An Exciting Opportunity for Your Community: Pro-bono Scientific Support
GFOA has partnered with the American Geophysical Union's Thriving Earth Exchange program to support GFOA communities to design and carry out projects that use science to advance local priorities.
We're looking for three to five projects that will launch in January 2022. The projects will connect communities with scientists and other technical experts who can help you explore priorities related to resilience, sustainability, water, and air quality, and much more. Projects typically span six to eighteen months.
The Thriving Earth Exchange program is entirely pro-bono and volunteer-based. Projects can help communities make science-based decisions that have long-term economic, health, and environmental benefits: for example, an analysis the Thriving Earth Exchange conducted helped the Town of Berlin, Maryland, avoid spending potentially $7 million on water remediation, and another project helped local officials in Evanston, Illinois, decide how to use funds received from its settlement with a polluting waste transfer station to protect residents' health.
NEXT STEPS
- Check out Thriving Earth's three-pager, which shares all the details of how projects work, case studies, and recent news.
- Discuss with your team to identify a current or potential project that requires science to make better decisions for your government where you could benefit from pro-bono scientific assistance.
- If you're interested in participating, please email a brief description of the project to Mark Mack or Michael Belarmino by November 19, 2021.
You can also apply directly through the Thriving Earth Exchange here: Start a Thriving Earth Exchange Project. The deadline to apply through Thriving Earth is December 1, 2021.