Benetech and CMP Release Miradi for Public Use

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Ann Harrison, Benetech 415-637-5262 - ann.h@benetech.org

March 31, 2008, Palo Alto, CA - Benetech® and the Conservation Measures Partnership (CMP) have released Miradi, a user-friendly software program that allows nature conservation practitioners to design, manage, monitor, and learn from their projects to more effectively meet their conservation goals. The program guides users through a series of step-by-step interview wizards based on the Open Standards for the Practice of Conservation used by major conservation organizations to plan and implement their work.

Miradi 2.0 is the first public release of the software that was created as a joint venture between Benetech and CMP, a consortium of global conservation organizations committed to improving the practice of conservation. The Miradi 1.0 beta version of the software has been accessed by more than 600 conservation practitioners in 82 countries.

"We desperately need information systems that have great agility and a low burden on participation to capture what conservation practitioners are doing in a rapid and user-friendly way," says Dan Salzer, a conservation ecologist who has worked with The Nature Conservancy for eighteen years researching, monitoring and measuring conservation success. "I am absolutely convinced that we can multiply the impact of conservation work three to five fold by using Miradi to capture, track and share conservation data. I think Miradi is going to transform the practice of conservation."

Miradi 2.0 helps conservation teams design conceptual models of their project site, prioritize threats, and select monitoring indicators to assess the effectiveness of their strategies. Practitioners can export Miradi project data to donor reports and to formats that can be shared with other Miradi users. Miradi is a Swahili word meaning "project" or "goal." For more information about Miradi 2.0, please visit http://www.miradi.org.

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About CMP and Benetech

Members of the CMP consortium focus on field-based conservation and work to develop better approaches to project design, management, and assessment. CMP Members supporting Miradi include The Nature Conservancy, the Wildlife Conservation Society, WWF, Rare Conservation, and Foundations of Success. Benetech is a Palo Alto, California-based nonprofit organization that develops technology projects to serve the conservation, human rights and disabled communities.

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