Sustainable Fox Valley is an independent community-education project that carries forward the mission of the original Sustainable Fox Valley initiative: helping households, neighborhoods, businesses and municipalities in northeast Wisconsin create sustainable communities. Our guides, articles and checklists are free to read and share. Keeping them that way, and turning them into real projects on real streets, depends on people like you.
You do not need money or expertise to help. Most of the support that matters is time, connections and word of mouth. Pick whatever fits your life right now.
Give your time
Volunteer
Help at cleanups and garden work days, set up for events, facilitate a conversation, write or photograph for the site, or lend tech skills. Many roles take just a few hours a season.
Host a study circle
Invite 6 to 12 neighbors, coworkers or members of your congregation to talk through a shared topic over four to six sessions. You provide the room and the invitations; the discussion guide does the heavy lifting.
Host an event
Have a meeting room, a backyard, a library branch or a shoreline that needs attention? Partner with us on a workshop, cleanup or garden day.
Share what we make
Every guide on this site was written to be practical for Fox Valley conditions: Wisconsin winters, local utilities, the Fox River and Lake Winnebago. Sharing one with the right person at the right moment can make a bigger difference than you might think.
- Forward our winter home energy guide to a friend who just bought an older house.
- Send the backyard composting guide to your block club or garden group in spring.
- Share the neighborhood energy challenge guide with a teacher, scout leader or congregation green team.
- Print a guide for a community bulletin board, library display or newsletter. Please credit Sustainable Fox Valley and link back to the original page.
Sponsor a kit for a school or neighborhood
A single kit can get a whole group started. If you, your business or your faith community would like to put materials into the hands of people who could not otherwise buy them, you can sponsor a kit for a school classroom, a youth group, a neighborhood association or a community garden.
Study Circle Starter Kit
A facilitator guide plus eight participant workbooks: everything a group needs to run its first series.
Backyard Composter Kit
A great fit for a school garden or community garden that wants to close the loop on food scraps.
Rain Barrel Kit
A hands-on stormwater lesson for a nature center, school or shared garden.
- Choose a kit. Pick the kit that fits the group you have in mind, or ask us to suggest one.
- Tell us who it is for. Name a specific school or group, or ask us to match your kit with a group that has asked for one. Add a note at checkout or contact us.
- We coordinate delivery. We confirm details with the receiving group and ship the kit to them, with a short note crediting you if you would like.
Buy a service or kit
Our paid services and kits are designed to be genuinely useful on their own, and purchases help fund the free educational content on this site: articles, checklists, study circle guides and event materials. When you book a Home Energy & Waste Assessment, bring a Natural Step Workshop to your workplace or pick up a kit for your yard, you are also helping keep those resources free for everyone else.
Browse everything in the shop.
Suggest a topic or project
What should we write about next? Which question do you keep hearing from neighbors? Is there a creek, park or vacant lot in your part of the valley that could use attention? Your suggestions shape what we publish and which projects we take on. Good suggestions are specific: “How do I compost in an apartment in Appleton?” is easier to answer well than “more about waste.”
You can also help by pointing out anything on the site that is out of date. Rebates, programs and rules change often, and a quick note from a reader helps us keep guides accurate.
Spread the word in person
Finally, one of the simplest ways to support local sustainability is to talk about it. Mention a guide at a neighborhood meeting, bring a friend to a cleanup day, or ask your village board or city council what they are doing about energy costs in public buildings. Community change in the Fox Cities has always grown one conversation at a time.