About Us
Sightline Institute is an independent, nonpartisan think tank putting original research and policy solutions to work to make Cascadia—from the Rockies to the Pacific, from Alaska to Oregon—a global model of sustainability. We equip leaders with practical policy solutions, arguments to advance them, and unusual coalitions to win them.
Our mission + vision
Sightline Institute’s mission is to make Cascadia a global model of sustainability—strong communities, a green economy, and a healthy environment.
We envision in Cascadia an economy and way of life that are environmentally sound, economically vibrant, and socially just. We believe that if Cascadians succeed at reconciling themselves with the natural heritage of this place—the greenest part of history’s richest civilization—we can set an example for the world.
Our people
Our staff, fellows, contributors, board members, and advisors are a talented cadre of diversely skilled and deeply committed people located throughout and beyond the region. They work together toward Sightline’s vision of an economy and way of life that are environmentally sound, economically vibrant, and socially just.
Meet our peopleOur funding
Sightline is proud to hold high ratings from nonprofit accountability groups Candid (GuideStar) and Charity Navigator, including for judicious financial management and transparency.
We are an independent 501(c)(3) organization. Over 90 percent of our funding comes from individual donations and grants from charitable foundations, and over 90 percent of our funding directly supports our people and accomplishments. We are deeply grateful to our generous community of donors for believing in and supporting our work.
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Our equity commitment
Since European sailing ships first touched Cascadia’s shores in the 1700s—and indeed, long before—Cascadia’s communities have struggled with inequalities and oppression. Slavery, colonialism, racial and sexual violence, land dispossession, enforced segregation and exclusion, Jim Crow laws, and Indian boarding schools—our history, like most histories, is rife with ugly injustices. This past, and the persistence of injustices in the present, too often divide Cascadians. They divide us by ability, class, creed, ethnicity, faith, gender identity, ideology, race, religion, sex, sexual orientation, and more.
Sightline understands its mission—to make Cascadia a global model of sustainability, with strong communities, a green economy, and a healthy environment—as necessarily intertwined with the effort to right current inequities and remedy historic wrongs. Solving the challenges at the core of our work, such as housing shortages, gridlocked democracy, and polluted air, often provides opportunities to advance equity as well. Sightline is committed to seizing these opportunities.
To this end, Sightline seeks to learn all it can about the equity dimensions of our work and to integrate what it learns into all aspects of our operations, from work planning to performance evaluations, from hiring methods to message testing, and from research methods to coalition strategy. In so doing, we find our research to be more robust and our policy proposals more effective. In turn, our wins are bigger and our impact stronger for fostering a future for Cascadia that reconciles people, place, and prosperity.
DonateThe values that guide us
Community
We are all in this place together, sharing its burdens and benefits, rising or falling together. Sightline stands for strong communities.
fairness
We stand for a well-governed economy that generates widely shared prosperity. We stand for public policies that support citizens equally.
opportunity
We stand for a society that generates opportunity: where all can thrive and where everyone has a chance to flourish.
Responsibility
Our way of life depends on a healthy natural heritage and strong public institutions. We stand for stewarding our inheritance well.
