Green Corps, Inc.

Objective 1: Conduct widespread outreach to colleges and universities and recruit top candidates for the Green Corps program

Through in-person and online outreach at college campuses and a centralized online publicity effort, Green Corps' recruitment efforts generate 1,700-2,000 applicants annually. Our goal is to recruit young people who are ready to launch their careers as professional environmental organizers and advocates. We will launch a massive recruitment campaign by conducting outreach to hundreds of college campuses, procuring recommendations from other environmental organizations, speaking with our alumni and using new media tools such as Facebook and Google ads. Our candidates come from a broad array of colleges and universities – including top Ivy League schools, large state schools, and smaller liberal arts schools. We plan to also continue to identify potential candidates for our program through offering environmental internship opportunities with our alumni to college students as we did the past two years, to great success.

Objective 2: Conduct 7 weeks of classroom training for 25 to 35 trainees

Green Corps will organize seven weeks of classroom training that will teach 25-35 trainees about the pressing environmental issues facing this country and provide them with the skills they need to be environmental organizers. Green Corps' classroom curriculum includes skills trainings such as developing a campaign, increasing public awareness, recruiting volunteers, securing media coverage, integrating new media tools and fundraising. Green Corps staff and graduates, as well as members of our Advisory Board and Board of Directors, lead Green Corps trainings. In addition, we rely on experienced trainers from organizations such as the Sierra Club, Environment America, National Wildlife Federation and more.

Objective 3: Provide field support to eight to ten environmental campaigns

After completing the initial training in August, the trainees will begin working on campaigns in communities across the nation. Each trainee will lead a series of three to five campaigns in partnership with leading environmental groups and will gain hands-on experience in environmental organizing. Organizations we have worked with in the past year include the Sierra Club, Food & Water Watch, Conservation Lands Foundation, Dogwood Alliance, and more. Though the specific campaign work will vary, all Green Corps trainees will pursue tactics such as generating media coverage about the campaign; securing endorsements from community organizations, religious organizations, and community leaders; organizing letter writing campaigns; and setting up visibility events

Recruitment:

We have a strategy of focusing on 25 of the top colleges and universities in the country for our recruitment work, particularly those institutions that have a strong environmental studies program and/or environmental activity on campus, as well as those that have produced Green Corps organizers in past years. We also work, however, to cast a wide net to hundreds of other colleges and universities across the country through outreach to career placement offices, professors, and student groups.

Training:

We focus our classroom trainings on 18 modules that we introduce in our three-week August training, and build upon those trainings throughout the year through advanced trainings and workshops. Our Assistant Organizing Directors also complete site visits with all organizers at least once per campaign to give feedback in the field as well.

Field campaigns:

We work to engage in campaigns that are high-impact and also provide an excellent training experience for our organizers. We work with campaign partners to craft strategic, ambitious, and achievable campaign plans that move the ball forward on critically important environmental campaigns of the day.

Green Corps is fortunate to be equipped with a talented staff of three Organizing Directors, a Recruitment team, a Development team, and an Executive Director who have nearly a cumulative 40 years of experience in grassroots environmental organizing and organization building.

We have an engaged, experienced, and visionary board of directors that guides our priorities and direction; we have a strong grassroots base of individual donors who consistently support our work. We also draw on 23 years of institutional knowledge and experience to guide our endeavors.

With our alumni community now numbering over 350, we're able to tap into a deep and vibrant network of alumni who support Green Corps by volunteering their time at interviews and trainings, by helping to lock in campaign partnerships, and by supporting us financially.

A few recent highlights include:

• The Conservation Lands Foundation and Green Corps alumnus Sam Goldman ('04) hired a Green Corps organizer, Laura Mistretta, to help build public support in Las Vegas for protecting the Garden and Coal Valleys of Nevada, which are valuable habitat for animals such as the sage grouse, mule deer, and nearly two dozen other threatened and sensitive species. Laura worked within a broad coalition to turn out nearly 300 people to a community meeting hosted by Senator Harry Reid's office, and delivered over 1,000 petitions in support of the campaign. She also built a volunteer group of ten community leaders ranging from ecologists to the head of an arts center to UNLV student leaders, who ended up forming a "Protect Basin and Range" group, which ultimately helped to successfully establish the National Monument.

• Ten Green Corps organizers fanned out on college campuses across the country this fall to elevate the issue of climate change among millenials heading into the Paris climate talks. Recruited by Green Corps organizers, groups of student leaders put on massive visibility events that turned out over 4,000 students to raise awareness about climate change as part of the Know Tomorrow Day of Action, prompting President Obama to write a letter thanking the students for their support of climate action. Overall, the Green Corps organizers on this campaign engaged nearly 55,000 students this fall in the fight against climate change.

We are working to expand the size of the program, update and improve our training curriculum, and work on even more hard-hitting and pressing environmental campaigns.