2024: Year in Review

With the end of 2024 just days away, now is a good time for us to take a step back and reflect on all that’s occurred over the past 12 months. We have a lot of work ahead of us in store next year, but not before we take a moment to ask you to join us in celebrating everything we’ve accomplished together!

We here at Delta Institute take pride in all the work we were able to advance in partnership with communities all across the Great Lakes Region. We can’t do it alone. If you believe in our vision of creating a more resilient home for all Midwesterners, please join us with a donation today to help us prepare for the year ahead!

Our Nature-Based Climate Solutions portfolio of work focuses on centering community voices in implementing projects that address the climate crisis and its impacts. This includes climate resiliency efforts, flooding & extreme weather mitigation, green infrastructure, and forest canopy expansion.

… and this has certainly kept us busy this year!

We’re honored to be a part of so many communities’ efforts to integrate nature into their planning – projects like:

• Working to reclaim green spaces in environmental justice communities. We’ve been partnering with groups on Chicago’s South Side like Blacks In Green , Emerald South Economic Development Collaborative , and South Merrill Community Garden in advancing their visions of redeveloping vacant brownfields into green spaces. Odds are, we just might be breaking ground on new green infrastructure installations in West Woodlawn by the time you’re reading this! Click here to learn more.
• Community-driven biodiversity assessments – Part of this work also includes measuring changes in biodiversity. And so: What better way to engage the community than by getting folks outdoors to help us catalog the insects, birds, plants, and all types of flora and fauna in their own backyards? This year, we hosted another “BioBlitz” event in Chicago’s South Shore neighborhood, centering community participation. We’re still sifting through data, but feel free to check out our Woodlawn BioBlitz Report from last year.
• Planning for green infrastructure installations on Chicago’s Southeast Side. Working with partners like the ILLINOIS INTERNATIONAL PORT DISTRICT and GRAEF , we’ve been conducting feasibility studies to assess sites that can host green infrastructure designed to mitigate flooding and improve water quality that flows into Lake Calumet and the Calumet River. We are preparing for 2025 when we work toward developing designs and implementation. Click here to learn more.

Learn more

Delta Institute’s Tree Planting Consortium has been well underway this year throughout Northwest Indiana. Throughout 2024, we planted 1,783 trees and have plans to plant thousands more in 2025 and beyond!

This project is about more than the trees themselves, though. We are directly engaging hundreds of residents throughout Lake County: at community-training sessions, volunteer planting days, school events that engage local youth in environmental education, and so much more. We are especially committed to partnering with environmental justice communities with low tree canopy coverage – and providing our partners with capacity-building support to advance their urban forestry goals.

We published several resources available on our resources, such as our Tree Planting Consortium Best Management Practice Toolkit. The work of our Tree Planting Consortium and other reforestation initiatives will continue in 2025!

Learn more.

2024 has been a year of soil sampling! Why?

We are working toward developing a way for land appraisers to easily factor in a value for soil health when valuing farmland. This would recognize farmers for the conservation work they put into adopting climate-smart agriculture practices while also improving economic outcomes for rural communities.

To help make this a reality, we partnered with cohorts of farmers in Illinois and Michigan: gathering soil samples from their farmland, collecting their feedback, and sharing more resources about the benefits of implementing regenerative agriculture practices. We will have plenty more to report on this and share about next steps in 2025 – stay tuned!

Learn more.

Municipalities, private businesses, and community groups frequently reach out to us to help support their goals – and we respond to these challenges and opportunities through our “Sustainability & Support Services” program. As such, we’ve been honored to feel a part of so many important projects throughout the Midwest, including:

• Advancing the environmental and economic goals at the Port of Chicago. The Illinois International Port District (IIPD) has been implementing their Master Plan with several initiatives designed to serve as a national multimodal freight & logistics hub, facilitate economic development on Chicago’s Southeast Side, and enhance quality of life and community benefits. We’ve been proudly working with the IIPD on several of these efforts, such as helping them maintain Green Marine Certification as part of their sustainability commitment and securing $34 million in federal funding for infrastructure improvements.
• Providing technical assistance on brownfields. Vacant parcels of land, known as brownfields, can provide communities with opportunities to redevelop the land for many types of use: green space, residential, business, etc. To help realize this full potential, Delta Institute partners with communities throughout the Midwest to provide technical assistance on what is required to redevelop brownfields, such as environmental remediation needs. We are proud to have partnered with 6 communities in Illinois, Indiana, Minnesota, and Wisconsin this year! Learn more here.
• Serving as the Environmental Finance Center for communities in US EPA Region 5. Specifically regarding water infrastructure and accessing state revolving funds, we are happy to provide technical assistance to communities and Tribal Nations located in in Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Minnesota, Ohio, and Wisconsin. Throughout 2024, we provided technical service to – or are currently working with 18 communities! For more information, please click here.

Partner with us.

We have been working with partners across the public and private sectors to help them reach their climate goals. Whether that means reducing climate threat risks like coastal erosion and flooding – or working to reduce emissions that contribute to climate change, Delta Institute has been proud to partner with several groups along the way.

• Resiliency Planning in Chicago’s South Shore neighborhood. Shoreline communities are among the most at risk when it comes to increasing climate risks. Chicago’s South Shore neighborhood is acutely aware of this, having addressed issues of flooding and degrading infrastructure for decades. Delta is working with the community to follow a roadmap for implementation of green infrastructure, stormwater breakers, or other resiliency measures. Learn more about this project here.
• Updating South Bend’s Climate Action Plan. After completing the City of South Bend 's Carbon Neutral 2050 Plan in 2019, the City has been exceeding its planned emissions reductions goals and has asked Delta Institute to assist with providing an update to the Climate Action Plan to reflect updated, more aggressive goals to reduce its carbon footprint. We have been assisting the City in developing a community-driven climate action plan throughout this past year. Learn more about the plan on the City’s website here.
• Our partnership with a tech company working toward 50% emissions reductions. This August, Delta Institute announced a new partnership with DISBELIEF to help them reach their goal of reducing their emissions footprint by half. Disbelief’s CEO, Steve Ellmore, shared, “Making this kind of commitment aligns with our values as a company and demonstrates our dedication to corporate responsibility.” Businesses looking to learn more about partnering with Delta Institute can learn more here. You can also learn more about our partnership with Disbelief in our press release.

Partner with us.

For two years in a row, Delta Institute was the recipient of the Indiana Governor’s Environmental Excellence Award for Land Use & Conservation! This year’s award, received in partnership with the City of Hobart Indiana and the Hobart Sanitary District was in recognition for completing the first phase of our restoration work at Duck Creek Tributary.

Prior to our work, flooding at Duck Creek Tributary would regularly result in road closures, property damage, and excessive water pollution which would flow downstream into the Little Calumet River and eventually into Lake Michigan. In 2019, Delta Institute began a new partnership with the City of Hobart to install 3.7 acres of green infrastructure, designed to capture 130,000 gallons of stormwater runoff annually and remove invasive species. As a result of the decreased flooding, our partnership has also resulted in removing more than 2 tons of phosphorus and 4 tons of nitrogen annually.

We are now implementing phase two of this project, which will prevent more than double the levels of pollutants being mitigated through our work.

Click here to learn more.

This year, Delta Institute marked over one quarter century of service as a nonprofit. Can you believe it?

We hosted a celebration this past spring to mark the occasion, held at the Chicago History Museum . Thank you again to everyone who came out and supported this extra special anniversary year with us! If you haven’t checked out the photos yet, you can visit our online photo gallery here.

Couldn’t make it? Or maybe want to relive the night? We’ve published the inspiring speech from our CEO, Bill Schleizer, that evening. Click here to read “Delta finds a way.”

Read Bill's speech here.

You haven’t tuned in to one of our webinar recordings yet??

All of our long-form content from 2024 (and before) is published on our YouTube channel. Check it out to watch or listen to:

• Green Soapbox on “Wildfires and Midwestern Air Quality” – Delta’s annual panel discussion on important local climate issues. Sponsored by William Blair , this year’s panel featured Olga Bautista of Southeast Environmental Task Force , Krista Thomason of US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Region 5, Kyra Wood of the Chicago Department of Environment , and Mackenzie Siren of Cloverly & Chicago Climate Connect . Watch the full panel discussion here.
• Online tree planting & maintenance training for tree owner – Hosted as part of Delta Institute’s Tree Planting Consortium project in Northwest Indiana, this recording has lots of information you may be interested in learning about for the trees in your community or in your own backyard. Check it out here.
• Webinar on soil health land valuation in Michigan – Presented in partnership with the Fred and Barbara Erb Family Foundation this webinar explores the soil health land valuation strategy that Delta Institute is developing and how it can impact landowners, land managers, and farmers in Michigan. Watch the webinar here.
• Urban Forestry Best Management Practices Webinar – Developed alongside Delta’s Tree Planting Consortium Best Management Practices Toolkit, this webinar touches on the background of the Tree Planting Consortium and additional things-you-should-know outside of the toolkit. Check it out here.

Visit our YouTube channel

Wow! Four years running!

For the past four consecutive years, Delta Institute has earned Candid 's Platinum Seal of Transparency: a recognition received by fewer than 1% of all 1.5 million nationally registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit organizations! Moreover, Charity Navigator has also recognized Delta Institute for two years in a row with its highest four-star “Give with Confidence” rating!

We believe in transparency here at Delta Institute because it is one of our core values. We are committed to being accountable and honest with everyone as part of our journey, and that includes our donors, our partners, and our stakeholders across all of our projects. We are proud of these recognitions because they demonstrate one way in which we are living up to these commitments.

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In total, since our strategic plan refinement in 2022, we estimate that our work has benefitted the lives of 8.4 million Midwesterners.

What does this look like in action? Well, every community’s needs are different, but sometimes it looks like:

• Restoring green spaces in environmental justice communities to create more opportunities for residents to connect with nature,
• Engaging local residents in tree planting initiatives or biodiversity assessments in their own backyards,
• Working with municipal staff to estimate their greenhouse gas emissions and develop plans to reduce their carbon footprint,
• Coordinating with farmers to implement conservation-based practices on their lands,
• Reducing pollution that enters into communities’ rivers, tributaries, and even the Great Lakes,
• Developing strategies for municipalities and counties to reduce waste, increase access to clean energy, or other sustainability initiatives,
• Creating plans to rejuvenate vacant polluted parcels of land in ways that support local economic and environmental goals.
• We’re honored to be a part of community-led projects that improve the lives of millions annually. And we have even more in store for 2025.

What we do

Thank you for an impactful 2024! Please consider supporting this work today as we prepare for 2025.

From all of us at Delta Institute ...

Staff

Photo: Delta Institute staff at annual retreat in December 2024. From left, back row: Katherine Schultz, Gillian Chesnut , Mélina Blanc , William Kort, PhD , William Pevec , Dean L. , Patrick Murphy ; Second row from back: Jenny B. P. , Natalie Brown, AICP , Jamie N. Zouras , Sidney C. Freitag-Fey, CFRE ; Third row from back: Helen Hardy, Mackenzie Manley Buchek; Front: Bill Schleizer ; Not pictured: Lucas Chamberlain

Governing Board of Directors

Jaré Akchin, Liz Alexander , Karl Analo , Ashley Bakelmun , Eira Corral Sepúlveda , Jessie Deelo , Madeline Demo, MBA, MPH, CSP , Lottie Ferguson , David Fording, CFA , Paige Graham , Bradley Grams , Niharika H. , Mike Harrington, LEED GA , Kevin Kalus , Vanessa Roanhorse , Tyler Strom

Delta Emerging Leaders

Lucia Bosacoma , Lizbeth Carrazco , Mackenzie Castle , Jessica Chen , Paige Curson , Linda Derhak , Maya Kelly , Delaney Klundt , Haroula Kyriacou , Phuong Le , Joey M. , Humble Mohammed , Molly Needelman , Gabby Petrelli , John Prisby , Conner Rettig , Manju Rupani , Anya Salnikova , Anusha Shaktawat , Becca Sita , Grace K. Snider , Ashvin Veligandla (MBA, PMP)