Yale Blue Green Sustainability Fund Success
In 2019 the Sustainability Fund was established to support the Office of Sustainability, which helps lead Yale’s efforts to integrate sustainability into the operations, scholarship, and daily life of the University, positioning Yale as a local and global leader. The Sustainability Fund supports student research assistant to develop programming, communications, events to advance the work of the Office of Sustainability.
Over the past seven years, the Fund has provided over $82,000 in much needed financial support to develop student environmental leaders. Funded projects have included work to: • evaluate faculty research linked to the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals, • shape a campus biodiversity plan with recommendations for plantings and a business case, • create student travel surveys to support scope 3 emissions data gathering, • enhance communications in graphic design, photographic and videographic presentations, • expand social media presence and enhanced communication about sustainability events, • improve sustainability data collection and analysis, • develop student-focused outreach programming on climate adaptation and resiliency, • enhance graphic design for sustainability communications, • work to manage the School of Architecture design waste, • collect data with The Schools of Management and Architecture for the Yale Bike Map.
We are pleased that Yale Blue Green has been able to support the vital work the Office of Sustainability student environmental leaders at Yale. Those wishing to support the YBG Sustainability Fund can do so here.
Becky Bunnell ’78, Paul Chapman ’70, Anne Crawley ’76, Sustainability Fund Co-Chairs
Family of Phillip “Flip” Dibner Establish Endowed Scholarship at Yale School of the Environment with $1 Million Gift
After Phillip “Flip” Dibner ’70, ’75 MFS passed away in May 2023, his family decided to honor his life and his years at Yale by making an endowed gift to the Yale School of the Environment, where both he and his wife and lifelong partner, Diane Renshaw ’75 MFS, met at the beginning of their studies. Yale Blue Green wishes to thank them for their very kind and generous philanthropy.
Born in Cleveland, Ohio, Flip spent his childhood summers helping to run several camps with his family in Maine, where he developed his passion for forests. Flip and Diane moved to California after graduating from YSE, and for many years he worked in Silicon Valley applying technology to large-scale ecological data acquisition and analysis with companies from Hewlett Packard to Apple. From an early age, Flip had many diverse interests, folk guitar, long distance running, learning many languages, practicing zen. He was a true renaissance man, very much a Yalie in the best sense. He was a docent at Stanford University’s Jasper Ridge Biological Preserve, where Diane continues her volunteer work today. A fuller account of his remarkable life can be found here.
The Phillip “Flip” Dibner Endowed Scholarship was the lead donation for the 1970 Class Gift for their 55thReunion, which totaled $8.75 Million. As Diane wrote: “I met Flip at FES, a major milestone in our personal and professional lives, and I have many positive memories of our time there. The academic experience shaped both our career paths in a very meaningful way. While at FES we both had scholarships, without which we would most likely not have been able to attend. I am so very grateful I was able to establish that scholarship in Flip’s name. I was tickled pink that the Class of 1970 also gets to share credit for the donation.”
Yale Blue Green encourages alumni to consider supporting the University’s work on the environment, through the School of the Environment, Planetary Solutions, and the Sustainability Fund. We are grateful to the Dibner Family for such a generous and meaningful contribution.
Reunion Outreach for Class Chapters and Giving Green to Yale
In 2024 the Class of ’94 established a Yale Blue Green class chapter, and this has led to our outreach to reunion classes. We contacted the leadership of all thirteen classes celebrating a reunion in the spring of 2025. We urged them to consider forming a class chapter with YBG to expand our network of Yale alumni working in environmental sustainability. And we encouraged class reunion chairs to share with their class gift leads information about how to support Yale’s environmental work financially. Our overview, Giving Green to Yale, outlines the various ways alumni can support this vital work.