Public Lab Wiki documentation



How Public Lab is Funded

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The funders listed below support the Public Lab nonprofit organization. Other Public Lab community members and project partners have received funding from different organizations which are not listed below. Public Lab also creates earned revenue through sales of open hardware kits in the Civic Information Starter Kit program area.

Current Support

11th Hour Project
* $350,000 Support for development of the Oil and Gas Accountability Toolkit

Claneil Foundation Emerging Leaders Fund
* $200,000 General operating support

Rita Allen Foundation
* $150,000 Support for a snapshot evaluation of Public Lab and development of an evaluation framework for co-created citizen science projects in partnership with UC-Davis

Autodesk Foundation
* $100,000 General operating support, 2015 - present

Fund for Shared Insight, a sponsored project of Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, Inc., with support from Rita Allen Foundation
* $60,000 Support under the Listen for Good to develop a robust systems for collecting and using feedback from stakeholders

National Science Foundation
* $10,987 "EAGER: Collaborative Research: SmartPhone App for Residential Testing of Formaldehyde (SmART-Form)," award number 1645090

Rackspace
* In-kind donation Server space for MapKnitter.org and Public Lab Archive, 2013 - present

MIT Media Lab
* In-kind donation Server space for Public Lab infrastructure, 2011 - present

Ashoka
* Recognition of Executive Director Shannon Dosemagen as an Ashoka Fellow, 2015 - present

We'd also like to thank the following supporters who have gone above and beyond!
Hank Boschen, Andrea Chen, Glorianna Davenport, William Dosemagen, ELGEA Inc, Ted Fjallman, Illah Nourbakhsh, Cindy Regalado, Tim Regan, Eugene Ruenger, Micah Sifry, Karan Wood, Heeja Yoo-Warren, and the Captain Planet Foundation.

Past Support

John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, Knight News Challenge
* $500,000 General support
* $350,000 Support for the Homebrew Sensing Project
* $10,000 Match for 1,000 backers on Infragram Kickstarter

The 11th Hour Project, a program of the Schmidt Family Foundation
* $230,000 Support for community development of low cost tool for monitoring sand frac operations and pilot testing of tool
* $50,000 Support of DIY water turbidity monitoring in communities affected by frac sand mining

Foundation to Promote Open Society, a part of the Open Society Foundations
* $150,000 Support for launching the Public Lab data advocacy initiative

Kickstarter (crowdfunded)
* $71,373 - 1,556 backers Infragram: the Infrared Photography Project
* $110,538 - 1,633 backers Public Lab DIY Spectrometry Kit
* $34,646 - 463 backers Balloon Mapping Kits
* $8,285 - 145 backers Grassroots mapping the Gulf oil spill with balloons and kites

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
* $52,185 To train community members and wetland restoration advocates to monitor and track progress at eight ongoing urban wetland restoration projects near Lake Pontchartrain.

Rita Allen Foundation
* $50,000 General support

New World Foundation
* $25,600 Preparing crowdsource disaster response to fracking emergencies in partnership with Northeastern University Social Science and Environmental Health Research Institute

Passport Foundation
* $20,000 Support for indoor air quality monitoring project

Betsy and Jesse Fink Foundation
* $15,000 General support

Raspberry Pi Foundation
* $13,000 Support for development of curriculum around near-infrared imaging

Environmental Leadership Program (through the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation)
* $10,000 Support for joint proposal to develop a community urban garden management toolkit with Ironbound Community Corporation in New Jersey

John S. and James L. Knight Foundation
* $10,000 Support for 2013 Public Lab Barnraising

U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
* $10,000 Air Quality Monitoring program for Cypress Hills school in Brooklyn, NY

Points of Light Civic Accelerator
* $10,000 Investment in development of Civic Information Starter Kit program

Shpilman Institute for Photography
* $10,000 Evaluation of work at Gulf Coast, New York and Montana sites

Patagonia
* $9,000 Gulf Coast Restoration - monitoring wetlands through community-led aerial imaging

Robert Rauschenberg Foundation
* $5,000 General operating support

UNICEF Rio
* $4,500 To implement a week long training on aerial mapping in Rio de Janiero, Brazil

Microsoft
* $4,000 In support of the spring 2015 Barnraising in Chicago, IL

MapBox
* $4,000 In support of the spring 2015 Barnraising in Chicago, IL

DenizenMedia.org
* $3,250 Balloon Mapping Kits, 2 day workshop, remote support

New Knowledge Foundation Ltd.
* $3,000 Partnership support on behalf of their EECapacity Project, an effort funded by the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency through a cooperative agreement with Cornell University, in collaboration with the North American Association for Environmental Education under Assistant Agreement No. NT-83497401-0

Environmental Defense Fund
* $2,500 Development of near-infrared imaging for agricultural use

Rackspace
* $2,000 Support for 2013 Public Lab Barnraising

American Anthropological Association, Anthropology and Environment Section
* $2,000 In support of hydrogen sulfide sensing tool development

iLab iLand
* $1,000 Development of urban mapping workshop with iLand fellows

Mozilla Open News
* $1,000 Support for ProPublica/Public Lab mapping in Louisiana

DevelopmentSeed
* $1,000 To support printing the July 2011 Wilkinson Bay Grassroots Mapping Forum

Awesome Foundation Boston
* $1,000 Grassroots Mapping of the BP oil spill

MakerBot
* In-kind donation Ten MakerBot Replicator1 3D printers

Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Center for Civic Media
* In-kind support Staff and research equipment

National Affordable Housing Network, Butte, MT
* In-kind support Butte site


Non-profit papers

Public Lab Tax Exemption Letter PublicLab_EIN_letter.pdf

Public Lab 2015 Financial Statements Public_Lab_2015_990s.pdf (Audit available upon request)

Public Lab 2014 Financial Statements Public_Lab_2014_990.PDF (Audit available upon request)

Public Lab 2013 Financial Statements PublicLab_2013_990s.PDF (Audit available upon request)

Public Lab 2012 Financial Statements PublicLab_2012_990s.pdf (CPA review available upon request)

Public Lab 2011 Financial Statements Public_labs_990_2011-2012.pdf (CPA review available upon request)