The newly created Community Partner Funding (CPF) pathway is a set of increased incentives that participating community-based organizations can access for their clients. For an organization to enroll in CPF, it must be vetted by Energy Trust and serve—or be developing an offer that serves—at least one of the following:

• People experiencing low to moderate incomes (LMI)
• Communities of color
• Rural communities
• Indigenous communities
• Veterans
• People experiencing disabilities

CPF customer eligibility:

• Must be a client of a participating community partner.
• Housing type must be either detached single-family home or an existing manufactured home.
• In Southwest Washington, small multifamily projects are also eligible. These are defined as duplex, triplex, fourplex and side-by side units, like townhomes.
• Home must be served by Portland General Electric, Pacific Power, NW Natural, Cascade Natural Gas or Avista.

General workflow of a CPF project:

1. The community partner organization will identify the participant, establish eligibility and, in many cases, perform a home energy assessment to provide customer education and identify potential energy upgrades.
2. Once eligible energy upgrades have been identified, the community partner may coordinate a site visit from a referred contractor to provide a project bid. (Contractors are chosen at the discretion of the community partner and customer.)
3. The referred contractor will complete the work and ensure adherence to Energy Trust’s Specifications Manual.
4. To simplify and encourage customer participation, either the community partner or the contractor must receive the Energy Trust incentive and provide an instant discount to the customer.

If your business is contacted by a participating community partner, we encourage you to contact your regional Energy Trust Residential representative to share awareness of prospective CPF Projects and to clarify correct CPF incentive amounts.

If you are already working with an organization that is serving one of the target populations listed above, please alert your regional Energy Trust Residential representative. Although we are not currently enrolling new organizations in the CPF pathway, we will note the organization for potential future engagement.

For more information, contact Patrick Murphy, program consultant, at 503.548.1623.