourish in the future.
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ISD Develops Solutions for the Future of Community Development
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Only 13 states have Chief Resilience Officers - ISD is encouraging other states to institute these offices.
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There are only three public-private Community Resilience Networks - ISD co-founded Together for LA which could be a model for others.
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A handful of states have revolving loan funds to support upgrades in resilient infrastructure - ISD helped the state of Maryland build one of the first.
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CDBG-DR — the main federal recovery program — routinely take more than two years to reach the ground. ISD is working on solutions to get money to flow more swiftly.
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As resources become more scarce, state and local governments are not built for sudden shocks — or for the slow stresses that hurt communities the most. We need to build state and local capacity to care for themselves. ISD is building an Academy of Fellows to provide this resource.
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Meanwhile, we are in the midst of an overwhelming technological revolution and many of our communities are not ready for it. ISD is developing white papers and hosting strategic planning workshops to help communities think through how they want to handle it.
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Our communities deserve better. At ISD, we are doing what we can to move the needle.
Better ideas only matter if they reach the people who do the work.
That’s why ISD's Fellows program - "The Academy" is so unique. Your support allows us to identify top experts across the complicated landscape of community development and disaster recovery and get them to share their expertise with state and local leaders, nonprofit directors, and community practitioners who actually carry out recovery and development.
The Academy is how the better way scales: not one consultant at a time, but cohort after cohort of leaders who go home and change how their own communities do the work.
THE MATCH
$1 unlocks $4 in support for the ISD Academy.
The Academy is built on matching support: every dollar you give is matched four-to-one. A $1,000 gift becomes $5,000 of training for the leaders rebuilding America’s communities. There are few places where a gift goes this far.
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The Institute for Sustainable Development (ISD) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization and is the business name of the Foundation for a Sustainable Community (EIN: 20-019-8071)
All donations are tax-deductible to the full extent permitted by law. No goods or services are provided in exchange for your contribution.
Institute for Sustainable Development • Alexandria, Virginia
Questions about your gift: mjellis@isdus.org • +1 (202) 550-0277
For more information, contact us at info@isdus.org.
Thank you for your support!