VisitGainesville Launches Green Grant Program to Carbon Offset Meetings and Conferences

Gainesville, FL – (April 27, 2010) --VisitGainesville ( the Gainesville/Alachua County Visitors and Convention Bureau) announced that it is offering a new grant program for meeting  planners who want to carbon offset the conferences they conduct in Alachua County.

The new grant, VisitGainesville Great Green Grant, offers planners up to $500 in carbon offsets in either of two categories –  reforestation  or low-income housing “weatherization,” also known as energy efficiency retrofitting– in Alachua County.

VisitGainesville initiated a pilot program with the assistance and participation of Elena Sachs, meeting planner for the 2010 Southeast Partners in Flight meeting at the University of Florida Hilton Conference in Gainesville, FL from March 9 – 11.   Prior to the conference, Sachs surveyed the approximately 70 conference delegates asking them the number of days each attended the meeting, their mode of transportation, number of hotel nights booked and the distance from Gainesville each delegate traveled.   This data was then given to Gainesville-based environmental nonprofit Earth Givers Inc. who calculated that the conference produced approximately 14.5 tons of carbon.

 “During the pilot process,  we were certainly impressed with initial results, but also recognized  and are therefore  tweaking and streamlining the data collecting process during delegate registration, making it easier for the meeting planner and enable the carbon offset calculation process to get started sooner,” said Nancy Fischer, CMP, director of sales for VisitGainesville. “The sooner the calculations are tabulated, the sooner the meeting planner can report the results to the conference attendees.”

“Including this environmentally conscious component to our conference certainly made an important and positive impact in the minds of delegates,” said Sachs.  The Partners in Flight opted for the reforestation offset option. “To know that we are now the proud ‘donors’ of 20 newly planted indigenous trees and increasing the tree canopy in this area was an incredible and pleasant addition to our conference,” said Sachs.   

“We purposefully made this grant easy to qualify for and available year round, which we believe will encourage planners to apply for it,” explained Fischer.  “After successfully kicking-off the Florida Green Lodging Conference here in Gainesville in fall 2008, we were anxious to follow up with another green meeting initiative. We believe this green grant does that.   It is philosophically aligned with Gainesville’s green meeting mission and even though we’re certainly proud to be one of the pioneers of conference carbon offset efforts, we hope that we aren’t for long and that other CVB’s hop onboard soon,” added Fischer. 

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Fischer explained that the two carbon offset choices were selected for two primary reasons.  “First, we believe that locally generated, locally applied is key; and these options provide a high ‘green’ return with a relatively small investment,” said Fischer.  According to Jacob Cravey, co-founder of Earth Givers Inc., on average, you can expect a $30 return in energy reduction for every dollar invested in energy efficiency projects and 1 to 1 ratio of trees to the ton of carbon sequestered.    

For additional information  or to apply for the Green Grant or  VisitGainesville’s  two other conference grants offered each Spring and Fall contact Nancy Fischer, VisitGainesville’s  director of sales by e-mail at:  nfischer@visitgainesville.com or by phone:  352/374-5260.

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