Helping Conservation Teams Meet Goals

Miradi is the leading platform for adaptive, results-based project management for the conservation community and is utilized in more than 170 countries by users ranging from large conservation organizations to local groups, researchers, nonprofits, for-profits, and governmental organizations.

Most conservation practitioners use an adaptive management process to design, manage, monitor, and evaluate their conservation projects. To perform these functions, project managers use many tools from pen and paper and Excel spreadsheets to a variety of individual programs for flowcharting, mapping, project planning, and accounting. Without the benefit of a fully integrated software package, however, conservationists had difficulty knowing which campaigns were most effective and whether their financial investments actually led to real results, be it less pollution or more salmon. They needed a tool that would empower them to fully succeed in their efforts to protect and restore species and ecosystems.

“The Conservation Measures Partnership turned to Benetech to help realize our vision of a software program that would support strategic conservation project design, management, monitoring, and learning. Benetech’s engineering team provided an agile programming approach that transformed our initial concept into the mature Miradi application that now guides real-world conservation work around the globe.” – Nick Salafsky, Co-Director and Co-Founder of Foundations of Success

In 2008, Benetech, the Conservation Measures Partnership (CMP), and Foundations of Success (FOS) launched Miradi—an open source desktop application that allows nature conservation practitioners to design, manage, monitor, and evaluate their projects in order to meet their conservation goals. Miradi – a Swahili word meaning “project” or “goal” — manages budgets across natural areas, guides work planning, finds efficiencies, and targets fundraising. The current version, Miradi 4.4, incorporates the industry-proven Open Standards for the Practice of Conservation. Benetech built the initial software and led its development and innovation until 2013.

In 2014, Benetech successfully exited Miradi and turned ongoing management and maintenance of this software application over to the conservation community. The project had reached sustainability, and Benetech’s commitment to open source made this transition easy. Miradi is strongly supported by its user community which includes organizations such as The Nature Conservancy, World Wildlife Foundation, the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, FOS, National Audubon Society, Puget Sound Partnership, Rare, and many others.