Program Partner Sponsorship Grant
A Founding Investment in the Future of Support for a Green Economy
Hazel Henderson Center
10 Carrera Street, St. Augustine, FL 32084
Executive Summary
The Hazel Henderson Center requests $15,000 to sponsor five Founding Program Partnerships for young, developing, and under-resourced organizations advancing an ethical and regenerative economy — $3,000 per organization, fully modular. A gift of $3,000 sponsors a single partner; $15,000 funds a founding cohort of five — and gifts of any size help sponsor as many qualifying organizations as funding allows.
Each sponsorship provides a four-to-seven-day gathering (season dependent) at the Center's historic St. Augustine home — meeting and lodging space, access to Hazel Henderson's research library, and connection to a growing network of mission-aligned organizations across finance, systems thinking, social entrepreneurship, and public education. The standard $3,000 cost per booking is modest by foundation standards, but it remains a real barrier for organizations without a line item for convening fees — including many of the most promising, values-driven groups working in this space today. This grant removes that barrier — investing not just in one organization's access, but in the depth and diversity of the field the Center exists to convene.
Statement of Need
Many of the organizations doing the most promising work in ethical finance, regenerative economics, social entrepreneurship, and systems change are also the newest and least resourced. These groups bring urgent, original thinking to the field, but rarely have a budget line for network membership, convening fees, or travel — even modest ones. Without support, the Program Partner community risks skewing toward organizations that could already afford a seat at the table, rather than the full range of voices the Center's mission is built to include.
This gap is especially pronounced for organizations led by and serving underrepresented communities, who are frequently the last to be invited into rooms like this one — not because their work isn't ready, but because the cost of walking through the door falls disproportionately on those with the least room in their budget to absorb it.
About the Hazel Henderson Center
The Hazel Henderson Center carries forward the legacy of Hazel Henderson (1933–2022) — ecological economist, futurist, syndicated columnist, author, and a founding voice of the global sustainability movement. For more than five decades, Henderson challenged conventional economic thinking and championed renewable energy, socially responsible investing, ethical markets, corporate accountability, and quality-of-life indicators that move beyond Gross Domestic Product.
The Center operates from Henderson's former home in St. Augustine — a property that served for four decades as a gathering place for scholars, entrepreneurs, investors, educators, journalists, and systems thinkers exploring new approaches to economics, sustainability, governance, and social innovation. Following Henderson's passing, trustees, advisors, collaborators, and community partners established the Center as a nonprofit institution committed to preserving and activating her intellectual legacy. Through leadership residencies, educational programming, research initiatives, strategic convenings, and community partnerships, the Center cultivates the ideas, relationships, and practical tools needed to address the defining challenges of this century.
The Center's key assets include:
A living library of more than 5,600 books and 1,000+ journal issues
Archives preserved through academic partnerships, including the University of Missouri
Residency accommodations, a research library, collaborative gathering spaces, a workshop room, kitchen, outdoor areas, a pool, and parking
An experienced leadership team and Strategic Foresight Advisory Committee with deep expertise in sustainability, ethical finance, education, and community development
Close relationships with Ethical Markets Media and its globally recognized Research Advisory Board, connecting the Center to a broad international network of practitioners, investors, academics, and public-sector leaders
The Hazel Henderson Center is a Florida not-for-profit corporation and a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization. EIN: 41-2894661.
The Place
St. Augustine is the oldest continuously inhabited European-founded city in the United States, and the Center sits inside that living history. Its historic district is compact and fully walkable — cobblestone streets, Spanish colonial architecture, Flagler College's gilded halls, and the Castillo de San Marcos, standing guard over the bay since 1672. Within a short walk of the Center: waterfront seafood restaurants, neighborhood wine bars, art galleries, and dining that draws on four hundred and fifty years of layered culinary history. The Atlantic beaches are fifteen minutes away.
This isn't incidental to the program — it's central to it. Hazel chose this home deliberately, and every partner who comes here experiences a version of what she built her life's work around: a place where big thinking and genuine hospitality coexist.
The Program
A Founding Program Partnership is an invitation into the Center's community. Partners — research institutes and think tanks, universities, social enterprises, impact investors and ESG practitioners, B Corps, individual scholars, and civic innovators — bring their own teams, agendas, and participants to host a gathering at the Center, often connecting to some of the Center's core focus areas — among them: technology and production; employment, work, and migration; trade, finance, debt, and information; peacebuilding and the impacts of militarization; pollution and resource depletion; consumption patterns and global culture; and social and institutional restructuring. Every partner, sponsored or not, is selected against the same rigorous criteria: mission alignment with the Center's core focus areas, systems-based thinking, applied real-world impact, cross-sector and intergenerational dialogue, intellectual rigor, and ethical governance. Sponsorship never lowers that bar — it removes a financial barrier for organizations that already clear it.
To make that possible, the Center offsets the $3,000 cost of Program Partnership for young, developing, and under-resourced organizations that meet the Center's mission criteria but cannot cover the fee on their own — funded entirely through gifts like this one.
What Program Partners receive:
Inspired meeting space — the plenary sunroom (20–40 participants), the library (18 participants plus mezzanine), and breakout space across the living room, dining room, and porch
On-site lodging — an ensuite bedroom with private bath and writing desk for a member of the visiting team
The Research Library — roughly 5,600 cataloged materials, more than 1,000 journal issues, and Hazel Henderson's own annotated personal collection
Public recognition — logo and name featured on hendersoncenter.org, plus acknowledgment in the Center's annual communications and public reporting
Invitations to Center programming — lectures, convenings, and partner gatherings throughout the year
A living network — connection to the Center's full community of Founding Partners, Ethical Markets collaborators, and legacy advisors
Where Your Money Goes
Your contribution funds full Program Partnerships for organizations that meet the Center's mission criteria but cannot cover the cost on their own. A $3,000 gift provides one organization with a complete gathering — meeting and lodging space, access to the research library, and every benefit of Program Partnership.
Gifts are flexible by design:
$3,000 sponsors a single partner's full Program Partnership
$15,000 sponsors five partners — a meaningful founding cohort
Gifts of any size help sponsor additional partners, with the Center allocating support across as many qualifying organizations as funding allows, based on need and mission fit
Funder Impact
Support for a sponsored Program Partnership does more than cover one organization's fee — it multiplies impact across a growing field. By lowering the barrier to entry for emerging, mission-aligned organizations, this support:
Strengthens collaboration and shared learning among organizations shaping the future of ethical finance, regenerative economics, and systems change
Ensures the Center's Program Partner community reflects the full range of voices doing this work — not just those who can already afford a seat at the table
Builds durable relational infrastructure that outlasts any single gathering, as sponsored partners join a lasting network of practitioners and institutions
In short, this isn't a gift to a single event — it's an investment in who gets to shape the field going forward.
Measures of Success
The Center intends to track the reach and impact of this sponsorship support over time, including the number of organizations sponsored, the diversity of mission areas represented, and outcomes reported by sponsored partners following their time at the Center. As support grows, this tracking will inform how future sponsorship is allocated.
Organization
The Hazel Henderson Center is guided by an experienced leadership team with expertise in sustainability, education, nonprofit management, ethical finance, and community development:
Dr. Carol Spalding, Co-Trustee
Beth Binns, Managing Director and Co-Trustee
Dr. Paula Seymour, Director of Innovative Studies Programs
Mara Zepeda, Director of HH Legacy Initiatives
Jan McAlpine, Director of Development
Tommy Maletta, Editor, Ethical Markets
The Center also benefits from the guidance of its Strategic Foresight Advisory Committee, whose members include Leslie Danziger, Elsie Maio, Vicki Robin, former U.S. Representative Claudine Schneider, and Jean Gaddy Wilson. A broader network of advisors and collaborators contributes expertise across environmental stewardship, architecture, education, finance, governance, entrepreneurship, and systems change.
The Center’s close relationship with Ethical Markets Media and its internationally recognized Research Advisory Board gives participants access to a global network of practitioners, investors, academics, and public-sector leaders—significantly extending the professional development and collaborative opportunities available beyond what any single institution can offer.
Conclusion
Grant support from you will enable the Center to welcome its founding cohort of Program Partners and build the operational foundation for a network of lasting collaborative impact. We are grateful for your consideration and invite you to reach out with any questions, to request additional detail on the Program Partner model, or to schedule a conversation with Center leadership about how your support can make this work possible.
Appendix
Please see hendersoncenter.org for more information.
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