Kate Meis: Civic Spark Plug

Courtesy Kate Meis

January 5, 2016 | Read Time: 1 minute

Kate Meis, 34
Executive Director, Local Government Commission
Sacramento, Calif.

California is in the grip of a record-breaking drought, leaving many in the Golden State wondering how to deal with climate change.

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Kate Meis is coming up with answers, one community at a time. She started CivicSpark, a program that places AmeriCorps members with local governments throughout the state to work on energy projects. In the program’s first year, members helped municipalities work with homeowners and businesses to reduce energy use, promote public transit, and streamline the process for getting permits to install solar-energy systems.

Ms. Meis and her colleagues at the Local Government Commission, a nonprofit in Sacramento, have worked closely with the Corporation for National and Community Service, which has started Resilience AmeriCorps to expand the idea nationally.

For Ms. Meis, local government is the ultimate laboratory. “Working locally, you’re closer to the problems,” she says. “You have a scale that’s more conducive to innovative solutions.”

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About the Author

NICOLE WALLACE

Features Editor

Nicole Wallace is features editor of the Chronicle of Philanthropy. She has written about innovation in the nonprofit world, charities’ use of data to improve their work and to boost fundraising, advanced technologies for social good, and hybrid efforts at the intersection of the nonprofit and for-profit sectors, such as social enterprise and impact investing.Nicole spearheaded the Chronicle’s coverage of Hurricane Katrina recovery efforts on the Gulf Coast and reported from India on the role of philanthropy in rebuilding after the South Asian tsunami. She started at the Chronicle in 1996 as an editorial assistant compiling The Nonprofit Handbook.Before joining the Chronicle, Nicole worked at the Association of Farmworker Opportunity Programs and served in the inaugural class of the AmeriCorps National Civilian Community Corps.A native of Columbia, Pa., she holds a bachelor’s degree in foreign service from Georgetown University.