ONE/Northwest has received a grant from the Lazar Foundation, which provides seed funding for a major new project we're launching to help create an open engagement platform for the environmental movement.

Over the past three years, ONE/Northwest has made deep investments in using Salesforce and Plone, two outstanding platforms for constituent relationship management and website content management.  We've recently started tying these platforms together, and using them in combination with other tools such as email newsletter tools and event registration systems.

Using robust, open tools like Plone and Salesforce lets us easily share tools and processes with others.  And because these tools are the products of vibrant software communities, we've also found ourselves taking increasing leadership roles in these communities.

Lazar Foundation's grant of $25,000 will help us make deeper, more strategic investments in both the Plone and Salesforce communities, helping them to deepen their vision of building powerful tools for civic engagement.  

ONE/Northwest is extremely appreciative of the Lazar Foundation's willingness to partner with us to launch this ambitious, entrepreneurial new initiative.  And this isn't the first time the Lazar Foundation has stepped up to help us get projects off the ground: in 2002-2004, Lazar provided seed funding to launch our Oregon and British Columbia offices, which have both grown into thriving practices and catalyzed our ongoing organizational development, and has also funded our strategy consulting work with the Oregon environmental movement.