For this month's Spotlight of the Month, we talked with Katie Navin, the Executive Director of Colorado Alliance for Environmental Education, a professional organization for environmental educators, and a recent OMF web department client. 

Please provide a brief summary of your organization.

The Colorado Alliance for Environmental Education (CAEE) is the organization that connects and supports the most valuable resource Colorado has to empower informed decision making about the environment: educators. As a professional organization for environmental educators, CAEE facilitates communication, cooperation, collaboration, and coordination among the varied environmental education programs in the state. We now have over 800 representing teachers, students, nonformal educators, public agency employees, businesses, retirees, and many more. 

What are the issues/information that you are trying to bring to a 

larger audience through your website?

We are all environmental educators in different ways, whether we are working with students, colleagues, family, businesses, or others. Our website tells the story of who we are as educators, why our work is important, how to access resources to do environmental education more effectively, and how to get involved in the Colorado's growing community of environmental educators around the state to share and learn from each other.

Why

is your organization unique? 

Colorado has a wealth of environmental education opportunities, programs, and organizations.  We are the only statewide organization that represents the many varied interests of these organizations and can help build broad base support for environmental education and capacity for the field to increase the impact of the work of all the individual environmental education providers. 

What are some of your primary goals for 2011?

Our work is focused in four areas: to connect educators to resources, tools, and expertise; to increase the knowledge and skills of environmental educators; to build support for the field, and to empower leadership and inclusiveness within the environmental education community.  Two of our most exciting projects include our Diversity and Inclusiveness Initiative and working with the Colorado Department of Education and Department of Natural Resources to adopt a statewide environmental literacy plan to ensure all preK-12 students have access to environmental education opportunities.

What are some of the projects you have worked on with the Open Media Foundation?

Open Media Foundation redesigned our website to make it more user friendly and help us paint a picture about who we are and the importance of environmental education.  OMF also created a CiviCRM database and migrated all of our current contact, member, and donor information to help us more effectively and efficiently manage our contacts and communicate with our members and donors.

What has been some of the outcomes of these projects?

We are incredibly excited about the launch of the new website and database.  Our members can more easily access the information they need for their work and get involved with the organization.  The website tells a story now, rather than just collects information.  Our small staff is also able to save time and more efficiently keep track of member information, register participants for professional development and events, and track donations.  We are still learning all the benefits of the new system.  The more we learn about CiviCRM, the more opportunities we see to facilitate our work and our mission. 

Anything else you would like to add?