Environmental Defense was one of the earliest adopters of Internet technology in both the nonprofit and the environmental activism sectors. With a budget large enough to invest in new technologies, they started earlier than most nonprofits experimenting with this medium. Their prime achievement was the Environmental Scorecard, a Web-based project that integrated Web and database technology to bring toxics information to the masses. I talked with Bill Pease, architect of Environmental Defense's early Internet efforts, and now Vice President of Product Delivery at GetActive Software, an Application Service Provider that uses much of the technology he developed at Environmental Defense. - Michael Stein.

April 11, 2001

Michael Stein: Bill, what is Environmental Defense's current budget and staff size? How many staff are committed to Internet-related activities? And when did Environmental Defense start using the Internet and for what original purpose?

Bill Pease: Environmental Defense has an annual budget of approximately $40 million, with a staff of about 200, including more than 75 full-time scientists, economists, and attorneys. During the historical period discussed in this interview, there were about 3 full-time equivalent (FTE) staff involved in environmentaldefense.org and 5 FTE involved in scorecard.org and actionnetwork.org. Environmental Defense has significantly expanded its Internet staff since my team's departure, to approximately 20 FTE currently.

Environmental Defense went online early in 1994, as did many nonprofits. It began by publishing "brochureware" about the organization and its programs, with no specific strategic purpose. As recognition of the reach of the Internet spread, the organization began experimenting with recruiting new members online, servicing existing members (with online newsletters), and attempting to build community (discussion/bulletin boards).

Environmental Defense became an early Internet leader among nonprofits as a result of two parallel efforts by "entrepreneurs" within the organization: Bill Roberts, Environmental Defense's legislative director (and eventually director of strategic communications), and myself, then Environmental Defense's senior environmental health scientist (and eventually director of Internet projects.)

Bill Roberts created an email-based activism service, which collected activists' email addresses and mobilized them to send messages to congressional decision-makers. Eventually, this system evolved into the online digital activism service, ActionNetwork.org. To recruit activists to Environmental Defense, the organization ran one of the earliest and most successful streaming video recruitment ads (a RealAudio Julia Louis Dreyfus clip), getting record response rates for an online effort.

Meanwhile, I created a Web-based environmental information service, Scorecard.org, in an effort to get actionable information to the public and stigmatize the poor environmental performance of top US polluters. On the strategic side, I worked closely with David Roe, a senior attorney at Environmental Defense, who believed that expanded right-to-know programs would create effective incentives for companies to reduce toxic chemical releases. On the technical side, I collaborated with Philip Greenspun, one of the Web's early experts in building database-backed Web sites and online communities. Environmental Defense's relationship with Greenspun and his company, arsDigita, was an essential factor in the organization's rapid development of sophisticated Web services. I was Environmental Defense's Internet architect, managing development work by arsDigita and linking their programming expertise with the strategic ideas of Environmental Defense program staff. The collaboration resulted in the launch of Scorecard.org in April 1998, and of ActionNetwork.org in February 1999.

It is worth noting that these cutting edge projects were developed separately from the internal Environmental Defense Web team, which focused on the organization's Web site, edf.org. While edf.org was produced with in-house IT staff, its infrastructure was not nearly adequate to handle the development of more ambitious and sophisticated Web services. Scorecard.org had to be separately developed, by staff in Environmental Defense 's environmental health program in California, rather than as part of any overall organizational plan for Web development. ActionNetwork.org involved more than one office from the beginning, with Web development directed from California, but strategic applications shaped by Environmental Defense's lobbying team in Washington and New York.

Michael: What impact did this approach have on the project and the organization? What were the pluses and minuses to having the Web/Internet activities developed separately from the main organization?

Bill: In many respects, Environmental Defense is an organization of policy entrepreneurs, which succeeds in developing innovative solutions to environmental problems because it allows professional staff considerable autonomy. So our independent Internet initiative fit well within this larger organizational culture - we were given room to innovate and do things differently online. However, this independence eventually generated conflict with the organization's management, which wanted more control over Internet projects once we had demonstrated success in attracting new audiences and funders to the organization. While this effort to regain control over Internet activities by management is understandable from an organizational perspective, it contributed to the departure of the entire team from the organization. We liked our independence, and had developed our own ideas about what was needed to succeed online.

Michael: How does maintaining an Internet presence fit into Environmental Defense's mission and goals?

Bill: Maintaining an organizational Web site had little relation to specific mission or goals, beyond educating the public about the organization's activities and providing member services. Scorecard and ActionNetwork, however, are examples of projects that were created in order to pursue key organizational goals with specifically Web-based strategies -- using information disclosure to create incentives for companies to improve their environmental performance; using online lobbying to introduce constituency pressure into legislative debates in real time. As ActionNetwork moved online, it was designed to become a hub site for smaller organizations collaborating with Environmental Defense on environmental issues. A number of other nonprofits were invited to participate (for free) in the service's early online development, as Environmental Defense pursued its goal of building relationships with regional and local environmental organizations.

Michael: What is the status of those relationships? What worked or didn't work with those partnerships?

Bill: Almost all of the partnerships with smaller or regional organizations have been maintained over time: most of the original organizations involved in ActionNetwork have migrated into paying customers of GetActive Software, and remain active participants in ActionNetwork, the largest online aggregation of environmental activists. Only a few groups have left the service, mainly larger national groups interested in trying to create their own independent action networks .

Environmental Defense is continuing to develop other new Internet services: ForMyWorld.org is a "green" destination site, which they hope will extend its reach into the wider public audience who are not environmental activists. The site offers localized community content (pollution reports from Scorecard.org, natural history reports from enature.org, recycling reports from 1800cleanup.org and gardening reports from Garden.com) and content created by partner environmental organizations, including the National Wildlife Foundation. By marketing this site widely, Environmental Defense hopes to expand its membership base using online recruitment. Environmental Defense is also planning to launch a global environmental information and activism service, actglobal.org. Both of these new services are being built by a newly hired Environmental Defense Web team, using a different development environment from that used to construct Scorecard.org and ActionNetwork.org.

Michael: At what point was the Scorecard Project devised? What impact has it had on Environmental Defense's work?

Bill: I joined Environmental Defense in 1995 and was quickly swamped by requests from grassroots organizations wanting assistance interpreting information about toxics in their community. With money raised from the Clarence Heller Charitable Foundation, I began building an internal database to improve the flow of actionable information to people concerned about toxics, and hired a team of environmental scientists and database consultants. Initially we planned to create a standalone program for interpreting toxics data (for CD-ROM and download as an executable). I solicited Philip Greenspun's advice about how to use the Web to distribute information, and he quickly persuaded me that a standalone program would never get used by the general public and that the only way to go was browser-based services. We began the data modeling and data collection for SC in late 1996, started programming in mid-1997 and launched the site in April 1998.

The immediate success of Scorecard transformed Environmental Defense senior management's appreciation of what the Web could do for an organization. It had significant internal and external impacts. Inside, the organization was astounded at the extent of press coverage the Web service created (articles in literally hundreds of newspapers, often from local media which never covered Environmental Defense), the level of user activity (thousands of faxes sent to polluters, emails to legislators), and the fundraising benefits. Large donors loved the idea of Environmental Defense leading the way online, and Environmental Defense attracted a number of very large grants from foundations wanting to expand SC from toxics to other pollution problems, as well as attention from Silicon Valley executives, a whole new class of donors nonprofits were then attempting to figure out how to engage. Getting a Webby nomination for ActionNetwork also aided the organization's buzz.

Outside, both Scorecard and ActionNetwork have had demonstrable impacts on changing environmental policies. While a large part of SC's impact is "invisible" (companies quietly alter behavior to get off "top ten" pollution lists), the emergence of Web-based information disclosure radically altered the balance of power between environmentalists and the chemical industry. Environmental Defense's biggest victory related to SC came in 1999, when the Chemical Manufacturers Association (CMA) agreed to a voluntary program to test high production volume chemicals for toxicity. Industry had opposed testing for decades, and EPA had been unable to use TSCA to get them to do anything on an expedited timeline (testing was expected to take until 2110!) Using Scorecard, Environmental Defense's Environmental Health program launched a campaign to get industry to commit to faster testing - threatening companies with public disclosure that they were using chemicals they could not prove were safe. Industry caved, and an extensive, expedited testing program (all toxicity data in within 3 years) was designed and agreed to by EPA, CMA and Environmental Defense.

Michael: Environmental Defense has made huge investments in staff and infrastructure over time to create a world class Internet presence. Was it worth it? How was this strategy arrived at?

Bill: It'd be nice to say it was all intentional, that a world class presence was the strategic goal of the organization from the beginning. But the inside story is a bit different: the early, rapid development of Environmental Defense's most impressive Web projects occurred as a result of entrepreneurial efforts by myself and Roberts, not as a result of a larger organizational strategy. There was understandable resistance to putting resources into Web work, and even fear that the organization's reputation for quality work would be undermined. Early efforts to develop a comprehensive strategy actually slowed down the pace of both Scorecard and Action Network development, as senior managers were slow to work their way up the knowledge curve before making needed resource allocations, and then were carried away by enthusiasm that led to very large resources being directed into new Web projects managed from the top down.

ED obtained its initial successes without "huge investments." Scorecard and ActionNetwork were both built for relatively little money (less than $750K) on the strength of the creativeness of my team in California and Philip Greenspun's willingness to work for ED at below-market rates. The infrastructure we built still operates these Web services, but is now outside the organization and managed under contract with GetActive Software (which powers both Scorecard.org and ActionNetwork.org). Rapid growth in Environmental Defense's Internet budget only occurred after the departure of my technical team to form LocusPocus. (Scarce internal budget resources were one of the reasons that led to our departure.) Environmental Defense has been building an entirely new infrastructure (team and development environment) since January 2000. Currently, the organization pursues its strategy using both internally- and externally-developed Web services.

Michael: $750,000 is a huge amount of money for most nonprofit organizations to consider spending on Internet projects. Can you shed light on how Environmental Defense funded these costs?

Bill: Environmental Defense had an annual budget of approximately $25 million during the two to three year period in which Scorecard and ActionNetwork were built, so $750,000 is a relatively small expenditure within that context. David Roe and I raised most of the money for this project from the Clarence E. Heller Charitable Foundation, The Joyce Foundation of Chicago, and the New York Community Trust. Bill Roberts found funding for ActionNetwork from other foundation sources. $750,000 is the cash cost of the projects, including staff and consultant salaries as well as the costs of our programming and hosting contracts with arsDigita. arsDigita was charging very reduced rates as a commercial Web developer because they supported our goals; we also received donated software licenses from Oracle and ESRI.

Michael: How has using email action alerts fit into Environmental Defense's Internet strategy?

Bill: Environmental Defense has considered email communications an essential part of its communication strategy for a decade. Initially offering an email newsletter, the organization has expanded its subscription services to include more engaging mail services like "action alerts." These messages alert activists about pressing legislative decisions, and enable them to correspond directly with their legislators simply by replying to sender (either email reply or a Web visit generate a customizable message matched to your legislator). As noted above, Environmental Defense recruited subscribers to its activist lists using streaming video pitches from celebrities, etc.

Since hiring a Chief Internet Officer, Environmental Defense has become much more sophisticated about its use of email. The organization now contracts with external vendors for list services, including direct marketing via email. Environmental Defense solicits subscribers via partnerships with destination Websites like care2.com, collecting recruits for further communication. Environmental Defense has recently moved most of this work to GetActive Software, to ensure there is a consistent tracking of all these various communications: newsletters, action alerts, etc. Environmental Defense now regularly experiments with sophisticated adaptive communications campaigns, designed to discover the most effective sequence of communications that results in donations or other kinds of support. For example, Environmental Defense first offers prospects free email reports on pollution in their community (http://www.environmentaldefense.org/Email/). Then it offers engaged audience members free activism services from ActionNetwork.org. After someone has participated in several action alerts, their probability of contributing to Environmental Defense is substantially greater.

Michael: What kind of experiences have you had in online fundraising and membership development using the Internet?

Bill: Well, as I've already explained, this is now a major focus on Environmental Defense's online efforts. The adaptive campaign described above (free personalized community reports, free digital lobbying services, then a request for support) netted Environmental Defense a record amount of online donations in December 2000.

Michael: What kinds of changes did Environmental Defense have to make to use the Internet?

Bill: In the early period, the organization's management struggled to support strategic and staff-initiated applications on the Web that threatened traditional modes of organizational control and management. For example, it was very difficult initially for Environmental Defense management to accept that Scorecard provided links to other online resources on toxics, allowed its audience to post unedited comments on corporate environmental behavior in bulletin boards, etc. When I started working at Environmental Defense in 1995, the official policy of edf.org was no offsite links, in an effort to keep users on the site. No staff members were allowed to publish directly to the Web on edf.org - everything went through a managerial editorial review. There was considerable fear about the liability Environmental Defense might be undertaking if we published regulatory agency data on polluters, or allowed community residents to speak out about companies. Basically, it had to accept entrepreneurial initiative from staff much more than it was comfortable with in this area.

Michael: Do you think that the Internet has helped you achieve Environmental Defense's mission?

Bill: Quantitatively, projects like Scorecard.org and ActionNetwork.org result in impressive performance according to a wide variety of measures of significance to an organization:

• substantial new funding attracted by Internet work
• extensive press coverage
• wins in environmental campaigns of importance to the organization
• growing lists of online prospects and activists, at much more cost-effective rates than direct mail substantial traffic to Web properties
• significant recognition of Internet performance (awards, search engine placement, cross-links)