Gulf of Mexico Alliance
Building Partnerships for a Healthier Gulf
Programs and results
What we aim to solve
Our programs
What are the organization's current programs, how do they measure success, and who do the programs serve?
Coastal Community Resilience
The Gulf of Mexico Alliance's Coastal Community Resilience Team focuses it's actions on our regional ability to respond to natural and manmade hazards, including risk communication techniques and resilience assessments, as well as a variety of coastal adaptation and planning methods.
Data & Monitoring
The Gulf of Mexico Alliance's Data & Monitoring Team provides guidance for the coordination of monitoring efforts to discover, use, and preserve data in support of decision-making for priorities in the region.
Education & Engagement
The Gulf of Mexico Alliance's Education & Engagement Team focuses on providing outreach for the Alliance's priorities and professional development for education, outreach and engagement practitioners in the region.
Habitat Resources
The Gulf of Mexico Alliance's Habitat Resources Team focuses on developing tools and data regarding habitat assessment, living shorelines, sediment management, sea level rise, and conservation.
Water Resources
The Gulf of Mexico Alliance's Water Resources Team focuses on a wide range of key water concerns, including pathogens, harmful algal blooms, nutrient pollution, hypoxia, freshwater inflows, and water resource sustainability.
Wildlife & Fisheries
The Gulf of Mexico Alliance's Wildlife & Fisheries Team focuses on identifying gaps in existing research and restoration efforts and coordinating regional efforts to protect and conserve threatened and endangered wildlife and fisheries in the Gulf.
Ecosystem Services
The Gulf of Mexico Alliance's Ecosystem Services Team focuses on enhancing the use and communication of ecosystem services and tools for citizens, scientists, and practitioners.
Marine Debris
The Gulf of Mexico Alliance's Marine Debris Team focuses helping to alleviate negative impacts of marine debris.
Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative
The Gulf of Mexico Alliance's Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative is a funding program to investigate the impacts of the oil, dispersed oil, and dispersant on the ecosystems of the Gulf of Mexico and affected coastal areas.
Where we work
External reviews
Our results
How does this organization measure their results? It's a hard question but an important one.
Number of groups brought together in a coalition/alliance/partnership
This metric is no longer tracked.Totals By Year
Type of Metric
Output - describing our activities and reach
Direction of Success
Increasing
Context Notes
This includes organizations participating in the GOMA priority issue teams as well as research consortia brought together through the GoMRI program.
Number of stakeholders or stakeholder groups who agree to engage
This metric is no longer tracked.Totals By Year
Type of Metric
Output - describing our activities and reach
Direction of Success
Increasing
Context Notes
This includes individual stakeholders that participate in both the GOMA and GoMRI programs.
Total number of grants awarded
This metric is no longer tracked.Totals By Year
Type of Metric
Output - describing our activities and reach
Direction of Success
Increasing
Context Notes
This includes total number of grant awarded through the GOMA program from 2004-2019 and total number of grants awarded through the GoMRI program from 2010-2019.
Our Sustainable Development Goals
Learn more about Sustainable Development Goals.
Goals & Strategy
Learn about the organization's key goals, strategies, capabilities, and progress.
Charting impact
Four powerful questions that require reflection about what really matters - results.
What is the organization aiming to accomplish?
The mission of the Gulf of Mexico Alliance is to enhance the environmental and economic health of the Gulf of Mexico through increased regional collaboration. The priorities for that collaboration were determined by the Gulf States themselves:
- Enhancing Coastal Community Resilience
- Improving Data Access and Baseline Monitoring
- Increasing Stewardship through Education and Engagement
- Conserving and Restoring Habitat Resources
- Improving the Health of Wildlife and Fisheries
- Improving the Quality of Water Resources
The goal is to address these priorities by:
● providing forums for collaboration on priority issues;
● developing and modifying tools to address regional issues;
● tracking restoration efforts;
● identifying and expanding opportunities for comprehensive monitoring;
● expanding the Alliance network to enable strategic partnerships; and
● continuing to administer a large oil-spill research program.
What are the organization's key strategies for making this happen?
The strength of the Gulf of Mexico Alliance is bringing together the stakeholders in the Gulf States in a shared vision for a healthy and resilient Gulf of Mexico. The Alliance focuses on a suite of priority issues determined by the Gulf States as those common to all five. This targeted approach has provided a strong foundation for long-term regional collaboration.
The Alliance's six priority issues offer the framework for defining all its goals and actions and are documented in a Governors' Action Plan. Each state leads a cross-state and multi-discipline team focused on making progress in a specific priority area. These teams are the vital component of the Gulf of Mexico Alliance organization. Teams focus on the issues through a collaborative approach with scientific, technical, and resource management experts who have deep understanding of Gulf issues and broad practical experience, including the ability to maximize the impact of funding. The teams are comprised of Alliance members from state and federal agencies, non-governmental organizations, academia and businesses. The teams work together to develop specific actions to address priority issues, with the Alliance Management Team providing high-level review and final approval.
As it has been since the beginning, involvement in the Gulf of Mexico Alliance's Priority Issue Teams is open and voluntary, and participation by wide-ranging Gulf stakeholders is highly encouraged. The Alliance serves as a forum for exchanging information about the Gulf and the issues that impact its ecological health. Robust participation on the teams improves the quality of our actions and leads to the most beneficial outcomes for a healthy and resilient Gulf of Mexico.
What are the organization's capabilities for doing this?
The Alliance Management Team (AMT) is comprised of representatives of the governors of all five Gulf States and serves as the governing body of the Gulf of Mexico Alliance. Representatives of Federal agencies, academic institutes, non-profits, and industry serve in advisory capacity and are vital to the cooperative decision-making process. Having a voice from all five Gulf States ensures that the work will be representative of their needs and effective for all partners.
The management and committee structure are documented in the organization's by-laws to preserve the state leadership of the organization, which gives the organization its strongest capability to operate. Two programmatic Action Plans have been implemented since 2009, the third published in 2016; each signed by all five Gulf State governors. Successful implementation of each of the first two Action Plans is a result of the effective organizational structure that has led to over 970 people collaborating to improve coastal resilience, increase habitat conservation, educate about gulf resources, and improve water quality.
What have they accomplished so far and what's next?
On a specific program by program basis, many, many accomplishments have been achieved (too many to list here). Some are detailed in the programs section of this database. For more, our 10-Year report was published in 2015 and can be found here: http://www.gulfofmexicoalliance.org/10years/.
More broadly, the Gulf of Mexico Alliance has achieved all of the goals related to our mission, although there is always more to be done. Specifically, the Gulf of Mexico Alliance provides annual forums for collaboration, but is realizing the need for providing them more often than once per year. So, we are seeking funding to provide semi-annual forums for collaboration.
Also, each of the Alliance teams are currently developing additional tools to address regional issues such as sea level rise or coastal resilience.
Our Deepwater Horizon Project Tracker is an accomplishment that simply tracks projects funded as a result of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. However, as more and more people make use of it, they are requesting different types of functionality, so we are seeking funding to add additional search and sorting capabilities to the system.
Comprehensive regional monitoring is an issue that is very difficult for any one organization to support alone, so the Alliance is pulling together those organizations, businesses, and agencies that supporting very specific monitoring to develop a method to identify and fill gaps in monitoring.
Financials
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Operations
The people, governance practices, and partners that make the organization tick.
Connect with nonprofit leaders
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Connect with nonprofit leaders
SubscribeBuild relationships with key people who manage and lead nonprofit organizations with GuideStar Pro. Try a low commitment monthly plan today.
- Analyze a variety of pre-calculated financial metrics
- Access beautifully interactive analysis and comparison tools
- Compare nonprofit financials to similar organizations
Want to see how you can enhance your nonprofit research and unlock more insights? Learn More about GuideStar Pro.
Gulf of Mexico Alliance
Board of directorsas of 03/26/2020
Mr. Gareth Leonard
Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission
Term: 2018 - 2020
Alex Reid
Florida Department of Environmental Protection
Steven Schar
Texas Commission on Environmental Quality
Gareth Leonard
Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission
Patti McCurdy
Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources
Hank Burch
Alabama Department of Conservation and Natural Resources
Joe Spraggins
Mississippi Department of Marine Resources
Chris Wells
Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality
Bren Haas
Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority
Chip Kline
Louisiana Governor's Office
Board leadership practices
GuideStar worked with BoardSource, the national leader in nonprofit board leadership and governance, to create this section.
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Board orientation and education
Does the board conduct a formal orientation for new board members and require all board members to sign a written agreement regarding their roles, responsibilities, and expectations? Yes -
CEO oversight
Has the board conducted a formal, written assessment of the chief executive within the past year ? Yes -
Ethics and transparency
Have the board and senior staff reviewed the conflict-of-interest policy and completed and signed disclosure statements in the past year? Yes -
Board composition
Does the board ensure an inclusive board member recruitment process that results in diversity of thought and leadership? Yes