Staten Island gets caricatured a lot — by people who have never spent more than an afternoon on the ferry. The actual borough is denser, weirder, and more civically alive than the stereotype allows. Nowhere is that clearer than in the work of Nonprofit Staten Island, the membership organization that has been the trusted backbone of the borough’s nonprofit community for more than two decades. This spring, NPSI is rolling out its 2026 Ambassadors for the Community Climate Corps, a program that is starting to look like one of the more interesting civic experiments anywhere in the city.
The Community Climate Corps is what happens when a borough that takes the brunt of coastal storms and waterfront pressure decides to organize from the bottom up. The program empowers communities through education, resources, advocacy, and community-driven sustainability projects. The Ambassadors program leans on local leaders — small business owners, neighborhood association members, congregation leaders — to push climate-aware projects into the parts of the borough that do not always get city attention.
Why It Matters Here
Staten Island’s geography makes climate planning local in a way that is easy to forget on the other side of the harbor. Coastal flooding from the bays, urban heat in inland neighborhoods, stormwater runoff in the wetlands corridors, and the ongoing work of post-Sandy resiliency all live next to each other. The borough has built bluebelts, raised buildings, restored wetlands, and is still working through what the next decades look like.
What NPSI’s Climate Corps adds to that picture is a network of people who can move information back and forth — between agencies and residents, between scientists and small business owners, between long-time North Shore organizers and South Shore homeowners’ associations. That kind of connective tissue is unglamorous and indispensable.
The Wider Staten Island Network
NPSI is the convener, but the borough has a full ecosystem of civic anchors:
- The Staten Island Foundation funds programs aimed at improving quality of life for the borough’s least advantaged, with a long track record of supporting local capacity building rather than parachute philanthropy.
- Joan & Alan Bernikow JCC of Staten Island has been operating for 90+ years and runs day camps, fitness, senior programs, early childhood, and more.
- The GRACE Foundation serves families of children with autism, with year-round programs and family supports.
- A Very Special Place serves people with intellectual and developmental disabilities and has been a quiet anchor of the disability services community.
- Staten Island Community Partnership works with families on the North Shore on child welfare and community-based prevention, in partnership with The New York Foundling.
For longtime residents, this list will feel familiar. For newcomers, especially those who have moved to neighborhoods like St. George, Stapleton, Westerleigh, or Annadale in the past few years, it is a useful introduction to the people doing the actual work.
How To Plug In on a Sunday
NPSI’s website at nonprofitstatenisland.org carries event listings, training schedules, and ways to engage with the Climate Corps program. Most member nonprofits welcome volunteers and donations, and several run weekend programs that are family-friendly.
For something concrete you can do this week: subscribe to NPSI’s events calendar and pick one local nonprofit’s volunteer night to attend. Showing up once is the hardest part. The networks tend to take care of the rest.
A Borough That Takes Care of Itself
The story Staten Islanders tell about themselves is that the borough takes care of its own. The Climate Corps and the wider NPSI network are evidence that the story is not just nostalgia. It is a working civic culture, evolving in response to the pressures the borough actually faces — climate, demographic change, an uneven post-pandemic recovery — without waiting for the rest of the city to weigh in.
What You Need to Know
- Nonprofit Staten Island (NPSI) has been the backbone organization for Staten Island’s nonprofits for over 20 years.
- NPSI’s Community Climate Corps is rolling out its 2026 Ambassadors this spring, with a focus on community-driven sustainability projects.
- Other anchors worth knowing: The Staten Island Foundation, JCC of Staten Island, The GRACE Foundation, A Very Special Place, Staten Island Community Partnership.
- Volunteer schedules, events, and Climate Corps details are at nonprofitstatenisland.org.
- Climate work in Staten Island is unusually hands-on because the borough’s geography makes flooding, heat, and stormwater issues immediate and local.
For more on the borough’s neighborhoods, see our Staten Island neighborhood coverage, and the Greenbelt walking guides are a good way to spend a Sunday morning before plugging into a volunteer shift.
