While we encourage an integrated, carefully planned approach to online communications, the reality is that many organizations stumble into an online presence without much planning. Or perhaps, like Environmental Defense, they backed into planning as a result of early experimentation or trial-and-error. Like many organizations exploring the potential of new media, Environmental Defense learned experientially about the Internet's ability to build networks of supporters, increase interaction with constituents and affect positive social change. After initial exploration (as described in a profile published earlier this year), Environmental Defense regrouped and reassessed how communication tools could be integrated effectively within the organization's mission and infrastructure. By developing a communications plan, which included building staff and technological capacity and forging new content alliances, the organization is shepherding an exciting online movement for a more sustainable world.

Growing an Internet Strategy
According to Acting Chief Internet Officer Joyce Newman, Environmental Defense didn't so much map out and implement a formal Internet strategy as it found itself evolving one through innovation and experimentation. In 1993, Environmental Defense, one of the leading environmental advocacy organizations in the country, first went online launching what has come to be known as a "brochure site" containing only basic information about the organization's programs and services. A few years later, former senior environmental health scientist, Bill Pease, and former legislative director, Bill Roberts, developed two separate "specialty" Web sites that drew on the Internet's ability to mobilize people into action.

These two sites, Scorecard.org and ActionNetwork.org, were the beginnings of actively advancing Environmental Defense's goals via the Internet. ActionNetwork.org enables organizations and its users to send messages via fax or email to policymakers around the country; Scorecard.org is an environmental information service backed by a sophisticated database alerting users to local environmental conditions, its impact on the health of their communities and suggestions for influencing and affecting change. ActionNetwork.org now numbers over 750,000 activists, 140,000 of whom are members of the Environmental Defense action network. Scorecard.org draws some 40,000 unique visitors each month.

The success of these sites confirmed to Environmental Defense's leadership the importance of the Internet in capturing and growing new audiences. A more formalized online strategy doubled the number of staff working directly on online initiatives, led to the development of the organization's Internet Department and the creation of a staff position for a Chief Internet Officer. Joyce Newman oversees the organization's seven Web sites along with the efforts of 14 fulltime project managers, programmers, editors and online marketers. Her team works across four functional areas - content, marketing, technology and administration - and share responsibility for all of Environmental Defense's Web sites and several off-shoot niche sites, many of which are collaborations with other organizations.

Refining Intended Audience Hand in hand with growing its Internet Department and technological capacity was growing its audience, including activists, journalists, policy and decision-makers, and consumers. The organization's Web sites respond to the needs of each of its audiences by developing Web sites specific to those needs - be it by offering online discussions about industrial hog farming in North Carolina, pushing policy changes through targeted email campaigns, or educating citizens about ways to reduce harmful toxic emissions. A new site launched in December 2001, ActGlobal.org, is the organization's first appeal to international audiences, focusing on issues related to rivers and dams, population and consumption and international financial organizations. Information is offered in four languages, including French, Spanish, English and Bahasa Indonesia.

ED Web Initiatives: environmentaldefense.org Scorecard Action Network For My World Hog Watch Global Warming: Focus on the Future Alliance for Environmental Innovation Save Our Environment Action Center Get Green

Environmental Defense is also relaunching its main organizational site, environmentaldefense.org, which is geared towards members. Prior to this redesign, the relationship between the many sites the organization manages was inconsistent and unclear. As a result, visitors to these increasingly popular sites were often unaware of their tie to Environmental Defense and visitors to Environmental Defense's organizational site were unaware of its affiliation with these powerful online initiatives. Thanks to technological innovations and lower costs, Newman explained, the organization can now make technical improvements that will closely link all the sites, helping to make the relationship between the sites and the organization more explicit.

Staff also experimented with a plethora of communication tools and marketing strategies that enabled them to build and manage relationships with their audiences, the most effective of which was email. By surveying audiences about its interests via email, the organization could target the information distributed, be it about gardening or global warming. Appealing to their audience's personal interests by strategically shaping the message of an email helps the organization to accomplish a range of its objectives, from affecting changes in consumer behavior to increasing online donations to environmental causes.

"We want to build relationships with people about the issues they care about. By looking at ways to segment our audience so that we're reaching people with the information they want when they want it," Newman said. The organization also experiments with the format and writing style of e-newsletters to ensure information is not only accessible, but motivational.

Content Alliances
Environmental Defense also discovered that reaching new audiences required building upon and initiating strategic sponsorships and content alliances with like-minded organizations.

"Cyberspace allows separate brick and mortar organizations to work together more effectively, to have a larger impact together," Newman said. "Such alliances, in the Web arena, allow for a broader distribution of information and lets you target information in the most cost-effective way."

With that in mind, the organization surveyed the burgeoning online environmental landscape and identified a need for a breadth of information and ideas that could speak to a wider audience. For that, the organization enlisted the help of some 20 eco-friendly organizations and news services to launch formyworld.com, a collaborative effort of organizations working together to educate and increase involvement in environmental issues.

Pertinent literature and research are fed into one of seven different "channels" by Environmental Defense editorial staff who coordinate activities with an appointed liaison from each partner organization. Partners include the National Wildlife Federation, Environmental News Network, Consumers Union, the Moosewood Collective and the Council for an Energy Efficient Economy (ACEEE). The site also teams up with VolunteerMatch, which links site visitors to environmental volunteer opportunities in their community. The organization has a number of additional strategic content and marketing alliances with environmental and corporate Web sites, including Ford, Care2.com and the GreenGuide.

"We are working together, sharing what does work and what doesn't work. We're all inventing it together," Newman said. "For example, one of our partner's zip-code finder and site design were outstanding. We learned a lot from them when talking about how to pull their material into formyworld.com. In the case of another organization, we had more extensive knowledge of working with databases and hopefully our expertise will drive more traffic to their information."

Environmental Defense complements its fleet of Web sites, email campaigns and electronic newsletters with direct mail campaigns, publications, paid advertisements and "Get Green," a public service campaign produced in partnership with the Ad Council. This multimedia initiative includes online banner ads, television public service advertisements (PSAs) and a Web site that provides simple, cost-saving tips to help people do their part in saving the environment.

The organization continues to explore the possibilities of communication technologies and implement strategies based on its experimentation. All of this together, it believes, plays a critical role in advancing its mission. And while the foresight, technical savvy and entrepreneurship on the part of staff may have sown the seeds of innovation, without clearly articulated communications goals and defined audience strategies, the benefits could not have been so successfully reaped.

Let us know what you think of this article. Email communicate@benton.org.

Last updated: 11 December 2001 jss
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