Utility helps 50 organizations meet energy needs

 

Ana Matthews, customer engagement manager at Avista Utilities, co-manages Avista's Named Communities Investment Fund (NCIF) with Kristine Meyer, Avista Foundation executive director and NCIF program manager.

The competitive grant program is one way for Avista to ensure customers benefit equitably and meet state clean energy requirements.

The program has supported more than 50 organizations since it started—including several faith-based and nonprofit groups—by addressing their energy needs so they can direct more resources to serving their clients.

Ana joined Avista in 2011 to manage the company's bill assistance program. In that role, she led a collaborative effort with key partners to redesign the program and make it more accessible.

After the Washington Legislature passed the Clean Energy Transformation Act (CETA) in 2019, requiring all electricity to be carbon free by 2045, she shifted in 2022 to work with Kristine and others to launch Avista's initiative to ensure equitable distribution of energy benefits to underserved customers through NCIF.

Avista is the state's only investor-owned utility with a program like this, Ana said.

"The law designates certain groups as 'named communities,' based on areas identified by the Department of Health's Environmental Health Disparities map and vulnerable populations recognized by Avista's Equity Advisory Group," she said.

That group, created under CETA, advises the company how to design and carry out clean energy programs to advance equity.

Ana said energy efficiency is central to Avista's clean-energy strategy.

"Conservation, which results in using less energy, is the most cost-effective way to achieve clean energy," said Ana.

An early grant application came from St. Ann's Catholic Church in East Central Spokane. It partners with the Career Path Services Dignified Workday Project to help unhoused neighbors gain job skills, find living-wage jobs and access wraparound services to build their life skills so they can move into homes.

They needed a place to do laundry, so St. Ann's received a grant to create a laundry corner with three stacked high-efficiency washers and dryers. They also installed a new heat pump for heating and cooling and replaced windows in its parish hall.

Ana receives requests from many faith-based and nonprofit organizations for grants to assist with new windows, insulation, lighting, and heating and cooling (HVAC) system improvements that conserve energy, increase comfort and save costs.

Many faith and nonprofit groups bring some of their own resources to a project through fundraising, donations or other grants. With the NCIF and its other programs, Avista helps bridge the remaining financial gap and "braids" funding together so these organizations can make their projects happen.

When it partners on clean energy projects for faith and nonprofit groups, it asks how they serve the community.

"We help those that offer community programs—meals, food banks and services to support stability," Ana said.

Through its NCIF, Avista serves vulnerable groups affected by environmental or economic challenges—such as inadequate housing, low wages or unstable employment. These people often lack resources to make efficiency improvements on their own.

"While this grant program is new, Avista has supported customers throughout its 137-year history," Ana said. "Its bill assistance efforts began in the 1980s, when the federal Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP) was established. Working with Spokane Neighborhood Action Partnership (SNAP)—then part of Catholic Charities—Avista helped launch Project Share, a community-supported fund to help customers pay their bills. SNAP continues to administer Project Share, along with other community action agencies."

Helping customers experiencing financial hardship, she added, is both the right thing to do and essential for maintaining access to energy services.

"Beyond bill assistance, we offer programs to help customers save energy effectively and efficiently," Ana added. "These include weatherization, rebates and incentives for improvements, such as lighting and insulation."

Ana said her commitment to giving back to the community was shaped early in her life as "a military brat." She moved every few years as her father was stationed in Georgia, Panama, Texas, Germany and Kansas. After serving in the Army, where she met her husband in Heidelberg, Germany, she earned a bachelor's degree in health education from Sam Houston University and a master's degree in public administration at Eastern Washington University.

"My values come from the sense of community in the military where everyone helps one another," she said, recalling her volunteer work at an Army Community Service Center as a teen. "People from different backgrounds come together and rely on each other.

"So, I love this work. It's an opportunity to serve the community by meeting customers where they are," she said, telling of other faith-based organizations that have applied for funds to support energy-efficiency improvements.

For example, Family Promise of Spokane requested support to replace the old, inefficient windows in their shelter and upgrade their HVAC systems to increase efficiency. Staff said the windows were in poor condition and the rooms were uncomfortably cold.

"New windows improved their comfort, reduced energy use and brought cost savings, so more funds could go to direct services," Ana said.

Two years ago, Westminster Congregational United Church of Christ received Avista's assistance to put in new windows to save energy for the congregation and prepare for a second-floor respite care center for unhoused people needing a safe place to convalesce after being released from a hospital. The program opened in February 2025 in partnership with the City of Spokane, Providence, Jewels Helping Hands and Empire Health Foundation. In 2025, Westminster received an NCIF grant for HVAC upgrades, too.

Christ Kitchen, a training program to help women gain skills to find dignified living-wage jobs, received support for its operations and help to expand economic opportunities for income-constrained women.

"We ask interested parties how they will serve a given population in ways that align with our clean energy goals. We send a team to analyze the facility's energy needs so people can decide about improvements in lighting, windows, HVAC or insulation," said Ana.

She listed other programs that have received NCIF grants.

• The food bank in Loon Lake rebuilt its cooler to preserve perishable food.

• Savings from the Springdale Food Bank lighting, window and HVAC upgrades went to more fresh produce.

• The Kettle Falls Community Chest used both a USDA grant and an NCIF grant for extensive building renovations.

• NCIF supported the Spokane Tribe in Wellpinit in a grant application to Washington Commerce with an energy audit to identify efficiency upgrades to its administration building. In addition, NCIF helped cover the cost to install a new HVAC system at their Indiana TANF building in Spokane.

• Side-by-Side, a nonprofit serving individuals with disabilities, received NCIF help for energy efficiency improvements in the former Westminster Presbyterian Church.

• Colfax's Hill-Ray Plaza senior affordable housing needed new windows for common areas so seniors could comfortably gather and to reduce energy use.

• NCIF has helped people in Takesa Village co-op manufactured homes in Mead with weatherization. Each year NCIF provides Spokane Co-Housing Works with four affordable, efficient manufactured homes that make home ownership possible for local families.

• NCIF provides efficient HVAC systems for Habitat for Humanity Spokane homes and solar panels for Palouse Habitat for Humanity homes.

Other nonprofits that received grants for HVAC systems include Whitman County libraries in Farmington, Tekoa and Oakesdale, the AHANA-Multiethnic Business Association Center, Lilac Services for the Blind, Salem Lutheran Church's Walnut Corners Apartments and Volunteers of America's Alexandria's House.

The program covers Avista's service territory in Eastern Washington, emphasizing rural communities, energy savings and workforce development.

"We've done some solar panels with batteries, such as at the Martin Luther King Jr Community Center, which has an innovative clean energy project with battery and natural gas backup. Started in 2022 along with lighting and windows upgrades, it will be completed in May," said Ana. "It makes the center a safe place neighbors can go in a catastrophe like a windstorm or wildfires."

About 20 nonprofits a year qualify for partial funding by Avista's Small Business Lighting Program. When groups can't cover their share of the project costs, NCIF may help, because lighting upgrades bring major savings.

Agencies using that program in 2025 included Catholic Charities House of Charity, Calvary Chapel of the Palouse, Salem Lutheran, Soul Patrol Ministries, Heritage Church of Odessa, the West Central Abbey, Crestline Church of the Nazarene, North Hill Christian, Colfax Community Church and St. Mary's Catholic.

For information, email CETANCIF@avistacorp.com or visit myavista.com/NCIF.