The Sustainable Endowments Institute (SEI) is a nonprofit organization based in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country Continental United States, primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., ...

that is engaged in research and education to advance

sustainability Specific definitions of sustainability are difficult to agree on and have varied in the literature and over time. The concept of sustainability can be used to guide decisions at the global, national, and individual levels (e.g. sustainable livi ...

in operations and endowment practices. Founded in 2005, SEI is a special project of

Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors (RPA) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that currently advises on and manages more than $200 million in annual charitable giving. Its headquarters are in New York City New York, oft ...

. SEI is located in

Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...

, Massachusetts.

Projects

College Sustainability Report Card

The College Sustainability Report Card, called the Green Report Card, was the first sustainability ranking survey inside higher education. SEI released the College Sustainability Report Card between 2006 and 2012. The sustainability survey collaborated with over 300 schools in North America, sampling colleges and universities in all 50 states and 8 Canadian provinces. The Report Card has been covered in numerous media outlets, including

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

BusinessWeek ''Bloomberg Businessweek'', previously known as ''BusinessWeek'', is an American weekly business magazine published fifty times a year. Since 2009, the magazine is owned by New York City-based Bloomberg L.P. The magazine debuted in New York City ...

Forbes ''Forbes'' () is an American business magazine owned by Integrated Whale Media Investments and the Forbes family. Published eight times a year, it features articles on finance, industry, investing, and marketing topics. ''Forbes'' also r ...

, and

CNN Money CNN Business (formerly CNN Money) is a financial news and information website, operated by CNN. The website was originally formed as a joint venture between CNN.com and Time Warner's ''Fortune'' and ''Money'' magazines. Since the spin-off of Tim ...

. The project surveyed administrators, students, and campus community members on 9 sustainability-related categories: administration,

climate change and energy In the 21st century, the earth's climate and its energy policy interact and their relationship is studied and governed by a variety of national and international institutions. The relationships between energy-resource depletion, climate change, ...

, food and recycling, green building, student involvement, transportation, endowment transparency, investment priorities, and stakeholder engagement. SEI supplemented these surveys with publicly available information to assess a grade, from an F to an A, for each institution based on the total number of points earned for each category. The Report Card was indefinitely suspended on March 30, 2012.

The Billion Dollar Green Challenge

The Billion Dollar Green Challenge (The Challenge) is an initiative to promote the revolving loan fund model to finance sustainability projects on college, university, and other nonprofit institutional campuses. The initiative advocates for increased investment in

efficient energy use Efficient energy use, sometimes simply called energy efficiency, is the process of reducing the amount of energy required to provide products and services. For example, insulating a building allows it to use less heating and cooling energy to ...

and sustainable efficiency improvements, with a goal one billion dollars in self-managed revolving funds called green revolving funds. The Billion Dollar Green Challenge program was covered in a cover story in ''Business Officer'' magazine published by the National Association of College and University Business Officers (NACUBO).

The Green Revolving Investment Tracking System

The Green Revolving Investment Tracking System (GRITS) is an online

web application A web application (or web app) is application software that is accessed using a web browser. Web applications are delivered on the World Wide Web to users with an active network connection. History In earlier computing models like client-serv ...

that allows organizations to track and calculate project-level energy, financial, and carbon data. The tool was developed by the Institute between October 2011 and April 2014, with the GRITS 1.0 version launched on Earth Day, April 22, 2014. GRITS was featured in a New York Times article "Investing in Energy Efficiency Pays Off" in February 2015.

References

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External links

Sustainable Endowments Institute Website
Non-profit organizations based in Boston Organizations based in Boston Sustainability organizations Sustainability in the United States Organizations established in 2005