Greater Newark Conservancy Inc.

“After preparation of the 990 tax return, a draft copy is emailed to the board of directors, executive director, and finance director for review and approval.”

“In the annual meeting, the board members are required to sign a conflict of interest statement. When a conflict of interest is identified, the board member recuses themself from voting.”

“Executive director's salary is reviewed by the executive committee, who then recommends any salary change to the full board.”

“For all directors and officers, other than the executive director, the executive director reviews and recommends any changes. The executive committee conducts a review and comparison to market rates for the positions before setting a new salary rate.”

“The conflict of interest policy, audited financial statements, and all governing documents are kept on file and are available to the public upon written request.”

“Greater newark conservancy promotes environmental stewardship to improve the quality of life in new jersey's urban areas. Founded in 1987, the conservancy has four program areas - youth and family education, community greening and gardening, job training and advocacy for environmental justice.”

“Education program - the conservancy's education program annually brings innovative, hands-on, science-based lessons and field trips to approximately 6,000 inner-city schoolchildren from newark and its environs. An additional 3,000 teachers, parents, senior citizens and the general public were served with nutrition and other programs. Programming focuses on the urban environment and includes environmental education field trips to the prudential outdoor learning center in downtown newark, in-class reverse field trips, living laboratory outdoor teaching gardens at newark schools, nutritional health lessons and activities, and farm to school programming. Since the prudential outdoor learning center opened 15 years ago, it has hosted over 33,000 underserved children who have engaged in environmental field trips.”

“Other programs environmental justice program builds partnerships with newark's residents to promote urban environmental issues and strives to empower them to recognize their ability to improve the city's environment. For a number of years the conservancy actively advocated for quality of life issues in the city's master plan and regarding cleaning of contamination in the passaic river. The newark youth leadership project (nylp) component of the conservancy's job training program provides supervised training in landscaping, horticulture, education and office administration for up to 30 newark high school youth each year, seeking to increase employability. The program provides participants with a sample of career options in various environmental fields, an appreciation for their urban environment and opportunities for pursuing higher education. In january 2016, the conservancy launched its city bloom landscaping initiative, which is a fee-for-service landscaping business that generates revenue to help support conservancy programming while at the same time providing job training experience for ex-offenders. Participants learn skills in the fields of landscaping, horticulture, hardscaping, light construction and equipment maintenance. Trainees who complete the program are better qualified to seek more permanent employment in the landscaping industry. This past year, city bloom landscaping earned 191,670 in revenue and trained half-a-dozen ex-offenders.”