The following letter from EcoCity Cleveland founder and executive director David Beach explains the organization's merger with the Cleveland Museum of Natural History. It was sent to EcoCity members in July 2007.

Dear EcoCity Cleveland supporter:

By now you may have heard about our agreement to merge with the Cleveland Museum of Natural History. For me, this a dream come true — a fantastic opportunity to align the resources of two strong and respected organizations and accelerate the transformation of Northeast Ohio toward greater sustainability. I just want to take a minute to give you some more details.

This month, I will become the director of a newly created Center for Regional Sustainability at the Museum. This new center will seek to:

• Make the Natural History Museum a hub of activity for sustainability exhibits, projects, educational events, and outreach.
• Become a clearinghouse for sustainability information and policies, and a resource for regional decision-makers.
• Create new visions of a sustainable future in Northeast Ohio. 
• Facilitate planning and implementation projects to help the Greater Cleveland area reduce its ecological footprint and build a positive identity as a green city on a blue lake.

Other core EcoCity staff members will also become employees of this new center. While our existing work and projects, including the GreenCityBlueLake.org website, will continue, we will begin to develop the center as a home for important new projects, such as a climate change initiative to reduce the region’s carbon emissions. We also will be recruiting an advisory board for the center composed of EcoCity board members, Museum board members, and experts on sustainability issues.

Organizationally, the merger makes perfect sense. EcoCity Cleveland's work will gain a more secure organizational home with the prestige and administrative support of a world-class institution. The Museum will gain expertise about the design of ecological cities that will help it engage the public about how human beings can live sustainably on Earth in the 21st century. And Northeast Ohio will gain a prominent center of sustainability thought and practice that will help make the region more competitive.

I want to assure you that nothing will get lost in this merger. There will be a well planned transition, whereby EcoCity Cleveland will continue to exist for a year as a separate nonprofit organization in order to finish current grant-funded projects and wrap up other affairs. During this time, I will continue to serve part time as EcoCity’s executive director, and our Board will remain in place. In July 2008, our remaining assets and commitments will be merged into the Museum, and EcoCity Cleveland will cease to exist.

If you have donated to us recently, please be additionally assured that your donation will continue to support EcoCity’s longstanding work. Moving forward after this month, we encourage all of our friends to support the new center by making ear-marked donations to the Museum. (We are especially excited that being part of the Museum will give us the potential to raise a permanent endowment for the center, something we could never do as a small organization.) Also watch for membership information from the Museum. All current EcoCity members will be given one-year Museum memberships if they don’t already have one.

I can’t think of a better home for our work than the Cleveland Museum of Natural History. The Museum has plans to transform its facility in University Circle into a green building with new exhibits. In a few years, it will be a showcase for understanding the evolution of life — from the origin of the Universe, to the evolution of life on Earth, to the growth of human civilization, to the challenges of living sustainably on Earth today. When people leave the Museum, our new center will supply them with solutions they can act upon in their own lives.

In closing, this whole experience has prompted me to reflect on the past 15 years since I founded EcoCity Cleveland in the attic of my house. It’s been a great ride for which I am grateful. Thanks to your support, we created an EcoVillage, educated the region about the problems of urban sprawl and created a statewide campaign for smarter growth, won national recognition by “Best of the Alternative Press Awards,” changed local transportation planning to include bicycles and pedestrians, published influential bioregional plans, helped the City of Cleveland hire a sustainability program manager, served on endless planning task forces and advisory committees as the environmental voice in the room, popularized the idea that Cleveland can be a “green city on a blue lake,” and in many other ways provided leadership that paved the way for the success of other organizations working on sustainability issues today.

Ultimately, I see our merger with the Museum as a validation of our success — a sign that our work has matured to the point where one of the world’s major museums has decided to embrace it.

If you have any questions about any of this, please do not hesitate to call. Thanks again for all your support! We’ve worked hard to make this happen, and the best is yet to come!

Best wishes,

David Beach
Executive Director

P.S. We are planning a big party to give all our friends a chance to celebrate EcoCity Cleveland’s 15 years of accomplishments — and to help launch our new center at the Museum of Natural History. The party is tentatively scheduled for February 23, 2008, at the Museum. By then, EcoCity will be wrapping up its work, and our new Center will be more fully formed. Watch for invitations toward the end of the year!