What we choose to do with our money is unavoidably a reflection of who we are. What if you had an opportunity to invest directly in the future of your community, your state, and your planet? How would you react?

This is, essentially, what we’re inviting you to consider. We are consciously creating that future, project by project, community by community, in New Jersey. And in so doing, we’re creating an example for the planet by helping transform New Jersey into a cleaner, more prosperous, and more sustainable state.

NJPACE is only one part of this. As the Center for Regenerative Community Solutions (CRCS), our mission is a broader one:

1. Providing local communities with educational services on the effects of climate change and other related issues that can affect their long term ability to regenerate their ecological and economic systems,
2. Providing local government institutions with assistance to undertake actions and initiatives to reduce and ameliorate present and expected extreme weather and other climate change effects,
3. Providing small businesses and non-profit organizations with funding to undertake actions and initiatives to reduce and ameliorate present and expected climate change effects in low and moderate-income communities, including communities impacted by Hurricane Sandy.

PACE is one tool. We think it’s an important one, that can leverage mainstream capital to finance the transition to clean, renewable (and incidentally affordable) energy for buildings throughout the state. This in turn will create jobs and economic development, with ripple effects within each community where it’s being implemented. And we’re assisting the legislature in fashioning an amended law, that will facilitate the process and expand PACE financing to cover a wide range of resiliency needs.

But it’s still only one tool, and it needs to be applied properly if it is to be successful. To begin with, the program must be impeccable in its overall design and implementation: protecting the municipality, the property owner, and the investor in as many ways as possible; approving only appropriately-designed and implemented energy and resiliency improvements; and monitoring the results in order to report them back to our constituency, which as a 501(c)(3) is the community as a whole.

Just as importantly, however, it needs to be leveraged further to make the difference we care about, which is creating a world that works — a world that’s sustainable, in which every individual has the opportunity to flourish, and which is designed to support both individual and social self-actualization.

This is not a predictable future. It has no chance whatsoever, however, if we don’t create it, moment by moment, in our dialogue with the world and with one another.

The “world that works” is thus the context for our work, the lens that we look through, to bring focus to each of our projects. At the state and local level it’s PACE. We also have a role in sponsoring the development of a viable global climate mitigation strategy, G4CM, using a new currency designed to recognize the true economic value of carbon mitigation. Other initiatives are also in the works, and we have an open invitation to other change agents to join us. (For more information, please visit CRCSolutions.org.)

But we can’t do any of this without donors, so we need to cultivate those who see the present moment in history as the opportunity to make a difference, by providing the resources to make this happen. Please visit our crowdfunding web site, and make a donation — however large or small — that represents the stand you want to be for the future of your world. Thanks.