PARENT SESSION
Contributed Oral Session 68: Ecology Education II
Tuesday, August 9, 1:30 PM - 5:00 PM, Meeting Room 521 A, Level 5, Palais des congrès de Montréal

Conservation NGOs: Who's doing what and how well?

LAMBERT, ANNE^{*,1, 2}, ¹ greendonor.org, Chester, NS, CANADA² Science Connection Inc., Chester, NS, CANADA

ABSTRACT- The last three decades have seen an increasing amount of conservation work done by non-governmental organizations (NGOs), some of which have grown into large organizations with budgets in the tens or hundreds of millions of dollars. A new informational website is trying to answer the question "who's doing what and how well?" in NGO nature conservation work worldwide. Called greendonor.org, this site hopes to be useful to donors who wish to support green causes and to the NGO sector itself. Site authors provide synopses for selected NGOs; these include information on where the organization works, what it does, its staffing, highlights of its accomplishments, a basic financial analysis, and a summary of public discussion of the organization. Information on the effectiveness of organizations will come mainly from public input from the site. People with first-hand knowledge of NGOs are asked to fill out the site's NGO rating form and/or submit comments. Potential contributors include biologists and other scientists, and people who work for an NGO, charitable foundation, or a related government agency. There are several options for the degree of privacy of people providing input. Greendonor also addresses questions in common to NGOs, such as how to assess long-term effectiveness of projects, how to address human interests in the course of third world conservation work, potential conflicts of interest relating to corporate support and involvement, and ways to improve financial reporting. The site's ultimate goal (along with providing information to donors) is to improve the effectiveness of conservation NGOs in terms of long-term results achieved per dollar spent.

Key words: non-governmental, organization, conservation, NGO