Introduction

1.	The example organizations below are but a few of the not-for-profit and/or non-governmental organizations (NGOs) concerned with the environment, as there are tens of thousands of such groups around the world.
2.	There are several types of such organizations with varying methods of pursuing environmental issues. Many organizations, though, overlap two or more types. The types include:
	A.	Advocacy/ Activist	Organizations that support or propose certain environmental policies or goals. They may promote issues, raise money, demonstrate, or pursue other activities in support of their goals. Examples: Nature Conservancy, Sierra Club, Friends of the Earth
	B	Radical Activist	Advocacy organizations that go out and do whatever is necessary to achieve the environmental goals that they support. Examples: Sea Shepherd, Earth First, Greenpeace
	C.	Philanthropic	These organizations may or may not have a specific environmental agendum, but they tend to focus on raising and/or providing money to environmental causes. Examples: Nature Conservancy, David and Lucile Packard Foundation
	D.	Research	The goals of these organizations is objective assessment of aspects of the environment, but they sometimes have an agenda. Examples: American Geophysical Union, National Ground Water Assn., Union of Concerned Scientists, Center for Wildlife Law
	E.	Think Tanks	These are usually not-for-profit or corporate institutes that may or may not have a specific interest in analyzing environmental issues. Example: World Resources Institute,
	F.	Stewardship	The prime goal of such organizations is preserving and caring for a specific place or multiple places. These could be a forest, an open space, a trail, a body of water. Examples: Pacific Coast Trail Assn., Sonoran Institute,
3.	Evaluating environmental and other not-for-profit organizations
	A.	If you consider such organizations for source information or as groups to be involved in and support, first thoroughly evaluate them for their goals, methods, activities, successes and failures, supporters, and more.
	B.	Check out their financial situations, because some organizations waste money, some are outright frauds. See the CHECKING OUT NOT-FOR-PROFIT ORGANIZATIONS web page.

Example Organizations

SUBJECT	RESOURCE
INTERNATIONAL
Environmental Organization Web Directory	Self described as, "Earth's Biggest Environment Search Engine." http://www.webdirectory.com/
Organizations by Topic	from EnviroLink http://www.envirolink.org/categories.html?catid=5
World Directory of Environmental Organizations	from InterEnvironment (a program of the nonprofit California Institute of Public Affairs), IUCN - The World Conservation Union, & the Sierra Club. http://www.interenvironment.org/wd/
Eco-Groups	US environmental organizations state-by-state. From Eco-USA.net http://www.eco-usa.net/orgs/index.shtml
US - ADVOCACY, ACTIVIST
Earth First	http://www.earthfirst.org
Earth Liberation Front	http://www.earthliberationfront.com/main.shtml
Environmental Defense	http://www.edf.org/
Friends of the Earth	http://www.foe.org/
Greenpeace	http://www.greanpeace.org
National Resources Defense Council	http://www.nrdc.org/
Negative Population Growth	http://www.npg.org/
Population Connection	http://www.populationconnection.org/ Includes the old Zero Population Growth, which started the movement.
Sea Shepherd	http://www.seashepherd.org
Sierra Club	http://www.sierraclub.org
US - SCIENTIFIC, THINK TANK
Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) Network	http://lternet.edu/
American Geophysical Union	http://www.agu.org/
National Ground Water Assn	http://www.ngwa.org/
Union of Concerned Scientists	http://www.ucsusa.org/
World Resources Institute	http://about.wri.org/
CALIFORNIA
California Environmental Groups	A list of groups from Eco-USA.net http://www.eco-usa.net/orgs/ca.shtml
California Native Plant Society (CNPS)	California Environmental Groups
Californians Against Waste (CAW)	http://www.cawrecycles.org.
Sierra Club	http://www.sierraclub.org
The Wildlands Conservancy	http://www.wildlandsconservancy.org
BAY AREA
Peninsula Open Space Trust	http://www.openspacetrust.org/
Wildlands Restoration Team	http://www.wildwork.org/webdocs/Plague_of_Plants.pdf