A spectacular new idea

A while back I mused about a new basic category of non-profit, something like "macro archives". A couple of weeks ago a spectacular new example of that impulse was made public, called the Encyclopedia of Life.

Funded by several large foundations and led by a veritable who's who of conservation and ecology heavyweights, the EOL aims to bring together all knowledge about the world's 1.8 million known species of plants, animals and fungi (a list which continues, of course, to grow). The wiki-based model they are using seems ideal for the purpose, though unlike Wikipedia this one's content will be professionally moderated -- so one interesting question will be just what the qualifications are to contribute information. (In the U.S., U.K. and a few other places they will have to figure out how to deal with information from legions of serious amateur restorationists and ecologists.)

As the project's newly-named executive director puts it: “I dream that in a few years wherever a reference to a species occurs on the Internet, there will be a hyperlink to its page in the Encyclopedia of Life.”

The news coverage has all focused on what I just summarized, and it's pretty cool. But I bet professionals in the nature-conservation sector will end up even more excited by something else buried at the end of the press release: "To provide depth behind the portal page for each species, the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL), a consortium that holds most of the relevant scientific literature, will scan and digitize tens of millions of pages of the scientific literature that will offer open access to detailed knowledge. In fact, the BHL now has scanning centers operating in London, Boston, and Washington DC, and has scanned the first 1.25 million pages for the Encyclopedia."

That part is, for me, even more mind-boggling than the big wiki. Ecology is just one of many fields in which more knowledge has been rigorously collected during the last century or two than in the previous history of humanity combined, but so much of that understanding remains captive in printed pages in scattered archives. Scanning such vast piles into modern digital technology is a huge step forward towards that "Star Trek shipboard computer" fantasy: letting machines carry out the gruntwork of collecting and sorting information so that human ingenuity can be devoted entirely to the analysis and critical thinking which makes us unique in our world.
Coooool!

U.S. foundation giving keeps surging, and changing

The Foundation Center, the best source of information on charitable foundations, has released its latest trend data. While the fact that foundation grantmaking continues to boom is hardly a surprise given various newspaper headlines the last few years, there are some changes underway which development directors and executive directors would be wise to think about.

The Center's data comes from the largest 1,100 foundations, representing about half of all foundation grant dollars awarded. Total grant dollars from those institutions are rising now at close to twice the rate of inflation: up about 6% in 2005 after a rise of 8% for 2004. (And the center predicts an even greater increase for 2006 thanks to various high-profile foundation gifts starting to turn into new grant dollars).

Those increases are in dollars awarded, though -- the total number of individual grants issued rose only half as much. So the average size of individual foundation grants is rising. At the top end, a record 308 individual grants were at least $5 million each in 2005.

The common accusation that foundations have limited attention spans is supported in some ways by this data. For example the largest grantmaking increases by subject area in 2005 were environmental and animal-related causes, two categories which had declined the previous three years.

Unrestricted grants rose by only 1% for 2005, meaning they declined as a fraction of all grant dollars. So that's one recurring gripe which is not yet being persuasive for many folks on the foundation side of the discussion (I'm one example of that, actually).

What's wrong with environmentalists?

Just over two years ago now, two California activists shook up the environmentalism field a fair amount with an essay entitled "The Death of Environmentalism." (32-page PDF file here; interview with the authors here.) Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus argued basically that American environmentalists have spent the last 30 years trying to re-fight their successful battles of the 1960s and 1970s, as if nothing had changed socially or politically since then. The new news is that they've expanded the essay into a book which will be published shortly.

Meanwhile at the practical-politics level, a prominent Republican pollster and messaging consultant (the guy who coined the phrase "death tax" for the inheritance tax) recently told the online green magazine Grist that green activists have repeatedly "taken a very important issue and undermined their own case for it." Frank Luntz thinks that the fact that steady strong public support for green issues hasn't lately translated into political victories is largely because environmental non-profits behave as professional scolds, communicating a vibe that "anyone who doesn't believe what they believe is not only wrong but evil." At last year's Environmental Grantmakers Association annual meeting I heard this communications consultant make much the same point in a more-friendly, but still pretty blunt, way.

(This stuff is fairly personal for me since a large fraction of who I am intellectually, professionally and even genetically falls in this issue realm.)

Luntz's remarks ring true, indeed remind me of comments I've heard in recent years from friends and family members -- I recall the generally-sympathetic voter who when I mentioned the "smart-growth" groups that my foundation funds, sighed and said, "Oh yes, the people who think we should all be ashamed that we don't live in little boxes." An analogy comes to mind with feminism, where even by the time I graduated college over two decades ago it was striking how many smart young women were completely supportive of feminist positions and goals while rolling their eyes at the attitudes and political hyperbole of actual feminist activists.

Shellenberger and Nordhaus, from my experience, have a strong point with regard to public-policy environmentalism, the heroes who got the Clean Water Act and Clean Air Act established back in the day but in recent years have had so much less success in Washington. Their argument holds up much less well with regard to conservationists, who over the last quarter-century have intellectually reinvented their own field and who are now realizing astounding successes.

[P.S. I only just recently noticed that Shellenberger and Nordhaus expanded their diagnosis to modern liberalism as a whole. On that point they get a big "hear, hear" from me but currently I try to save that particular rant for commenting in other people's blogs, for which I'm sure readers here are just as grateful as is my immediate family...]

If you can make it in Bentonville...

Environmental Defense is looking for someone to take the lead in their work to make Wal-Marts green -- from within. Joel Makower has a nice writeup of the situation at "Two Steps Forward". It sounds like they don't want someone who'd simply put a happy face on what the company does: "The ideal candidate...is someone who would never have imagined moving to Arkansas."

Land conservation takes the lead

A startling report from the Land Trust Alliance is getting some national-media attention this week but I wish they hadn't buried their lede, which is that in the U.S. the permanent protection of land for conservation is now going faster than sprawl -- and pulling away.

Last month the national conservation groups were celebrating the current boom in state/local public funding for land conservation; now the LTA has pulled together national data on non-governmental activity for the same purpose. They report that just in the past five years private non-profits protected 13 million acres, equal to a new Yellowstone National Park every year.

The national conservation-advocacy groups say that new development consumes 2 million acres per year, so the nongovernmental land trusts alone are now protecting more land than is being sprawled on each year. Obviously adding the new open space protected via all those new state and local bond referenda, and the occasional addition to federal national monuments and so forth, makes the picture even better.

The LTA report does have a couple of oddities, such as that most of their charts and graphs include only state and local land trusts when national groups like The Nature Conservancy and Trust For Public Land are a huge part of all this activity. And while criticizing the drops in direct federal appropriations for conservation they ignore the fact that all that private non-profit land protection is being subsidized by the federal tax code to the tune of billions per year now. (And the increase in federal tax benefits from donating land or easements which President Bush signed into law in August will boost all this even more.)

The non-profit land trust business is, not surprisingly, booming like dot-coms in the 90s. The LTA reports that even while the number of state and local land trusts was increasing by a third, the average operating budget increased by two thirds and salaried staff increased by almost half. In just five years, during an economic downturn! And that again doesn't count the big national/international groups.

The evil empire

Joining a foundation staff a year ago turned me from a non-profit specialist into more of a generalist as far as subject area. One subject that keeps coming up at conferences and online within the U.S. non-profit sector now is Wal-Mart.

For instance one project I'm heavily involved in at work is related to the food system, seeking to leverage a big increase in the amount of food that is grown locally and/or organically. Activists in that subject are talking a lot about Wal-Mart these days, with no clear consensus on whether on balance the company's entry into the issue is a good thing or bad. A colleague on that project who is a veteran public-health advocate mentioned one day that those folks are slightly agog over the rapid expansion of Wal-Mart's cheap generic drug offering which, if successful, seems to shake up some of the public-policy debate regarding our health care system. Pro-choice activists scored a big win early this year when the company reversed course on the morning-after pill, particularly since they sell it for far less than other pharmacies do.

On gay-rights websites there is chatter about the company's moves the last couple years on that front, as for example noted here, which is inspiring calls by religious-right groups for boycotts. And thanks to Al Gore's public endorsement of Wal-Mart as a key green change agent (which, as an aside, is my least-favorite new non-profit-sector buzzword), the company's environmental impact is getting more attention. I've seen this news article linked a few times now.

Anti-sprawl activists continue to name Wal-Mart as a poster child for unsustainable economic growth, as do labor unions. This progressive activist's research paper coming to a different conclusion gets linked a bit and the author got a couple of invitations to speak on campuses and debate online, but he's been largely ignored by the mainstream media.

And recently a friend who is heavy into the stock market noted this irony: Wall Street thinks that Wal-Mart, as a business, peaked several years ago. Its stock price hasn't even kept up with inflation for three years now and its sales growth lags well behind that of competitors like Target. As a dominant economic force it may be that the company's historical moment has, for better or worse, passed.

Give me land, give me land...

U.S. conservation groups like Trust for Public Land and the Land Trust Alliance have been celebrating a November 7th election result that hasn't risen to the top of the media coverage: voters in 23 states approved raising their own taxes by $5.7 billion for new permanent parks or nature preserves.

A total of 99 state, county or local referenda for this purpose passed, many by overwhelming margins. That's out of 128 which were on ballots; the 77% winning percentage is similar to national elections going back a decade but the amounts keep getting bigger. The winning referenda this time were scattered around the country, six in Texas alone, with the biggest being California's at $2.25 billion.

That follows a huge conservation victory in Congress in August, an expansion of the tax benefits for donating permanent conservation easements on private land. That was buried within the federal Pension Protection Act (which included other provisions that were less clear and less welcome) .

Bless us every one!

Made me giggle: a fine non-profit devoted to building bridges between religious denominations around environmental issues recently wrote to its supporters, "Join Us for a Blessing of the Solar Panels!" (newly installed on the roof of a member church that is going green) I pictured one of the Monty Python guys in a white robe intoning, "...and furthermore bless this new insulated pipe, running over from the Holy High Efficiency Hot Water Heater, without which we might continue to waste Your heavenly energy since some of us are simply unable to remember to wear long woollies and hence spend each Sunday service complaining without justification..."