The Natural Capital Institute serves the people who are transforming the world. We are a team of researchers, teachers, students, activists, scholars, writers, social entrepreneurs, artists, and volunteers committed to the restoration of the earth and the healing of human culture. We do two things: we describe pathways of change in books and research reports, and we create tools for connecting the individuals, information, and organizations that create change.

NCI is homebase for one of the tools you are using now: the World Index for Social and Environmental Responsibility, called WISER. It is a platform where people, civil society, the private sector, and government can form community and collaboratively define, address, and solve social and environmental problems. The more than one million organizations and the more than one hundred million individuals who actively work towards ecological sustainability, economic justice, human rights, and political accountability address issues that are systemically interconnected and intertwined. Their effectiveness to prevent harm and institute positive change is undermined by the lack of a collective awareness, duplicative efforts, and incomplete connectivity. We believe that we are moving from a world that is shaped by privilege to a world created by community. This change in the loci of power calls for a new system of awareness, support, communication, and collaboration. That is WISER's purpose.

The Natural Capital Institute was founded in 2002. Past projects include:

• Researching the world's non-governmental-organizations working in the field of Clean Water and Sanitation. We created a database of direct-effect organizations, and identified key leverage opportunities for grantmaking foundations and concerned individuals.
  
  
• Publishing a report analyzing Socially Responsible Investing (SRI) in 2004. We identified the world's 600+ retail mutual funds that screen portfolios against non-financial criteria, examined current portfolio practices and fund allocation, and made five specific recommendations for improving industry practices.
  
  
• Creating ResponsibleInvesting.org, a public education website containing complete equity holdings and screening categories of SRI mutual funds in the US and Canada. We collected and catalogued fund information, published the database online, and enabled visitors to view the distribution of their investments in order to make more informed decisions.
  
  
• In January 2005, along with local and global volunteers, we began creating WiserEarth, the first open source, community editable online database to identify and connect the hundreds of thousands of organizations and individuals throughout the world comprising sustainable civil society. (2005 – present)
  
  
• In summer 2005, we launched our Corporate Accountability Program, providing direct consultation and guidance to the top tier of corporate management in order to bring awareness of the true social and environmental costs of corporate activities, motivate leaders to account for these costs, and facilitate the implementation of the systemic tools necessary to do so.
  
  
• Our Corporate Accountability Project has led to work on a second project under WISER: WiserBusiness, a clearinghouse of responsible business practices and related resources. Built on the same platform as WiserEarth, plans for WiserBusiness include creating a community-based, open-source free-content website that is both comprehensive and collaboratively written. We hope to make it the most extensive — and most accessible — body of collective knowledge centered on responsible business. 
  
  
• In fall 2006 Interra Project became a fiscally sponsored project of NCI: its mission is to empower a community based movement of citizen consumers by providing tools for a direct alignment between daily economic activities and our deepest human values. NCI and Interra are co-sponsors of the WiserCommons: a network of contributors creating a common resource of sustainability-focused information.
  
  
• In winter 2007, we brought in dotOrganize as a fiscally sponsored project. dotOrganize is tackling the challenge of "tools integration" on civil society's behalf, by helping the marketplace of databases and online organizing tools work together more effectively to meet organizers' needs.
  
  
• Green for All joined us as a fiscally sponsored project in January 2008. GFA has a simple but ambitious mission: to help build a green economy strong enough to lift people out of poverty. By advocating for a national commitment to job training, employment and entrepreneurial opportunities in the emerging green economy — especially for people from disadvantaged communities — Green for All will fight both poverty and pollution at the same time. GFA is committed to creating green pathways out of poverty for hundreds of thousands of people in the United States, by greatly expanding federal government and private sector commitments to green-collar jobs.

Current NCI Team...

• Arash Boostani
• Camilla Burg
• Peggy Duvette
• Paul Hawken
• Melinda Kramer
• Honore Louie