Grants
Hillspire
September 2025 – August 2028
$600,000 ”Protecting the Right to Know in a Time of Erasure”
These funds are general operating funds to (1) sustain uninterrupted operations, (2) strengthen core infrastructure and talent, and (3) enhance EDGI’s agility to respond to unpredictable threats. A portion of these funds will be distributed to partners in our Public Environmental Data Partners coalition.
MacArthur Foundation
September 2025 – August 2026
$250,000 ”Disrupting Deregulatory Efforts: Safeguarding, Analyzing, and Sharing the Value of US Climate Policies, Data, and Information”
The goals of this project are to safeguard climate-relevant federal data and information, support people to leverage that data and information in support of climate-friendly policies, and influence public and political discourse to show the value of climate regulations and their data and information. To achieve these goals, we will engage in immediate interventions and conduct research to facilitate medium-term and inform longer-term interventions across two pillars of work: data and information.
Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
May 2025 – May 2026
$250,000 ”Preserving, Promoting, and Protecting Environmental Health Data Project ”
EDGI will utilize these funds to support immediate interventions to mitigate the harms of environmental health data suppression. These interventions include safeguarding resources including quantitative data, documents, web content, and other records; supporting public access to the data and information resources we preserve; and raising public awareness about the changes to public data, information, and governance that are occurring, and their importance.
Summit Foundation
April 2025 – March 2026
$75,000 ”Preserving Access to Critical U.S. Government Ocean Biodiversity Data”
These funds will support EDGI in preserving federal data related to marine mammals and threatened and endangered marine species. 50% of this funding will be directed to EDGI’s partner organization Intertidal Agency.
Sustainable Cities Fund
March 2025 – March 2026
$750,000 ”Public Environmental Data Partners”
These funds support EDGI and our data coalition, the Public Environmental Data Partners. Using these funds, EDGI and our PEDP member organizations will archive at least 200 critical federal environmental datasets and make them publicly accessible through a central website linking to several repositories. More than 50% of this funding will be directed to EDGI’s movement partners.
The David and Lucile Packard Foundation
April 2025 – April 2026
$150,000 “Safeguarding and Stewarding Data and Information for Environmental Justice”
Using these funds, EDGI will obtain, preserve, and build access to critical environmental data and information for environmental justice advocacy and action. Through a variety of approaches, EDGI will collect and safeguard data and information that environmental justice communities and advocates need. By building tools and information dissemination platforms, EDGI will not only preserve but contextualize and share data and information primed for effective advocacy.
October 2023 – April 2026
$215,087 “Core Support Grant”
EDGI is utilizing a Core Support grant from The David and Lucile Packard Foundation to sustain and further develop our work at the intersection of US federal environmental, science, and information policies and practices. We are focusing these funds on expanding and improving public access to federal environmental data and information, supporting more effective public engagement with federal environmental governance, and creating a thriving network to conduct this work.
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Individual Donations
Our work is made possible through grants and direct tax-deductible donations from the public.
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Fiscal Sponsorship
EDGI is fiscally sponsored by Multiplier, a 501(c)(3) organization that supports projects that are turning game-changing ideas into planet-saving impact.
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In-kind Resources
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Previous Support
Bloomberg Philanthropies
November 2024 – March 2025
$350,000 ”Building Resiliency for Federal Environmental Data and Information”
EDGI is utilizing these funds to support large-scale archiving of the federal web presence and launch new projects to increase the reach and the utility of those archives. We are pairing this broad-scale effort with smaller-scale, targeted efforts to create data repositories and tools that center and serve community needs. These efforts aim to address much of what has made federal environmental data extremely challenging for layperson use and will identify, collate, archive, and utilize vulnerable data that are critical to environmental and climate justice advocacy. More than 50% of these funds will be directed to partner organizations.
Sustainable Cities Fund
September 2024 – January 2025
$125,000 ”Safeguarding and Expanding Access to Federal Environmental Data and Information”
EDGI is utilizing these funds to ramp up our work monitoring federal web-based environmental resources for changes and suppression of information, to develop tools to archive informational resources related to major proposed environmental rules and create a dynamic database for those resources, and to participate in a broad multi-organizational data rescue effort to preserve and provide public access to vulnerable environmental datasets.
The National Science Foundation’s Science and Technology Studies (STS)
August 2022 – July 2025
$465,888 ”Data, Science, and Environmental Justice at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency”
EDGI is utilizing these funds to investigate how the environmental justice (EJ) movement in the United States has affected data- and science-related values, methods, and practices at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) over the last four decades. Building on prior studies of this agency undertaken by interdisciplinary researchers at the Environmental Data and Governance Initiative (EDGI), the proposed project hones in on a pivotal yet problematic arena of the EPA’s incorporation of environmental justice into its work: its approaches to cumulative exposure. Our research team includes academics, environmental justice groups, and the academic advisory committee.
Schmidt Family Foundation – 11th Hour Project
January – July 2024
$12,377 “Research United Data Corps”
EDGI is utilizing these funds, a sub-award on a project led by Coming Clean, Inc, to participate in a research service to support environmental justice community partners.
Rita Allen Foundation – Civic Science Fellows
September 2021 – March 2023
$187,000 Civic Science Fellowships
EDGI utilized these funds to support two Civic Science Fellows who explored the relationships between environmental governance, environmental justice, data, and civic science. Their fellowships informed policy and practice recommendations and moved forward fields of critical scholarship.
The David and Lucile Packard Foundation
June 2021 – May 2023
$450,000 “Environmental Data and Governance Initiative (EDGI) General Support”
EDGI is utilizing these funds to sustain and further develop our work at the intersection of US federal environmental, science, and information policies and practices. In our first four years, our analyses demonstrated that just and effective environmental governance will require significant work to improve three critical functions: agency operations, public information, and community engagement. With programs rooted in these three areas, over the next two years we will explore how environmental, climate, and data governance can be rebuilt and reimagined to protect the most vulnerable, and how governing agencies and industries can be held more accountable through transparent, collaborative, community-centered environmental research, technology, and decision-making.
April 2020 – June 2021
$450,000 “Environmental Data and Governance Initiative (EDGI) General Support”
EDGI used this funding to continue and expand its successful work documenting and analyzing changes to federal websites involving environmental issues, interviewing past and present staff of EPA and other agencies, analyzing federal environmental policy changes, publishing lay and academic articles on federal environmental concerns, and developing new democratic approaches to environmental data production, access, and use. This funding allowed us to lay vital groundwork for a brighter future for environmental data and governance in which justice and equity stand at the center.
April 2018 – March 2020
$500,000 “Environmental Data and Governance Initiative (EDGI) General Support”
The Environmental Data and Governance Initiative (EDGI) is using this funding to continue and expand its very successful work in archiving federal environmental data, monitoring and reporting on changes in federal websites involving environmental issues, interviewing past and present staff of EPA and other agencies, producing analyses of federal environmental reports and rules changes, publishing lay and academic articles on federal environmental concerns, and working with data justice organizations to develop new democratic approaches to environmental data production, access, and use, as well as additional general organizational support.
October 2018 – September 2019
$35,200 “Organizational Effectiveness Grant”
This project involves working to build more organizational effectiveness within EDGI, including working with two consultants with complementary skills. Zulakya Santiago of Libélula Consulting is focusing on EDGI’s internal structure and Susanne Moser is focusing on EDGI’s external relationships with many different audiences and types of organizations. This funding also supported a two-day in-person meeting of EDGI’s core membership.
May 2017 – June 2018
$97,020 “Collaborative Website Monitoring, Analysis, and Strategic Communications to Protect Science Infrastructure Under the Trump Administration”
Climate Central is partnering with The Environmental Data and Governance Initiative (EDGI) to comprehensively assess which government-based climate science resources (including databases) are threatened and to establish a model and plan for ongoing monitoring and strategic communications that protect vital scientific infrastructure.
Doris Duke Charitable Foundation
September 2020 – August 2021
$50,000 “Building Foundations for the Environmental Right to Know in the Digital Age”
Over the last three years, EDGI’s analyses have demonstrated that we need to not just restore but enhance the rules and principles guiding how our federal government protects our ecosystems and human health. EDGI has been developing detailed retrospective analyses with a view to formulating recommendations for concrete improvements to both our regulatory systems for protecting our environment and to the democratic orientation of those systems, which will better ensure that environmental protection benefits everyone. We are laying the groundwork for justice-oriented public data and information accessibility, including new standards for public oversight and our environmental right-to-know, that is tailored to the digital age.
June 2018 – May 2020
$200,000 “Archiving, Monitoring, and Ensuring the Accessibility of Federal Environmental Data: Support for the Environmental Data and Governance Initiative”
This grant will be used to promote access to government data and information, refine assessments of data vulnerability, and promote social and environmental justice movement building.
March 2017 – September 2017
$50,000, “Environmental Data and Governance Initiative”
This grant provided funding for three of EDGI’s core working groups: archiving, website monitoring, and interviewing.
Earth Science Information Partners Lab
March 2021 – August 2021
$10,000 “Developing an Environmental Enforcement Data Portal for Grassroots and Congressional Action”
Vital data about federal environmental enforcement actions against facilities that pollute the soil, air, and water is currently available but largely inaccessible in the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Enforcement and Compliance History Online (ECHO) database. In this project, we will build a web portal to share accessible data tools we have developed so that the public can use ECHO data to answer questions about polluting facilities in their areas of interest and draw attention to their findings. Our web portal will include new tutorials about how to access and query our database, and will create intuitive access to our existing data science tools.
Code for Science & Society
December 2020 – December 2021
$20,000 “Environmental Enforcement Watch: Open Data Science for Environmental Justice”
EDGI is using this funding to host a series of online workshops for our Environmental Enforcement Watch (EEW) project. In these workshops, we bring together environmental activist groups, environmental justice communities, subject area experts, and members of the public to collaboratively analyze & make actionable data from EPA’s Enforcement and Compliance History Online (ECHO) database using data science tools we have created.