Dubuque Featured in Knight Foundation Community Information Challenge

In a newly released study published this February by the Knight Foundation, the Community Foundation of Greater Dubuque was one of four foundations nationwide to be featured for using information to engage residents in conserving the environment.

The Knight Foundation’s Community Information Challenge encourages foundations throughout the nation to become leaders in ensuring the community’s information needs are met.

The study highlighted the successes of Dubuque 2.0, a community-wide sustainability effort led by the Community Foundation, the City of Dubuque and several other community partners. The Knight Foundation’s case study specifically focused on the project’s successes in heightened awareness and behavioral changes in Dubuque residents.

Dubuque 2.0 was able to gain a strong following online and offline throughout the community with sustainability challenges and games, greater access to sharing of sustainability information, friendly competition between neighbors to enhance resource-saving programs and sustainability events, such as Community Café. Because of these efforts, Dubuque residents in an IBM Smarter Cities pilot program were able to reduce their water usage by 6.6% on average, and 69% of Dubuque 2.0 website users indicated that they were doing more to promote sustainability in their own lives and throughout the community.

Currently, Dubuque 2.0 is being integrated into Sustainable Dubuque, the City of Dubuque’s sustainability initiative. This will allow the program to become more financially viable and have a long-term home. Eric Dregne, Vice President of Strategic Initiatives at CFGD said of the merge, “As we continued, we saw that our initiatives could be more sustainable by combining the best of each partners work to ensure a sustainable community in the long term.”

To view the case study in its entirety, please click here.

Knight Foundation supports transformational ideas that promote quality journalism, advance media innovation, engage communities and foster the arts. Knight Foundation believes that democracy thrives when people and communities are informed and engaged. More at www.knightfoundation.org.