CT EarthNet: Empowering Community-based Environmental Management
CT EarthNet empowers a grassroots groundswell led by community groups in Connecticut that is known to hold great promise for resolving urgent issues such as sprawl, air and water quality, conservation and environmental education.
CT EarthNet empowers a grassroots groundswell led by community groups in Connecticut that is known to hold great promise for resolving urgent issues such as sprawl, air and water quality, conservation and environmental education.
CT EarthNet is a dynamic portal employing web-based technologies to connect a broad spectrum of stakeholder groups and individuals (local citizens, community planners, environmental organizations, advocates, scientists, educators, students, businesses, museums, libraries, philanthropists and governments) engaged with informing environmental decision-making and management.
Research has affirmed the potential for community-based initiatives, such as those of the 500 local groups active in Connecticut’s 169 towns, to succeed where centralized, “top-down†governmental regulatory approaches fail. They are effective for their ability to reflect local values, enable stakeholders to participate equally and foster voluntary stewardship ethics.
Studies also reveal how fundamental barriers that stand in the way of local groups can hobble their efforts. These include lack of staff, time, cooperation, coordination and political clout. There is an identified need for a resource to support community groups and resolve issues of isolation and inefficiency.
CT EarthNet was given its mandate at a meeting at the Yale Peabody Museum where individuals representing nearly 100 local groups came together to study the proposal for the network and voiced urgent calls for it to be made available.
“I like [the CT EarthNet] concept because it brings together many communities of environmental concern that normally do not interact very much,†James “Gus†Speth, Dean of the Yale School Forestry & Environmental Studies, told the Hartford Courant. Cities and towns “are what’s driving environmental progress today.â€
“It’s the right idea at the right time,†said Yale Peabody Museum Director Michael Donoghue. “We need to be able to communicate with one another and find out what’s going on, [and] provide a way for people to intersect.â€
CT EarthNet is currently approaching a diverse group of traditional and emerging funding sources. The network’s diverse nature and constituent base, coupled with its robust business plan, put it in a good position to attract catalytic philanthropic investment in its start-up phase and win grants with a broad range of objectives in its ongoing years.
Initial seed money to build the web-based resource and conduct due diligence and outreach is being sought from a carefully researched and highly targeted set of private foundations, including local family foundations, larger regional and national private foundations and emerging market-based (venture philanthropy) funding sources. Each has been targeted based on the strategic alignment of the CT EarthNet mission with potential funders' missions.
Thereafter, a sustainable funding base has been detailed in the business plan and includes small annual project grants from primarily private foundations, large multi-year, multi-disciplinary agency and quasi-agency grants, corporate sponsorships, membership dues, network program service revenues, and miscellaneous related publication and event-driven revenues.
CT EarthNet’s challenges relate more to starting up the nonprofit than building the web resource for which we have the technology, living network, database and content.
A key challenge is to attract funding that is additional to what is currently being granted to Connecticut environmental groups and to develop new sources of funding.
We are also new to the nonprofit field and as such do not have a directly relevant track record to share with funders. Instead, we are using the written support of our network partners and a strong board to demonstrate the strengths of our organization.
CT EarthNet has developed relationships with environmental groups statewide through face-to-face meetings, conferences, and community outreach. It has developed a comprehensive database of network partners and a ground-level understanding of local initiatives.
CT EarthNet will initially utilize existing web frameworks and functionality to minimize development time and cost. It will place emphasis on tracking functionality from the user perspective to identify necesary improvements, additional functionality and potential innovations.
Key resources needed to ramp up individual network partners and support the integration of CT EarthNet include:
Funding development manager
Outreach manager
Network partner coordination manager
Web developer
Database developer
Educational coordinator
CT EarthNet has three-year business and strategic implementation plans detailing weekly activities in seven program areas for staff and consultants. The 90-day project plan represents the first three months of the longer term plan and would focus on top priority activities for project implementation as described in the project summary.
CT EarthNet is a dynamic portal employing web-based technologies to connect a broad spectrum of stakeholders engaged with informing environmental decision-making and management and support collaboration toward shared objectives.
Network & resource development: Assemble best quality informational resources and technical expertise to inform and enable community-based environmental planning and management.
Network:Â Facilitate collaboration between network partners with similar, overlapping and/or complementary environmental management goals and programs.
Web site: Build a web-based, search engine optimized portal where individuals, groups and communities can manage schedules and calendars, publicize initiatives and events, post and archive information, research, white papers and other resources, search for or make information searchable using keywords, meet online to discuss needs, issues and opportunities, participate in bulletin boards and forums, blogs and videologs. Make templated, customizable technological solutions more readily available and useful, e.g. enable local groups to more efficiently utilize web-based utilities.
Outreach & marketing: Conduct outreach that informs groups and individuals about community-based environmental management cases around the state, explains the mission and goals of CTEarthNet and describes its utility and value for local groups. Inform groups working toward common objectives how to use CTEarthNet to easily communicate and explore ways to coordinate efforts to realize greater efficiencies, enhance effectiveness and speed overall progress.
Education:Â Develop Connecticut-based curriculums, kits and activities and conduct programs in earth science and environmental issues (e.g. biodiversity declines, global climate change, global geological processes and occurrences) to teach environmental management using local sites, contexts and environmental initiatives, providing collaborative partners with new means to engage diverse segments of local communities and greater numbers of people in environmental management issues and education.
Connecticut Environmental Performance Index (CT EPI): Survey local groups & towns about their goals, priorities and self-assessments of their progress towards the accomplishment of stated goals. Analyze survey data to publish a Connecticut Environmental Performance Index, a report on environmental needs, issues and priorities at the community level, built from the “bottom up.â€
Research & study: Utilize the CT EPI to measure, evaluate and recommend the potential for applying the network approach to other geographies and on other scales. Use the vision expressed in the CT EPI to guide, inform and coordinate initiatives at the landscape, state and regional levels.
Finance & Development:Â Fundraising, grants, membership (see above Sustainability Model).
What CT EarthNet offers to underfunded/understaffed NFP's is...
... essential, in my opinion. If this business model can become a reality, it would make the day-to-day work being done by not-for-profit environmental groups -- from CT Audubon to middle school science teachers -- so much easier and allow us to spend more of our resources, especially time, on the real work that needs doing, and less on being our own secretaries and admin. ass'ts, or re-inventing wheels. The CT success story that would surely emerge is a paradigm for other states and regions.
CT Earth Link
Very valuable concept and solid implementation. This is a model we will watch just across the NY border for replication/ collaboration. Very best of luck.
Brendan Hanrahan is the
Brendan Hanrahan is the Johnny Appleseed of this century. His propagation method is networking from an Apple laptop. Broadcasting the data, tools, connections, resource pools, and convergent issues of interest, he has enabled statewide communities to reach decisions, action, and impact. For the environment and its advocates of protection and conservation, CT EarthNet will bring flowering once again to hills and valleys, a sweeter fragrance to Connecticut air, and the crisp taste of a future unrestricted by sprawl, growth, and neglect.
CTEarthNet
Just as the initial Boston Post Road cut a wide swath through Connecticut enabling transportation, communication, commerce, information flow, cultural exchange, and the bonding of communities for action and improvement over two hundred years ago, so too will CTEarthNet provide the essential connectivity for this fortunate geography today. It will provide an interchange, forum, decision-making apparatus, and solution pipeline for critical issues facing American cities and towns here in New England, and across the country. Rather than traveling the ruts, ridges, and primitive roadways of yesterday, it will bridge the switches, routers, networks, and data repositories of today's information pathways. And it will transform data into information, and information into action -- in the search for an improved and protected quality of life.
More support for grassroots level activity-where it counts!
It's a simple concept: people pay a lot more attention to what's happening in their own environment. We may care about global warming, but when the local lake is too polluted to swim in, we don't just talk about it, we get it cleaned up. Bringing focus, resources and support for local action on local issues is what CTEarthnet is all about. There are hundreds of tiny groups across Connecticut working to improve and preserve their local environments. CTEarthnet provides a comprehensive, easy-to-use and always available facility where these groups can come together to share knowledge, experience and resources to help these groups succeed.
It's a simple, incredibly powerful, idea.