Dear Readers,
We write with the remarkable news that we have just received our first sustaining grant from the Packard Foundation for $500,000 to support EDGI for the next 2 years.
This vital investment in our future is built on the work of hundreds of volunteers and support from fiscal and in-kind donors over the past year. We have achieved much in such a short period of time. Highlights, as mentioned in our annual report, include:
- 49 DataRescue events in cities across the US and Canada between December 2016 and June 2017.
- EDGI was awarded the 2017 J. Franklin Jameson Archival Advocacy Award from the Society of American Archivists. Our major contributions to governmental data archiving were also recently recognized by the Federal Depository Library Project.
- EDGI Interviewers conducted 60+ interviews with EPA and OSHA employees.
- EDGI website monitoring reports have been cited in more than 120 news articles and are regularly covered by The Washington Post, The New York Times, POLITICO, E&E News, The Guardian, Vox, and other outlets.
- Seven Senators and over two dozen Congress members cited EDGI’s website monitoring results in letters to EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt and President Trump to request restoration of key climate science material on the EPA website.
With this funding, we plan to invest in each of our working group areas as well as develop our unique horizontal organizational infrastructure.
Specifically, we will be funding:
- An Administrative Support position to assist with financial reporting, record keeping, and partnership management.
- An EDGI community coordinator to help with onboarding and training new members, communications, and building our community.
- A coordinator for our Web Monitoring team to help onboard and support volunteer analysts, organize report writing, communicate with media, and oversee project administration.
- A software developer to develop a public version of our web monitoring software, Scanner.
- A coordinator for our Archiving/Data Together working group to lead care of the EDGI-wide github, tech documentation, developers slack, and volunteer developer organizing.
- Support for 700 hours of interviewing time.
- Funding for 8 small prototyping Environmental Data Justice projects.
This success is thanks to the generous, dedicated work of our members and supporters. From this foundation, we look forward to growing together with both care and courage to imagine, offer, and enact responsible and responsive approaches to Environmental Data and Governance.
In collaboration and celebration,
Current EDGI Steering Committee
Sara Wylie (Moderator/Chair)
Lourdes Vera (Communications Coordinator)
Nick Shapiro (Fiscal Partnerships Coordinator)
Phil Brown (Development Coordinator)
Stephanie Knutson (Grants Coordinator and Bookkeeper)
Lindsey Dillion (Treasurer)
Kevin Nguyen (Secretary/Record-Keeper)
Chris Seller (Interviewing Working Group Representative)
Michelle Murphy (Environmental Data Justice Working Group Representative)
Gretchen Gehrke (Web Monitoring Working Group Representative)