ONE/Northwest is now Groundwire.  Yep, we changed our name.

As you can imagine, this was not an easy decision to make. Over the last 15 years, we have worked with hundreds of environmental organizations who have come to know and trust the ONE/Northwest name. Over that time, we’ve also become somewhat attached to the name ourselves.

Why change our name?

Put simply, we wanted a name that better reflects who we are now and the work we do today. What started in 1995 as an organization to help environmental groups use technology has transformed to a full-service online communications consulting shop delivering websites, databases, email & social media tools, and the strategy needed to weave these systems together for social change.

On a practical level, ONE/Northwest has been somewhat of a challenging name. If anyone tries to convince you to include a "/" the next time you name an organization, child, or pet—don’t fall for it. Also, we have expanded our work to serve groups outside of the Northwest, so, "Northwest" is a little confusing to our groups in Canada, Arkansas and New Jersey.

We put a lot of thought into it.

At the most basic level, Groundwire connects technology to solid ground. We build tools and strategies to connect people both online and on-the-ground.

Groundwire is a fusion of two words. Ground represents many things: people on the ground working for change; a plain and simple reference to earth and environment; and being grounded in pragmatism and a stubborn insistence for real world impact. Wire too has several meanings: a wire connects and we are about connecting people; a wire conducts power and channels it to useful applications – in our case the power of democracy channeled toward building a sustainable society.

To bring about the scale of change needed for this kind of impact, we need to connect a lot of people – both to each other and to the planet. We’ve tried to capture the essence of this in our new “You Are Connected” tagline.

Groundwire

The ground part of us is immediate, concrete, practical, and soulful. The wire part is future-oriented, innovative, inspirational, techie and exciting. And although we’ll miss the fern logo from time to time, we already feel at home in our new name.