How Public Lab is Funded
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
Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation
* $374,745 Support for research on the capacity of Public Lab’s model of community science to both build confidence in scientific concepts and increase civic engagement, to be completed in partnership with the University of California, Davis
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 Fund, a corporate advised fund of Silicon Valley Community Foundation * $100,000 General operating support
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
Threshold Foundation * $19,650 General support
Google * $15,000 Support for development of Infragram
Google Summer of Code * $5,200 Support for web development work
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
MIT Media Lab
* In-kind donation Server space for Public Lab infrastructure
Ashoka
* Recognition of Executive Director Shannon Dosemagen as an Ashoka Fellow
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)