The Community Weatherization Coalition (CWC) is a grassroots community coalition made up of citizens, religious leaders, and NGOs concerned about Alachua County citizens spending a large percentage of their income on home energy bills. Our mission is to help our neighbors save energy and water and reduce their utility bills, by engaging volunteers, building community, and learning together.
The CWC developed over several years, starting with the faith-based community and evolving into a collaboration of nonprofit, government, faith-based, business, and university partners working together to address an unmet need within Alachua county.
CWC’s story began in 2005 when church members in Gainesville, Florida reported paying $300-500 each month for utilities. For some, this amount was 25% of their income. Recognizing that this energy burden seemed higher than average, local church leaders affiliated with Action Network reached out to Gainesville Regional Utilities (GRU) to hold a public meeting at Springhill Missionary Baptist Church. After looking into the concerns, six regional agencies revealed that they were receiving an average of 250 calls per month, or an equivalent of 18,000 residents a year, requesting assistance with their utility bills.
The group partnered with a local critical home repair organization, Rebuilding Gainesville (now Rebuilding Together North Central Florida, RTNCF), to request the development of an energy audit program that would assist Alachua county residents decrease their energy burden and monthly utility bills. Volunteers would be trained by local professionals to perform home energy audits for the homes receiving Rebuild’s home renovation and repair assistance in 2007.
Members of this newly formed coalition met monthly, and systematically worked to resolve a series of questions and issues. By October of 2007, a committee structure was developed with a Case Management Committee, a Volunteer Operations Committee and a Fund-Raising/Development Team. A small, representative Executive Committee defined the CWC Mission, Goals and logo, and signed the first memorandum of understanding with GRU.
In 2008, grants and donations allowed the CWC to hire a part-time Volunteer Coordinator and to begin operations. CWC’s first 23 volunteer energy auditors were trained by February of 2008, and bi-annual trainings were held twice yearly from 2008-2011 to continue to train and develop volunteers. A loss of funding and of key personnel caused a decline in activity from 2012-2013. Since early 2015 the CWC renewed its activities with a full-time staff member, a volunteer Executive Committee, and an Advisory Board with representatives from key partners.
In 2016, the CWC received a two-year Demonstration of Energy-Efficient Developments (DEED) grant through GRU from the American Public Power Association (APPA). The grant supported improvements to the CWC home energy audit process using community-based social marketing methods, and quantitative measurements of the impacts of CWC audits on home energy and water usage. Read about our impact in our DEED Grant Report.
In late 2018, the CWC hired an additional staff person to help increase households reached. In 2019, 172 families took part in CWC’s free home energy tune-up services, and an additional 18 households were reached with our next level upgrade program. In March 2020, a global pandemic brought CWC’s in-home services to a halt for nearly 16 months. During that time, we developed a new Do It Yourself (DIY) home energy tune-up program which has served 170 households to date. In home services reopened the summer of 2021 and two additional staff joined our team in February, 2023. We have now reached over 1,800 families with our DIY and in-home tune-up programs!
Please click here to read our 2023 Annual Report. We are so grateful for our grantors, individual donors, volunteers, and supporters and we look forward to helping more of our neighbors save money and resources, together!
