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It's Getting Hot in Here

Our Vision

Grand Aspirations grew out of a number of grass-roots initiatives in St. Paul, Minnesota by a group of Macalester students in MacCARES, a campus group. Here in the Twin Cities, students, labor groups, city officials, businesses, non-profit organizations, and community members have been collaborating on various climate positive initiatives for the past two years, generating a number of ongoing and rapidly growing initiatives with little institutional infrastructure. As we began to work more and more closely with grassroots youth leaders around the country, we because increasingly aware of the common need for organizational infrastructure to support and empower the grand aspirations of dedicated youth leaders in many communities across the country. The power of these youth initiatives is sweeping; through collaboration and partnership, our efforts are creating climate positive solutions around the world. In order to create a public face, scale-up, ensure the longevity and sustainability of existing projects, and foster the emergence of new projects, Macalester students established a formal non-profit organization, christened Grand Aspirations, which serves as an incubator or “think-and-do tank” for bold grassroots initiatives that would otherwise have no recognizable institutional infrastructure.

Grand Aspirations empowers, connects, and supports youth leaders as they create innovative, self-sustaining, and inter-dependent initiatives that systemically integrate climate and energy solutions, economic security, and social justice.

Our Philosophy

People are global warming solutions.  We are a force for change, a force that can transcend the old energy paradigm to build the present and future that we know is possible; one that is both equitable and sustainable. Our social, economic and environmental problems will be solved creatively by drawing together resources, forces, ideas and energy from many different people and places. People in every community hold the ideas and inspiration for change, and we believe in those people as we believe in ourselves.  

Grand Aspirations will:

• Provide the institutional structure through which aspiring individuals and groups can house their initiatives and support themselves while devoting their time to building healthy communities that are socially, economically, and ecologically sustainable. 
• Incubate new independent entities that focus on building capacity for change through creative open-space organizing and inter-organizational collaboration. 
• Foster networking and collaboration between different initiatives to share ideas and support each other’s needs.

Structure

Grand Aspirations will be staffed and managed by “partners” who carry out and implement its initiatives, set the course of the initiative, and select new partners as they are identified or asked to join. The Board of Directors will have the right to over-rule the selection of any partner or program, and will guide decisions around the provision of staff support for the logistical operations of Grand Aspirations and the use of organizational funds, rather than those that are program-specific. Grand Aspirations partners will operate the programs that they start with funds that they raise through grants and donations using Grand Aspirations’ fiscal agency and support from Grand Aspirations partners and external allies.  Initial partners will be the youth leaders involved in establishing Grand Aspirations, and they will identify/ approve at request additional partners.

Grand Aspirations will choose, monitor, interconnect, and empower community based programs, but individual partners starting such programs will shape their development and structure of these initiatives with the goal of creating self-sustaining and independent structures that build capacity for the whole climate movement. The organization will consist of groups of people working across the country on individual projects, people working to attract large grants and investors, people documenting and organizing the network of initiatives, and people who handle accounting.  Point-people from each project will connect on a weekly basis to discuss the progress and needs of each initiative.    

Grand Aspirations will document all of the projects on our website and circulate a newsletter to donors semi-annually to share progress with our supporters.

Join us as part of the Summer of Solutions