Heirloom East Bay hosts a small scale farm and intentional Christian community, which started in 2013 as The Possibility Project. Heirloom East Bay exists to nurture a diverse community of people that practice hospitality, sustainability, and creativity in the midst of a busy culture. In living differently, they bear witness to the Love of God in our world. 

Heirloom East Bay’s main motivation for going solar with RE-volv was sustainability. Heirloom East Bay says, “A key area of focus for us is sustainability. Solar, like many other ecologically sustainable efforts, is also an opportunity for us to be economically sustainable as an organization by stabilizing costs. This will allow us to focus our financial resources in our other two areas of focus as a non-profit, hospitality & creativity.” 

How Heirloom Will Utilize Their Solar Savings 

Heirloom has three areas of impact as a nonprofit, including sustainability, creativity, and hospitality.

1. The first is modeling a path toward sustainability, where they want to share their story of progress and encourage others along their journey.

2. The second is that they are a community focused on developing creativity. The savings will allow them to focus more of their time and resources on engaging the broader community in this, as they believe everyone is creative. 

3. The third impact area, which is deeply connected to both sustainability and creativity is hospitality. Guests and partners of Heirloom are invited into restorative practices and to share in Heirloom’s lived values. 

By moving forward with this solar project, Heirloom East Bay hopes to share their pathway toward sustainability for others as well. They are working with several other local Bay Area churches to share their solar contract, legal review process, and decision matrix so that other local churches might find a practical guide to upgrading their power supply from the grid to the sun!

Going Solar with RE-volv 

RE-volv works with community-serving nonprofits to help these nonprofits go solar at no upfront cost. Heirloom Co-Pastor Jeffrey Purganan says, “We didn't currently have the financial assets to pay for the full up-front costs. RE-volv gave us the flexibility to update our energy system, while reducing our impact and dependency on fossil fuels, plan for long term financial costs, and save money now! The attention to work with our needs and responsive communication were also critical components of feeling comfortable in a long-term partnership with RE-volv.” 

Heirloom East Bay’s decision to go solar was also guided by their community values and consensus approval, involving their community and members. Heirloom staff says that, “Everyone who is a part of our community sees the value in upgrading our power options. Members were involved in both the decision to pursue solar as well as giving input into the design preferences.”