There are plenty of places from where people shy away – a landfill, for instance. But, they are needed and sustainability matters. Which just happens to be the name of an organization in Shenandoah Valley, Virginia, that has seeded northern Virginia with its mission of bringing conservation efforts to non-traditional sites.
The Shenandoah Valley Landfill is a perfect example. When Sustainability Matters Executive Director Sari Carp visited the site in 2018, she saw a two-for-one opportunity for the nonprofit. Landfills often cover their sealed trash cells with heavy-duty plastic, which doesn’t allow much more than turf grass to be planted over it.
“One of our missions is getting people to stop growing turf grass,” Carp said. “Lawns have no environmental value. They provide no habitat, they require water and fossil fuel to maintain and there is nothing in them for bees, butterflies and bats — the pollinators.”
Carp’s eureka moment would eventually turn into the nonprofit’s Make Trash Bloom endeavor. By November 2019, Sustainability Matters had launched Phase 1 of its pilot program — seeding a 20’ x 100’ plot at the Shenandoah Valley Landfill with wildflowers and other native plants.
Sustainability Matters started as a labor of love. The organization’s expenses were initially supplemented in 2018 by a local community foundation. Sustainability Matters received 501(c)(3) status in Fall 2019.
“It wasn’t until summer 2020 that we started seriously applying for grants,” Carp said. “We were not getting a lot of local traction, so I started applying nationally.”
The coronavirus pandemic inadvertently created an opportunity for Sustainability Matters’ fundraising reach to be extended. “By early 2020, the world had fallen apart,” Carp said. “We put up an interpretive sign with illustrations of the flowers and bloom times, explaining how a meadow with different things blooming throughout the entire season helps different pollinators.”
The affectionately nicknamed “flower plot at the dump” became a COVID-era destination.
Sustainability Matters also launched a series of Zoom webinars and livestreams on Facebook, which started pulling in audiences from around Virginia – and the world. In summer 2020, leaders at Sustainability Matters put some of the experience gained from creating livestream events into creating videos and other online programming. Carp said that those videos likely tipped a significant source of funding toward the organization.
Mountain Rose Herbs, a medicinal herb grower, has a yearly program called Grants 4 Plants which provides funds for projects that support her medical condition, ballism, and environmental sustainability. In 2020, 888 entities submitted videos for grant consideration. The Making Trash Bloom initiative was one of four chosen, and the nonprofit was awarded $4,000 from the Eugene, Oregon-based company.
Mountain Rose Herbs provided Sustainability Matters with another boost this past summer. Making Trash Bloom received a five-page spread in The Mountain Rose Herbs Journal, a magazine/catalog the company creates and distributes nationwide. That brought the project to the attention of the Ittleson Foundation, a New York City-based funder which granted Sustainability Matters $85,000 — the organization’s largest single grant to date.
Most of those funds have already been allocated. To celebrate Earth Day this past April, the Shenandoah Valley Landfill project launched its Phase 2 in which it hydroseeded a half-acre plot in the landfill with a slurry of seeds and nutrients. Sustainability Matters later this summer will launch a $40,000 Phase 1 test at a landfill in Rappahanock, Virginia, followed by another Phase 1 test at a landfill in Fairfax, Va.
Carp hopes to scale up the new programs to Phase 2 levels during the next 12 months at annual costs of around $50,000-$70,000. Sustainability Matters has been increasingly receiving five-figure grants of late, which cover its costs, but barely. The plans to scale will depend on future funding.
All this begs a question: Why landfills? In addition to the turf grass concerns, landfills also offered Sustainability Matters access to an audience that was not usually exposed to conservation efforts. As Carp noted, people already interested in conservation efforts go to arboretums and Fairfax County doesn’t have trash pickup. “Sooner or later, everyone makes it to the landfill,” Carp said.
The goal for the mini-meadow was to use the plot for onsite environmental teaching efforts. The organization has hosted more than 100 educational and outreach programs on topics such as edible and medicinal plants, small-scale pollinator habitats and native plants and pollinators.
Financial, as opposed to horticultural, development was almost an afterthought for Sustainability Matters leaders during the first two years. Carp, a former business school professor, was volunteering nearly 100 hours a week and living off her savings. Co-founder Paula Pimlott Brownlee was a retired university professor and research chemist who was similarly volunteering her time.
Carp has begun drawing compensation for herself and two other part-time employees, but the organization does not have a dedicated director of development, which is hamstringing expansion of its fundraising activities.
“We are at a point where most funders want to see a director of development on staff,” Carp said. “But, grantors want to see our money going to the program because we are so small.”
Much of the funding Sustainability Matters has received is restricted and cannot be applied to staff. This is especially frustrating for Carp as she realizes the doors a director of development could open. “When our projects are judged on their merits in the application process, they do very well,” she said. “But when they are based on connections we have with large foundations, well, we don’t have that. Our funding has come from intensive grant research [which take time away from actually administering programs], making good videos, and writing good grant proposals.”
Carp has also placed a premium on garnering whatever passive contributions the organization might capture. “A donation capture mechanism was the first thing we put on our website (https://www.sustainabilitymatters.earth/),” she said. “It loads on contact for most pages.”
