2006

Advocates for Environmental Human Rights
$30,000
Support provided for the production and purchase of paid media to support grantees public awareness campaign focused on protecting the right of displaces Gulf Coast residents to return to healthy and safe neighborhoods in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

Patuxent Riverkeeper
$30,000
Support provided to continue paid media work carried out to support grantees work to protect and improve water quality in the Patuxent River. The Patuxent Riverkeeper’s mission is to maintain vital water resources and assure that surrounding ecosystem are not squandered or degraded from neglect, abuse, profiteering, and public indifference.

2005

Illinois PIRG Education Fund, Ill.
$50,000
Support provided to continue a paid radio, print and other media component in the state to keep public awareness on the negative impacts of mercury from coal-burning power plants on human health. The campaign will also continue public education efforts on the need to more stringently regulate mercury pollution in Illinois at a standard that exceeds that required by the federal EPA.

Louisiana Bucket Brigade, La.
$50,000
Support provided to add a paid media component to the Louisiana Bucket Brigade's campaign to hold petrochemical corporations accountable for their negligence that led to the nation's largest oil and other chemical spill in the wake of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. The campaign will also target public officials to encourage them to side with home owners as they attempt to gain restitution from the companies as a result of having their homes flooded with petrochemicals.

Maine People's Resource Center, Maine
$50,000
Support provided to continue a paid media component to the campaign to encourage the Maine Department of Environmental Protection to require a better clean-up plan for the mercury contamination at the HoltraChem chemical plant. The Campaign is part of the larger Penobscot Valley Toxics Action Project, initiated in 1999 to address the toxic threats afflicting Valley residents and the accompanying contamination of Maine's largest watershed.

Save Our Cumberland Mountains, Tenn.
$50,000
Support provided to continue a paid media component to the campaign to activate citizens to advocate for state policies to regulate the aerial spraying of pesticides through the establishment of buffer zones and a registry of chemically sensitive people to be notified before pesticides are to be sprayed. Aerial spraying of pesticides is a widely used and growing practice in West and East Tennessee, and has led to an exponential growth in health-related complications for residents, especially children, in the mainly low-income communities located close to spraying zones.

Clean Wisconsin
$50,000
Support provided to Clean Wisconsin so they can add a media component to their various human-health related environmental campaigns, such as their efforts on behalf of cleaner air and water in the Badger State. Clean Wisconsin will use radio, print and other paid media to advocate for policies to protect human health from air and water pollution, including mercury, a neurotoxin pumped into the air by the burning of coal.

2004

Appalachian Center for the Economy and Environment, W. Va.
$55,000
Support provided to conduct a public opinion poll to ascertain the perspectives of West Virginians on mountaintop removal coal mining, on whether coal companies should be required to follow existing federal and state environmental laws, and whether these laws should be relaxed. Once the poll is completed, the Center will conduct a paid radio and print media campaign to communicate the results of the poll and highlight the threats posed to the state’s economy and its citizens’ health by unchecked mining.

Chesapeake Climate Action Network/Institute for Policy Studies, D.C.
$66,000
Support provided to launch a media campaign in the District of Columbia to encourage the city government to require utilities delivering power to the city to get ten percent of their energy from renewable resources by 2006. The campaign will use ads in community-based newspapers, public transit, billboards, and radio to build momentum.

Citizen Alert, Nev.
$75,000
Support provided to add a paid radio and print media component to Citizen Alert’s campaign aimed at permanently halting efforts to store high level nuclear waste at the Yucca Mountain Nuclear Waste Depository. The campaign will educate Nevada’s citizens of the federal government’s ongoing efforts to import most of the nation’s nuclear waste into the state where it is to be stored for thousands of years. The campaign seeks to maintain citizen awareness with the goal of averting any attempts by officials to side-step developing a scientifically sound evaluation of the storage site’s safety.

Clean Water Network/Natural Resources Defense Council, Fla.
$75,000
Support provided to launch a paid radio and print media campaign to advocate that the State of Florida act to protect the health of citizens who fish in a river that is heavily polluted by a pulp and paper mill. The campaign seeks to educate citizens about the need to: 1) have the governor issue fish-consumption advisories; 2) rewrite the mill’s permit so that the company must clean up its discharge now, rather than years in the future; and 3) create a wetland treatment and discharge system.

Clean Wisconsin, Inc., Wis.
$80,000
Support provided to launch a paid radio and print media campaign to raise the profile of mercury power plant pollution in the state and to encourage the Department of Natural Resources to reissue the 2003 draft mercury emissions rule without weakening it. Mercury contamination has become a top environmental problem in the state, primarily due to power plant pollution.

Community Toolbox for Children’s Environmental Health, Ariz., Mo. and Wis.
$60,000
Support provided to add paid media components for three campaigns in three states: 1) to organize and educate migrant farm workers in Arizona regarding the dangers that threaten their health and that of their children; 2) to add a paid radio and print media component to the already existing campaign to raise public awareness about the need to stop the burning of hazardous waste at a decommissioned military base in Wisconsin; and 3) to launch a radio, print and billboard campaign in St. Louis to advocate that the city engage in more effective measures to eradicate lead paint from poor, inner-city neighborhoods.

Environmental Health Strategy Center/Tides Center, Maine
$70,000
Support provided to design, develop and launch a paid print and radio media campaign for the Healthy Portland Campaign to, to advocate banning of the purchase and use of all persistent bioaccumulative toxic chemicals in Portland, Maine’s largest city. The Campaign is part of a long term effort to achieve the statewide phase-out of brominated flame retardants (BFRs), suspected bioaccumulative endocrine disruptors, which are particularly hazardous to pregnant or nursing women and children.

Government Accountability Project, Wash.
$75,000
Support provided to run a paid media campaign involving radio, print and internet ads and billboards in support of a statewide referendum on the November 2004 ballot regarding the Hanford Nuclear Site, a government-owned facility whose mission, until recently, was the production of nuclear materials including plutonium. If approved, the referendum would discourage the U.S. Department of Energy from implementing a plan that would not only import more nuclear materials to the site but also leave most of the highly dangerous radioactive waste onsite and poorly protected.

Illinois Public Interest Research Group Education Fund, Ill.
$55,000
Support provided to launch a paid radio and print media campaign in the state to raise public awareness on the negative impacts of mercury from coal-burning power plants on human health. The campaign will also educate Illinois’ citizens about the need to more stringently regulate mercury pollution in Illinois at a standard that exceeds that required by the federal EPA.

Louisiana Environmental Action Network, La.
$75,000
Support provided to launch a paid radio and print media campaign to advocate that Louisiana enforce existing environmental protection laws and regulations pertaining to the state’s chemical and petrochemical industries. The campaign will concentrate on water and air quality, agency reform, the permit review and implementation process, and engaging and activating community groups.

Maine People’s Resource Center, Maine
$66,000
Support provided to launch a paid radio, print and television media campaign to encourage the Maine Department of Environmental Protection to require a better clean-up plan for the mercury contamination at the HoltraChem chemical plant. The Campaign is part of the larger Penobscot Valley Toxics Action Project, initiated in 1999 to address the toxic threats afflicting Valley residents and the accompanying contamination of Maine’s largest watershed.

Michigan Environmental Council, Mich.
$41,000
Support provided to launch a media campaign calling on an electric utility in Detroit to honor an agreement with the Environmental Protection Agency to clean up a polluting coal-fired power plant.

Oregon Environmental Council, Ore.
$66,000
Support provided to design, develop and launch a paid radio, print, billboard, and web-based ad campaign to restore funding and reinstate data collection for the state’s landmark pesticide use reporting law in the 2005-6 biennial fiscal budget. Environmentally conscious voters in Oregon passed the original law in 1999 out of concern over numerous studies that link pesticides to increasing rates of childhood illnesses including asthma, birth defects, learning disabilities and cancer.

Save Our Cumberland Mountains Resource Project, Tenn.
$75,000
Support provided to design, develop and launch a paid media campaign to activate citizens to advocate for state policies to regulate the aerial spraying of pesticides through the establishment of buffer zones and a registry of chemically sensitive people to be notified before pesticides are to be sprayed. Aerial spraying of pesticides is a widely used and growing practice in west Tennessee, and has led to an exponential growth in health-related complications for residents, especially children, in the mainly low-income communities located close to spraying zones.

Washington Toxics Coalition, Wash.
$70,000
Support provided to launch a paid radio and print media campaign to activate citizens in key Washington State districts about the need to restore and maintain funding of Washington landmark program to eliminate persistent toxic chemicals, including the entire class of toxic flame retardants called PBDEs. Recent studies have demonstrated that the build up of persistent toxics chemicals - including dioxin, mercury, pentachlorophenol and PCBs - is a growing problem in the state, especially for children and pregnant/nursing mothers. Washington is one of the first states in the country to establish such legislation.

Total
$1,004,000

2003

Clean Water Fund
$20,000
Grassroots lobbying to support a radio advertisement campaign in support of a grassroots lobbying with the goal of shifting Minnesota's energy policy away from nuclear power and towards renewable energy. An electric utility was pushing a bill through the legislature that would allow more nuclear waste to be stored on the grounds of a nuclear plant. The ad campaign attempted to derail the bill, but failed to prevent passage.

Montana Conservation Voters Education Fund
$50,000
General support to the Montana Conservation Voters Education Fund's "Citizen Media and Message Program," which aims to educate Montana citizens about the environmental votes in the state legislature. The campaign uses print, radio and cable television ads urging people to lean about mining, clean air, clean water, and public health issues, and the positions of state legislative candidates on these matters.

New Mexico Wilderness Alliance
$50,000
General support for a television and print media component to their campaign to protect Otero Mesa, federal land that contains the largest remaining intact desert grasslands left in North America. NMWA is working to protect this important biological area from the threats of oil and gas development, while also making an important contribution to the national energy debate.

Rocky Mountain Energy Campaign, a project of Western Resource Advocates
$40,000
General support for a series of local print and radio advertisements to assist rural community organizing in response to the Bush Administration and industry efforts to open up western lands to oil and gas exploration, and to advocate for wind and other alternative energy development. The media campaign publicizes town hall meetings in communities that educate and organize the local populace.

Western Organization of Resource Councils
$10,000
General support for a series of local print and radio advertisements to assist rural community organizing in an effort to educate and organize local opposition to the introduction of genetically-modified wheat in the state of North Dakota.

In 2001-2002, Media Action Fund made grants through the Florence Fund.

2002

Conservation Law Foundation
$25,000
To shut down the Vermont Yankee, an aging and inefficient nuclear power plant and run an ad campaign targeting the utility company that owns the plant. Funding partner: The John Merck Fund.

Container Recycling Institute
$52,220 (in-kind)
The Container Recycling Institute ran two ads on The New York Times op-ed page to promote bottle and can deposit laws, and to call on Coca-Cola and Pepsi to stop fighting deposit laws. Funding Partner: The Prentice Foundation, Inc.

Dakota Rural Action
$85,000
Used newspaper and radio ads to convince voters that large animal feed lots were a threat to the state’s environment and family farm-based economy. Funding partners: The Tides Foundation, Charitable Gift Fund, Institute for Civil Society, and The Prentice Foundation, Inc.

Earth Day Network
$20,435
Placed a quarter-page ad on The New York Times op-ed page.

Montana Conservation Voters Education Fund
$50,000
Ran a media campaign focusing on the mining industry’s use and abuse of Montana’s environment, leaving federal and state taxpayers to clean up the mess. Funding Partner: The Brainerd Foundation.

Natural Resources Defense Council
$500,000
Ran an ad campaign to inform the public about the Bush Administration’s efforts to weaken environmental protections through rulemakings and other administrative procedures. Funding Partner: The Bauman Foundation.

The Partnership Project
$400,000
Placed newspaper and magazine ads throughout the country raising the alarm about the Bush Administration’s assault on 30 years of environmental laws and protections. Funding Partner: The Turner Foundation.

South Dakota Resources Protection Fund
$65,000
Used newspaper and radio ads to convince voters that large animal feed lots were a threat to the state’s environment and family farm-based economy.

U.S. PIRG
$20,435
Placed a quarter-page ad on The New York Times op-ed page advocating for the passage of federal legislation requiring chemical companies to put in place safeguards against terrorist attacks.

2001

American Bird Conservancy
$50,000
Conducted a web-based campaign to direct public comments to the EPA over fenthion, a pesticide used to kill mosquitoes, and also deadly to birds and suspected to threaten human health.

Citizens to Clean Up G.E.
$104,400 (in-kind)
Ran an ad campaign encouraging the EPA to force G.E. to dredge and cleanup PCB hotspots in and near the Hudson River.

Conservation Law Foundation
$90,000
To support a radio and newspaper campaign to pressure public officials in Vermont, including the governor, to take action to clean up the pollution that plagues Lake Champlain.

Forest Ethics
$100,000
To mount, in partnership with the Dogwood Alliance, the “Paper Campaign,” an effort to move the paper industry toward greater use of recycled and alternative fiber sources and away from the destruction of forests.

Friends of Blackwater Canyon
$50,000
To support this West Virginia-based group mount a radio, television, newspaper, and web campaign urging citizens to contact the governor and express their desire that he preserve Blackwater Canyon, a beautiful natural area in the Appalachian Mountains.

LocalMotion
$5,000
Produced and purchased advertising promoting a series of lectures on the threat toxins pose to human health.

Missouri Coalition for the Environment
$50,000
To block the construction of the world’s largest cement kiln on the west bank of the Mississippi River south of St. Louis and run a radio and billboard campaign highlighting the human health threats posed by the added air pollution from the kiln if it were allowed to operate.

N.C. Waste Awareness & Reduction Network
$40,000
To stop plans by Carolina Power & Light to increase storage of nuclear waste near Raleigh-Durham, N.C.

Ohio Valley Environmental Coalition
$50,000
Ran a newspaper ad campaign in West Virginia about the threat posed to the state’s environment by mountain top removal (MTR), a new and highly destructive form of coal mining that is devastating Appalachia.

Sierra Club
$100,000
Used a combination of radio and newspaper ads to educate residents about the threats large animal feed lots pose to the environment and family farmers.

All project sponsors are listed in italics.