Powering What's Next in your community
Great partnerships, great stories
At Alliant Energy, our purpose is to serve customers and build stronger communities.
Below you’ll see our impacts by the numbers. But we also love a good story. So keep reading! These partnerships bring our purpose to life and strengthen the communities we call home.
It’s just one more way we’re Powering What’s Next.
Full bellies, all week long
- Project: Backpack Nutrition Program
- Partner: Waushara's Vision
- Location: Waushara County, Wisconsin
- Our gift: Funding to help 255 students/week, with 5-6 food items per backpack
But it's also hard to be the parent of a hungry child.
Food-insecure kids are guaranteed a lunch at school, but weekends are tough. The Vision 2020 Backpack program helps parents fill the gap. Volunteers discreetly tuck food items and grocery coupons into students’ backpacks on Friday. Kids carry them home from school to get them through the weekend.
The backpack program is a safety net for families, stretching household dollars.
As one parent said, when times were tough, the backpack program “helped more than you know.”
Fueling girl power in STEM
- Project: Innovation Studio Workshops
- Partner: Maydm
- Location: Wisconsin
- Impact: 5 workshops, 100 students
Do you believe you can contribute great things to STEM?
92% of Maydm students say YES.
That’s great for two reasons:
- STEM careers are growing faster than jobs can be filled.
- Maydm students are primarily girls and youth of color - groups that are typically underrepresented in STEM.
Maydm engages and equips youth from underrepresented communities to boldly pursue futures in science, technology, engineering and math.
Our partnership supports our local community and raises up our future workforce.
Equipping first responders
- Project: Four-gas monitors for first responders
- Partners: North Central Iowa Regional Emergency Commission
- Location: North Central Iowa
- Our gift: $10,000 toward purchase of 74 new monitors
Aaron Beemer, Deputy Chief of Operations – Mason City Fire Department, was noticing an alarming trend.
Over two thirds of the volunteer fire departments in northern Iowa were missing a critical tool: a four-gas monitor. Monitors alert first responders to toxic or combustible conditions. The monitors don’t just help first responders do their jobs; sometimes, they save their lives.
74 fire departments needed devices.
Aaron reached out to Alliant Energy. His firefighters and our crews serve the same neighborhoods.
Alliant Energy contributed $10,000 to the fundraising campaign. The new monitors will help protect firefighters as they keep our communities safe.
The winds of change
- Project: InventSTEM
- Partners: Iowa State University Extension and Iowa 4-H Foundation
- Location: Iowa - Statewide
- Our gift: Helped purchase 100 kits, reaching 80,000 students
InventSTEM gets students ready for careers in Science, Technology, Engineering or Math. This year, the curriculum focuses on wind energy. That’s something we know a lot about! An Alliant Energy team designed this year’s classroom kit. Then, the Alliant Energy Foundation gave funds to send kits to 4-H groups across Iowa.
Students will explore a variety of wind technologies: boats, wind tunnels and wind turbines. They’ll also get to use their new skills to solve a real-world challenge.
Look for their best projects, featured at the 2020 Iowa State Fair.
Growing futures
- Project: Growing Futures
- Partners: Trees Forever
- Location: Cedar Rapids, Iowa
- Our gift: Support to kick off the Cedar Rapids program, which will provide 500 new trees and 30+ high-paying jobs for local teens
Everyone needs trees. They provide shade, lower energy bills, reduce stormwater, clean the air and boost mental health.
But, lower-income communities often have fewer trees than their neighbors.
The Growing Futures program plants and maintains trees where they’re needed most in Cedar Rapids. Growing Futures hires at-risk teenagers, who plant and care for the trees – sometimes in their own neighborhoods. They also learn important life skills, like financial literacy and resume writing, all while earning a good wage.
Things are looking greener all around!