The Arntz Family Foundation has provided grants to the following organizations: The As You Sow, The Coral Reef Alliance, Earth Island Institute, Earthjustice, EcoLogic Development Fund, Ecotrust, Environment California Research & Policy Center, Greenbelt Alliance, Marine Conservation Biology Institute, The Ocean Conservancy, Pacific Marine Conservation Council, Pesticide Action Network, Rainforest Alliance, Rainforest Action Network, RARE, Rocky Mountain Institute, Seacology and Trees, Water & People,.

As You Sow  logo

As You Sow mobilizes capital markets to promote corporate accountability, social justice, and environmental sustainability. We build investor coalitions, engage in dialogue with company executives, file shareholder resolutions, and conduct shareholder solicitation and media initiatives to promote more responsible corporate behavior. No other organization is working full-time to translate social and environmental initiatives into financial terms to make a convincing business case to take directly to corporate executives and mainstream shareholders of large U.S. corporations.

As You Sow was instrumental in these victories:
· Getting Home Depot, the world's largest retailer of lumber derived from ancient old growth forests, to phase out old growth lumber products in favor of FSC certified wood.
· Moving Apple Computer to launch a computer recycling program – protecting water supplies by keeping millions of tons of toxic electronic waste out of landfills.
· Pushing Coke and Pepsi to implement recycled plastic in their containers saving nearly 1 million barrels of oil per year.

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Coral Reef Alliance Logo

The Coral Reef Alliance (CORAL) is an international non-profit, member-supported organization, dedicated to keeping coral reefs alive around the world. CORAL works to build sustainable coral reef destinations by enhancing the conservation management of marine parks, fostering best environmental practices in the tourism sector, and building communities' understanding of and connection to the reef.

MISSION: CORAL is dedicated to protecting the health of coral reefs by integrating ecosystem management, sustainable tourism, and community partnerships.

CORAL:
- works with communities to identify and solve conservation challenges
- changes attitudes and behavior through education and training
- provides resources to strengthen conservation efforts
- creates incentives for sustainable tourism

Earth Island Institute logo

Earth Island Institute was founded in 1982 by veteran environmentalist David Brower, a bold, inspiring environmental leader who believed that the most promising, creative solutions to urgent environmental problems spring from inspired and informed individuals. To that end, Earth Island grows environmental leadership by promoting citizen action and incubating a diverse network of projects. The quarterly Earth Island Journal educates and activates the general public covering environmental news from around the world.

Our project support program allows activists to put ideas into action by providing technical assistance and allowing them to focus on their programmatic goals not administrative tasks. Currently our network of 35 projects in more than 25 countries addresses a wide range of environmental issues worldwide through a variety of strategies including research, education, community organizing, media work, lobbying and collaboration. Lastly, Earth Island nurtures the next generation of environmental leaders through our Brower New Leaders Initiative - a program aimed at recognizing, mentoring and inspiring young activists.

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Earthjustice logo

Earthjustice is a non-profit public interest law firm dedicated to protecting the magnificent places, natural resources, and wildlife of this earth and to defending the right of all people to a healthy environment. Earthjustice brings about far-reaching change by enforcing and strengthening environmental laws on behalf of hundreds of organizations and communities.

Founded as the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund in 1971, Earthjustice established key environmental rights in a landmark case that went all the way to the Supreme Court. Since that time, Earthjustice has provided free legal services to hundreds of grassroots environmental and community organizations---as well as to regional, statewide, national, and international organizations. From eight regional offices across the country, Earthjustice works with these organizations to bring suits and to enforce laws that safeguard our natural resources, wildlife, and public health.

Earthjustice's policy experts in Washington, DC, work to prevent Congress from overturning these victories, and to protect such environmental laws as the Endangered Species Act and the Clean Air Act. Earthjustice's International Program addresses the impact of trade on the environment and on human rights and strengthens environmental law groups in other countries. Earthjustice also runs an environmental law clinic at Stanford University, educating students in the practice of public interest environmental law and increasing our service to organizations throughout the country.

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EcoLogic Development Fund lgog

EcoLogic Development Fund has worked since 1993 to foster community-led conservation of Latin America's tropical habitats; areas whose rich biodiversity makes their survival a matter of global importance. In contrast to the top-down, mega-projects typically imposed on the region, EcoLogic takes a people-centered approach to conservation. EcoLogic provides local organizations and communities with the financial and technical assistance they need to become powerful advocates for the environment.

By partnering with local groups, EcoLogic's small staff has helped strengthen the local stewardship of one million acres of threatened habitat and helped improve living conditions for over 500,000 poor. Its current projects span nine countries, 500 communities, and dozens of indigenous cultures.

For more information on EcoLogic, visit www.ecologic.org.

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EcoTrust logo

Founded in 1991, Ecotrust is a conservation organization dedicated to building a future that strengthens communities and the environment from Alaska to California - the place we call Salmon Nation. We do this in three ways: articulating a vision for Salmon Nation; investing and connecting markets in key sectors; and building constituencies for change. These strategies are applied across four core areas: Fisheries, Food and Farms, Forestry and Native Programs.

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Environment California Research & Policy Center logo

Environment California Research & Policy Center

We all want clean air, clean water and open spaces. But it takes independent research and tough-minded advocacy to win concrete results for our environment, especially when powerful interests stand in the way of environmental progress. That's the idea behind Environment California. We focus exclusively on protecting California's air, water and open spaces. We speak out and take action at the local, state and national levels to improve the quality of our environment and our lives.

Being in favor of the environment is a step in the right direction, but it's not enough. Winning real results that protect our environment requires action.

Promoting Clean Energy
In 2004, we helped convince the nation's largest municipal utility-the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power - to adopt the California Clean Energy standard-the nation's strongest clean energy law. It requires California's utilities to produce 20 percent of their electricity from clean, renewable sources by the year 2017.

Protecting Children's Health
In 2003, our advocates helped enact a landmark law banning PBDE's, chemicals so widely used in consumer products that levels of the chemical in women's breastmilk is skyrocketing. Exposure to the chemical may cause developmental damage and thyroid disruption in children.

Protecting California's Coast
In 2001, we helped win a court order suspending new offshore oil drilling that would have imperiled our coast. In 2002, our advocacy also helped lay the groundwork for the U.S. House to ban funding for drilling off our shores.

Defending Clean Water
We helped win a state law that forces the worst water polluters to pay significant fines, which go to fund pollution-reduction efforts.

Environment California draws on 30 years of experience in tackling our state's worst environmental problems. Our professional staff combines independent research, practical ideas and tough-minded advocacy to overcome the opposition of powerful special interests and win real results for California's environment.

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Greenbelt Alliance logo

Greenbelt Alliance: Preserving Historic Landscapes

For almost fifty years, Greenbelt Alliance has worked to protect the Bay Area's scenic landscapes and promote sustainable urban development in the nine-county Bay Area. Our work has consistently focused on achieving tangible results that all Bay Area residents can see and enjoy: we've protected over 1.1 million acres of productive farmland and open space that provide important economic benefits as well as scenic views, recreational opportunities, clean air and water.

We've improved the livability of Bay Area communities by promoting compact, transit-oriented housing and commercial development as an alternative to urban sprawl. We have produced a number of award-winning publications that promote smart growth. Since 1990 we've endorsed smart growth development projects within existing cities and towns, resulting in the creation of over 45,000 new homes – all without paving over a single acre of the greenbelt.

We take a unique grassroots approach to addressing land use issues. Our four field offices in Santa Rosa, Fairfield, Walnut Creek and San Jose assure that we have a strong presence in the communities where crucial land use decisions are being made. We partner with local businesses, decision-makers, residents and community leaders to find shared solutions to the problems of traffic, housing, loss of open space and other land use issues that impact their communities.

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Marine Conservation Biology  Institute logo

Marine Conservation Biology Institute was founded in 1996 by Dr. Elliott Norse to protect ocean life by pairing science and conservation advocacy. MCBI's essential approach is to be proactive - seeking to frame the agenda, rather than react to it. We view science as the basis for developing knowledge to improve public understanding and to promote needed governmental policy and management reforms. As a result, we focus on:

* developing the science of marine conservation biology;
* sponsoring scientific research that enhances the conservation of marine species and ecosystems;
* convening working groups of scientists and policy-makers to identify critical marine conservation problems and their solutions; and
* planning and carrying out advocacy work to secure better marine conservation laws, especially at the federal level.

MCBI works at the interface of the scientific and conservation advocacy communities. The public and our decision makers depend on scientists to take the sea's pulse, report its vital signs and prescribe what must be done to maintain or restore its health.

We've assembled a bold, focused and close-knit team of trained experts that works collaboratively with others to reshape the marine conservation agenda in the USA and beyond. Since MCBI is not a membership organization, we don't have to appeal to broad public sentiments. We don't take on all problems. Rather, we can focus on accomplishing what is most important and amenable to solution, looking beyond the horizon to see what others miss.

We then share our vision with the broader scientific community, our funders, our NGO collaborators, the media, Congress members and federal agency officials. This vision, our energy and our web of relationships with these "key players" is the foundation of our efforts to protect life in the sea.

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TOC Logo

The Ocean Conservancy promotes healthy and diverse ocean ecosystems and opposes practices that threaten ocean life and human life. Through research, education, and science-based advocacy, The Ocean Conservancy informs, inspires, and empowers people to speak and act on behalf of the oceans.

Our Four Strategic Priorities are:
1. Restore Sustainable American Fisheries
2. Protect Marine Wildlife From Human Impacts, including whales, sea turtles, and manatees.
3. Conserve Special Ocean Places, including California, the US Virgin Islands, and Florida
4. Reform Government for Better Ocean Stewardship

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Pesticide Action Network Logo

Pesticide Action Network North America works to replace pesticide use with ecologically sound and socially just alternatives. As one of five PAN Regional Centers worldwide, we link local and international consumer, labor, health, human rights, environment and agriculture groups into an international citizens' action network. This network challenges the global proliferation of pesticides, defends basic rights to health and environmental quality, and works to insure the transition to a just and viable society.

We have over 190 affiliated groups in Canada, Mexico and the U.S. and almost 1,000 partner groups worldwide. Our current campaigns protect children, communities and the environment, advocate corporate and government accountability for the harms of pesticides and genetic engineering, promote sustainable solutions, and provide resources for local and global action to address pesticide use.

Our award-winning website serves more than 25,000 users monthly, and our pesticide database is the world's single most comprehensive source of information on pesticide health and ecological impacts, regulatory restrictions, and other essential pesticide-related data available to the public today.

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Rainforest Alliance Logo

The Rainforest Alliance was founded in 1987 to develop creative solutions to deforestation, biodiversity loss, and world poverty. The mission of the Rainforest Alliance is to protect ecosystems and the people and wildlife that live within them by transforming land-use practices, business practices and consumer behavior. Companies, cooperatives and landowners that participate in our programs meet rigorous standards that conserve biodiversity and provide sustainable livelihoods.

Over the last seventeen years the Rainforest Alliance's innovative programs have proven that effective conservation can only be met through providing rural people, those that depend on natural resource use for their livelihoods, with economic incentives and targeted education to manage their lands in an environmentally responsible manner. The groundbreaking work that we have pioneered in sustainable forestry, agriculture and tourism in the US and around the world has offered people a valuable solution to balancing environmental protection and economic well-being.

The Rainforest Alliance has three major divisions: Sustainable Forestry, Sustainable Agriculture and Sustainable Tourism. The Sustainable Forestry Division pioneered the use of market forces to conserve tropical forests. Our projects in this division launched a worldwide sustainable forestry movement, where producers are encouraged to harvest wood products in ecologically sustainable and socially beneficial ways. Through our venerable SmartWood program, we have certified over 900 forestry companies, communities and landowners that have committed to protecting local biodiversity and watersheds and conducting restoration activities.

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Rainforest Action Network Logo

Rainforest Action Network (RAN) campaigns to protect the Earth's rainforests and support the rights of their inhabitants. In coalition with indigenous communities and allies from around the world, RAN uses classic grassroots pressure combined with sophisticated boardroom negotiations to convince multinational corporations to introduce environmental and social ethics into their bottom line. RAN identifies the causes and consequences of rainforest destruction, advocates for permanent solutions and mobilizes consumers, retailers, manufacturers and financiers to change business-as-usual throughout the global marketplace. Since 1985, RAN has won landmark environmental victories with on-the-ground results for forests and forest-based communities worldwide.

With support from the Arntz Family Foundation, RAN will leverage the commitments of global leaders like Home Depot, Boise Cascade, Citigroup and Bank of America to push for further corporate reforms impacting forests and indigenous peoples from the Boreal to the Amazon. RAN's Old-Growth Campaign will work to transform the rest of the logging industry by pressuring retailers to eliminate endangered forest products and replace them with sustainable alternatives. Our Global Finance Campaign will continue to convince the private financial sector to channel capital away from projects that destroy ecosystems, violate indigenous rights and accelerate global warming. By taking a holistic view of the mechanisms that drive environmental destruction, RAN's markets campaigns work synergistically to restructure the relationship between industry and the natural environment.

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RARE Logo

RARE, a U.S. based conservation organization, works globally to equip people in the world's most threatened natural areas with the tools and motivations they need to care for their natural resources. Rare believes conservation is a social issue, as much as it is a scientific one. A lack of alternatives and awareness leads people to live in ways that are harmful to the environment. For thirty years, Rare has used social marketing campaigns, "edutainment" radio programs, and economic development solutions to make conservation attainable, desirable, and even profitable for people close enough to make a difference.

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Rocky Mountain Institute Logo

Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI) is an entrepreneurial nonprofit organization that fosters the efficient and restorative use of resources to create a more secure, just, prosperous, and life-sustaining world. Our staff show corporations, communities, individuals, and governments how to create more wealth and employment, protect and enhance natural and human capital, increase profit and competitive advantage, and enjoy many other benefits – largely by doing what they do far more efficiently. Our work is independent, non adversarial, and transideological, with a strong emphasis on market-based solutions to perplexing problems. We demonstrate our waste less, use less philosophy so that profits and efficiency and the environment don't have to be pitted against each other.

RMI works in energy, water, climate, green buildings (including large developments, hospitals, and universities), lean manufacturing, security, and communities based on its core values as expressed in Natural Capitalism, a 1999 book by Paul Hawken and RMI founders Amory Lovins and L. Hunter Lovins.

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Seacology logo

Seacology is the world's premier nonprofit, nongovernmental organization with the sole and unique purpose of preserving the environments and cultures of islands throughout the globe. Too often, islanders around the world are told that they should make financial sacrifices on behalf of the environment, and receive nothing in return. Seacology searches for "win-win" situations that not only protect the local environment, but also provide tangible benefits to the islanders.

As of July 2004, Seacology has launched over 89 island projects worldwide, protecting a total of 42,074 acres of island terrestrial habitat and 1,700,275 acres of coral reef and neighboring marine habitat. Additionally, Seacology has built 48 schools, community centers, water delivery systems and other critically needed facilities, and funded 21 scholarship programs, vital medical services and supplies, and other crucial assistance for island communities.

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Trees, Water & People ogo

Trees, Water & People is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization founded by Stuart Conway and Richard Fox in 1998, in Fort Collins, Colorado. Our mission is to improve people's lives by helping communities to protect, conserve and manage the natural resources upon which their long-term well-being depends. We believe that natural resources are best protected when local people play an active role in their care and management.

We have established programs, both domestically and internationally, that incorporate our mission and beliefs, as well as the desires, abilities, and efforts of the people that our work directly benefits. Our efforts focus primarily on conservation, reforestation, appropriate technology, and community development.

Collaboration with local individuals and grass-roots groups is at the core of our work. In Central America, we have planted more than 1.6 million trees, established microenterprise tree nurseries, and have built/installed over 18,000 fuel-efficient stoves in poor communities. Haiti, one of the poorest and most deforested countries in the Western hemisphere, is our newest project area. The Tribal Lands program is focused on lowering utility bills at reservation homes in the Interior Western U.S. by planting trees for shade and wind-breaks, and by assembling and installing simple solar heating systems.

Regionally, we provide training and support for organizational sustainability to watershed protection groups. Local programs in Northern Colorado include environmental education, community tree-planting and renewable energy.

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