The Facilities working groups provide tools to help you reduce your energy use in your
facility building.  The less energy you use, the lower your utility bill. That leaves money
for congregational programming. Reducing energy usage also lowers your
environmental impact by putting less carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. It is a win-win;
lower cost, lower carbon footprint. We guide you to start with the easy, do-it-yourself,
steps, moving from lowest cost, up to having an energy audit of your building and
beyond. Learn about these concepts in the sections About, Stories, Resource and
Webinar pages below to help you get started. Be sure to visit the toolkit Funding
Sources pages to find where and how to get possible funding assistance.
These tips and first-hand stories came from members of the Facilities working group.
We always welcome new information and new members. To join this group or for more
information, contact Ken Wright, the Facilities group leader, at facilities@fcgg.org

Faith Communities Go Green Energy Efficiency Program
FCGG is beginning a program to help congregations in our region improve the energy
efficiency of their buildings. This program grew out of our response to a Department of
Energy funding opportunity announcement (“Renew our Non-Profits”) in the spring of
2023 in which they announced series of large grants to non-profit organizations who in
turn would give smaller grants (up to $200,000) to non-profit organizations to improve
the energy efficiency of buildings they owned.

We ultimately decided not to apply to that program but our groundwork for it convinced
us of the need and interest in congregations in the Cincinnati region for energy
efficiency improvement. Fifty-four congregations have already expressed interest. They
completed surveys online and then spoke on the phone with one of our volunteers.  We
have detailed spreadsheet data, including what congregations would do with their
savings. Of the fifty-four congregations, twenty congregations serve minority and/or
under-served communities.

We welcome new faith communities’ participation in the Energy Efficiency Initiative. To learn more or express interest in joining, please complete the Energy Efficiency Initiative Participation Survey found on this FCGG.org website under the TAKE ACTION tab. 

Please send any questions to Facilities@fcgg.org