The Abundance Foundation grew out of the work of Piedmont Biofuels. When Piedmont Biofuels was being formed, it was closely aligned with Central Carolina Community College, which has a biofuels account as part of its non-profit foundation.  We had written some grants for the college, and we had drummed up a big donation, so we did not see the need for another non-profit.
Piedmont Biofuels headed into the world as a Coop and has grown ever since.  It is incorporated as a “C� Corporation, which means it could make a profit, if it were ever inclined.  The Coop is a place of experimentation, trial and error, and exciting grassroots breakthroughs in the biodiesel field.  About half of its annual revenues come from sales, and about half come from donations.  Until now, none of those donations were tax deductible.
We formed the Abundance Foundation in part to backstop the good work of the Coop.
But while we were at it, we recognized not only the rapid growth of the Coop, but also how the Coop had become involved in green building, photo voltaics, organic food production, and so much more.  We were so excited about the possibility of funding renewable energy projects, that we photo shopped a wind turbine into the background of the greenhouse, and threw the photo up on our home page.
We also wanted to keep our options open, so that we could fund non-biodiesel related projects.  Our objective is to capitalize the foundation, and offer grants to a variety of local projects.
And the name?  That’s a programming issue.  Most of us were raised in a culture of scarcity.  We found we had to compete for scarce things, like money, attention, and love.
But we’ve grown tired of that and have switched to a new model that is based on abundance.  We now get everything we want or something better.  With that as our start point, we find we get all the love and money and attention we desire.  Sometimes we slip back into our old programming—those are dark moments—but in general we have all elected to discard some of the cultural messages of our youth and focus instead on Abundance.