Our Mission

It all started in a basement office in Chelsea, Michigan. Looking for a way to accelerate the adoption of solar, combine solar & social good, and well, of course close some deals, our Founder came up with the name and idea for Kilowatts For A Cause®, a community-shared solar program.

After an exhaustive search to see if anyone else had the same idea and whether the name itself had been used or trademarked, it seemed to be the first of its kind, and so, the story began.

What was known is that low-income families suffer many financial burdens. One of which is the cost of energy. In the U.S., low-income households face disproportionately higher energy costs. On average, their energy costs are three to ten times higher than non-low-income households. Yet today, even as solar energy has become the cheapest source of energy in history, few low-income households have access to solar or, in some way, even benefit from it. With solar, energy costs can be reduced and the savings can help offset other financial burdens.

So why not leverage the savings from the installation of solar by those that can, to reduce the financial burdens of low-income families that cannot?

Well, fast forward about a decade, and here we are.

Kilowatts For A Cause® is a radically new approach to installing solar and sharing its operational savings with the local community. We are building, operating, and maintaining solar systems for nonprofit and for-profit commercial & industrial building owners and utilizing the savings generated, to give back to nonprofits and schools supporting low-income families within the local community.

Participants are asked to have a solar system installed and operated on their property and purchase the energy produced at their current utility rate or slightly less. From the savings generated by the operation of the solar system, Kilowatts For A Cause® will make a donation, on behalf of the program participant, to a local non-profit supporting low-income families. If the participant is a school, a donation is made to the school to further the education of their students.

Kilowatts For A Cause® was developed to be more than just building and operating solar energy systems. We are a mission-driven community utilizing our knowledge, networks, and tools to promote and deploy solar energy, while giving back to communities and assisting low-income families with the financial burdens they endure. Doing what’s right is just good business. As such, Kilowatts For A Cause® was formed to operate as a non-profit Social Enterprise to create sustainable change and harness the power of business and entrepreneurship as a force for good in the world. With business and social goals, commercial strategies are applied to maximize improvements in financial, social, and environmental well-being, which includes maximizing social impact, for our donors.

A long road? Certainly. Some bumps along the way? Who doesn’t have them when you are developing something from scratch. Setbacks? Many including a near collapse of our parent company business and that gosh awful thing called COVID. But thanks to our Founder’s persistency and the numerous people, organizations, businesses, and investors that have helped us develop our business model and listen to our endless pitches, we have taken what was once an idea hatched in a basement office and created a company that is using solar energy to create social good.

What’s next? Well we are just getting started and we have a lot of work to do. Hoping you will stay tuned for future updates about our journey and the lives we are impacting through Kilowatts For A Cause®.