After a decade of service and impact at The Community Purchasing Alliance, our much-valued colleague, collaborator, and founding Executive Director Felipe Witchger is moving on to exciting new endeavors in impact-first investing with his new project, the Francesco Collaborative.
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At CPA-Coop we bring decision makers together to tackle common challenges - finding solutions that are stronger and more resilient than if we’d try to go about the process alone. Our trust and camaraderie is especially evident in the wake of COVID 19 and the protests that gripped our nation.
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Now more than ever, CPA Co-op is focused on listening and responding to the needs of our community. We’ve been in communication with leaders in five regions of the country, and the vast majority of them have indicated a willingness and need to continue purchasing PPE and other COVID Response supplies in the anticipation of reopening by the end of the summer.
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It all started with an avocado. I was a teacher in Detroit with a classroom that door didn’t lock and an unavoidable open door policy. Students sought refuge from the lunchtime fray in my quiet classroom, and thus our “Lunch Bunch” was born.
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Here is an opportunity where you can make a good decisions for our own institution and contribute to building a vehicle to tackle systemic racism in our economics.
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All of us at the Community Purchasing Alliance wish to say, in no uncertain terms, that we stand with Black communities and everyone who is hurting in the wake of George Floyd’s violent death in Minneapolis, Minnesota. We are saddened and outraged that in 2020 America, we are still losing beloved members of our community to systemic racism and police brutality.
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When the COVID-19 crisis arrived in the US, it was clear that, because of the virus' airborne contagion nature, that PPE (personal protective equipment) would be needed in healthcare centers and for anyone who would be in touch with other people. And given the many supply shortages (and long lead times), CPA Co-op wants to make sure our members and participants have enough masks, sanitizer, thermometers to be able to open safely. Our reopening blog series is a synthesis of all that we’ve learned from our research and conversations with members and participants.
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Last week, 150 congregational leaders from across the country gathered to learn from one another and discuss a response to the recent economic crisis.They shared the challenges they were facing, administratively, financially, and ministerially. Across regions and denominations, we found common concerns around decreased giving, caring for church employees, the pros and cons of virtual worship, and the way COVID-19 was affecting their ability to serve the most vulnerable among us.
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One of things that I wish my seminary would have offered when I was a student was a course on church facility management. I soon discovered, upon entering my first pastorate, that the maintenance cost of the church facility can severely hinder the congregation’s ability to fund the operating and programmatic side of ministry. Every dollar spent on the electric bill, trash pickup, cleaning, and building repairs was a dollar not spent on furthering the work and mission of the church. While these expenses are a necessary part of being a property-owning congregation, pastors and trustees are often confronted with decisions amidst complex industries, misleading sales tactics, and burdensome contracts. We do not always have the time or capacity to ensure that we get the best pricing by researching policies, vetting vendors, and getting multiple bids for all of our facility needs. As a result, we often end up paying more than we should for the basic services that ensure we can keep the building and our ministry up and running.
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When the Dupont Commons affordable housing development was approved 15 years ago in the Fort Dupont neighborhood of Southeast Washington DC, housing density required that a substantial parcel be left open to meet building codes. That land became something of a blight; it required basic maintenance, accrued stormwater management fees, and was littered with garbage and illegal dumping. Joe Naroditsky, Director of Solar Programs for CPA, spent two and a half years pitching the land to solar companies, but kept hearing that the terrain wasn’t ideal for solar panel placement and that the project seemed daunting because the costs of development were uncertain.
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Team members of CPA Co-op recently had the chance to meet with leaders of Randall Memorial to learn more about their deep roots in Northeast DC as well as their 108 year old roof that was (not surprisingly) leaking and in need of constant repair after a century of use.
Randall Memorial United Methodist Church was founded in June of 1912 in Northeast DC. Standing in their beautiful sanctuary, one cannot help but imagine the thousands of worship services, meals, acts of kindness, choral concerts, assemblies that have taken place under their roof.
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The Community Purchasing Alliance is starting to capture the attention of conferences and radio outlets from across the country. Here’s an incomplete list of all the speaking engagements and interviews we have coming up as well as recordings of those that have already happened:
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As CPA deepens its investment in the DC region and continues to look to growth in new regions, we convened a group of inspiring partners and entrepreneurial strategists interacting with the church and co-op sectors today. In a recent video call, our Executive Director, Felipe Witchger, reached out to colleagues across disciplines to do just that.
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The industry has changed - too many suppliers will offer a low price, only to pass-through overcharges later on. CPA rigorously vets suppliers by analyzing the utility bills of hundreds of organizations to see how suppliers perform. Through this process, CPA is committed to achieving not just savings, but reliability. Constellation is one of a handful of suppliers CPA has pre-qualified to work with the Cooperative based on the strength of their contract, their observed business practices and their overall commitment to transparency and reliability.
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With the recent Amazon HQ2 bidding wars, it is clear cities need a more thoughtful approach to local economic development. As more nonprofits consider what a deliberate approach to re-making the economy might look like, we want to offer our community purchasing co-op model as a complement to the growing work of universities and hospitals trying to refocus on local, equitable economic development.
Last year over 100 small anchor institutions in Washington DC purchased $16.7 million of goods & services through the Community Purchasing Alliance Cooperative (CPA), with almost $10 million going to minority owned businesses.
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Is it your full time job to manage a facility? Perhaps you have years of experience behind you, and you feel confident in your property know-how. OR maybe you are like Rev. Martha Clark at St. Augustine’s Episcopal in DC. She told our ED Felipe last week that at her church “none of us are property savvy at all.”
Click the video below to hear Rev. Clark share her testimonial of working with on of our preferred vendors.
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We invited leaders in our member network to share their experience and insights to ensure that your next Janitorial RFP will run as smoothly as possible. Click to watch our video and learn more.
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Strength in numbers is not just a tagline for CPA Co-op, it is the philosophy behind everything we do. The strength of our group was displayed in full force last month when a routine PEPCO bill review forced us to confront the realities of a shifting energy industry.
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Time was tight. Sign or don’t sign? The organization that would soon become the Community Purchasing Alliance (CPA) had just emailed a draft contract that would save twelve religious institutions over $100,000 on their annual energy bills. The congregations had two hours to review and sign.
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CPA Co-op is growing! Building on our success in DC, we are launching a new co-op in Durham, North Carolina.
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