These 15 Sarasota Organizations Don’t Wait for Earth Day to Care for Our Planet
Every April 22nd, the internet does its thing. Green graphics. Hopeful captions. "Do your part."
Buttttt here's the thing — while we're all posting, someone in Sarasota is hauling oyster shells out of a dock. Someone is monitoring nitrogen levels in a pond nobody's heard of. Someone is sitting across a table from a regulatory agency that would reallly rather not be there.
The organizations actually keeping Sarasota healthy weren't waiting for today. They've been at it—in the water, on the land, in courtrooms, in classrooms—on all the other 364 days too.
At Deming-Rivers Social Club, we work at the intersection of psychology and organizational culture, which means we think a lot — realllly a lot — about what makes systems healthy. And what we've learned is that community health isn't a feeling. It's a function of the systems people build and maintain inside it. That applies to organizations, it ALSOOO applies to the watershed, the soil, and the food supply. So, in honor of one of Essence's fav holidays, here are some Sarasota orgs who deserve their sprinkles!
Water & Land
Okay, we have to start here because obviously the water plays a huge role in our community — and these are the people literally in it, fighting for it.
Oyster Boys Conservation
Dom Marino came home from college in Missouri in 2021, found manatees dying at record rates, and did not look away. He was from here and knew what the water was supposed to feel like. Soooo he and his brother Vince — both Suncoast natives — founded Oyster Boys Conservation in 2022 with one clear mission: improve local water quality through nature-based solutions, while educating and engaging the community in coastal conservation. Their invention: vertical oyster gardens — 20 shells on a rope, hung from docks — that grow mature oysters capable of filtering up to 50 gallons of water per day. Each. There are now over 1,000 of them across the barrier islands. Ten thousand pounds of shells collected every year. "An oyster reef is like a snack bar for fish," Dom says — and honestly that line lives rent free in our heads. Two brothers from south Sarasota, cleaning the water one dock at a time. We are sooo here for it.
Oyster Boys Conservation
Suncoast Waterkeeper
Suncoast Waterkeeper was built on the foundation of the original Hudson Riverkeeper model — their founder actually worked there for years before bringing that framework home to Sarasota. Their mission is clear and unapologetic: defend the coastline through advocacy, monitoring, community engagement, and legal action so that everyone can enjoy swimmable, drinkable, fishable water. Not just the people with waterfront property. Everyone. And they follow through — they've successfully opposed toxic materials in the environment, worked to address a 50% increase in stormwater runoff flowing into Sarasota Bay, and built programs like PFAS testing, Mangrove Rangers, the Healthy Pond Collaborative, and Eyes on the Suncoast — a volunteer early-warning network that turns regular people into the coastline's immune system. All of that is running right now because somebody decided to stay and build the infrastructure. You don't build that overnight. You build it because you're not leaving.
Suncoast Waterkeeper
Founders Garden Club of Sarasota
These people have been at this since 1927. Their very first meeting was held at Ca'd'Zan — the stunning winter home of founding president Mable Ringling, wife of John Ringling. And their mission hasn't wavered in nearly a century: stimulate the knowledge and love of gardening, restore and protect the environment through education, and take civic action in conservation. In practice, that means funding the next generation of botanists, marine biologists, and horticulturists through scholarships for Sarasota County residents — with over $35,000 awarded in recent years alone. A century of showing up. Of training the person who comes after you. That is the long game, and Founders has been playing it longer than almost anyone.
Founders Garden Club of Sarasota
metamimicry
metamimicry's Sarasota chapter is doing something that will take you a second Google to fully understand — and we mean that as the highest compliment. Their mission: serve as a bridge between sustainability and the urban environment by designing decentralized, interdependent, self-renewing systems of remediation that restore natural ecosystem functions in real-world applications. The parent organization is built around measuring the effectiveness of grassroots remediation techniques — and the Sarasota chapter is applying that right now to stormwater, one of the biggest and least-discussed drivers of water quality problems in our region. If you don't know yet why stormwater matters, you will. metamimicry is already building solutions before most people have named the problem. We love an org like that.
metamimicry
Justice & Accountability
The environmental movement has a long history of identifying problems — and organizing solutions — in ways that leave historically excluded communities out entirely. These two organizations are actively, explicitly working against that. They deserve the loudest applause in the room.
FOCUS (Family Oriented Community United Strong)
FOCUS was born out of one of the most devastating environmental justice stories in Florida history. Tallevast is a historically Black community — founded in the late 1800s by freed slaves and migrant workers — and in 2003, contamination from a former Lockheed Martin weapons manufacturing facility was discovered beneath their neighborhood, covering more than 200 acres across three distinct aquifer systems. The Miami Herald called it, in 2010, "one of the nation's most emotional environmental divides." FOCUS was formed in response, with a mission to advocate for the Tallevast community through contamination cleanup, address the health impacts of that contamination, and support community revitalization — no small task when you're going up against a defense contractor, a county, and a state simultaneously. They showed up, took Lockheed Martin's cleanup plan apart piece by piece, and didn't stop until a real one was approved. They are still watching. They have not left. There is no Earth Day post that means anything without naming what FOCUS has done — and is still doing — for Tallevast.
FOCUS — Family Oriented Community United Strong
Minorities in Shark Sciences (MISS)
MISS was founded on Juneteenth 2020 by four Black and mixed-race women who had spent their entire careers being made to feel like they didn't belong in marine science. Their mission: advance the field of shark, ray, and other marine sciences by challenging the status quo of underrepresentation — creating accessible, equitable pathways to research, conservation, and education for gender minorities and historically excluded communities of color. Their response to being excluded wasn't a statement. It was an organization — fully funded (all programs, to remove financial barriers completely), globally accessible, 300+ members in 30 countries. 91% of surveyed respondents say MISS has positively impacted the field by eliminating barriers for women. 93% say the same for racial minorities. The science gets better when more people are allowed to do it — and MISS is proving it, one researcher at a time. We are enormous fans.
Minorities in Shark Sciences (MISS)
Spaces, Food & Access
Sunshine Community Harvest
Sunshine Community Harvest is brand new and already doing the most — in the best way. Formed from the merger of Sunshine Community Compost (since 2017) and Community Harvest SRQ (originally Transition Sarasota, founded in 2010), their unified mission is to cultivate a resilient local food network that nourishes the community and the planet — reducing waste, expanding access to fresh food, and strengthening the local food system. The result: the Suncoast Gleaning Project, Suncoast Fruit Rescue, Farmers Market Produce Recovery, the Eat Local Guide, and Annual Eat Local Week — all under one roof. What that means on the ground: backyard fruit that would've rotted is now in someone's hands who needed it. Produce gleaned from farms, donated to food banks. Fresh food rescued and redistributed. That is a local food system. Not aspirational. Operational. We are sooo excited about what this org is going to do.
Sunshine Community Harvest
The Bay Park Conservancy
The Bay Park Conservancy holds a distinction we don't throw around lightly: they are behind Sarasota's very first public-private partnership with the City, unanimously approved by the City Commission in 2019. Their mission: conserve, preserve, restore, and transform 53 acres of city-owned land along Sarasota Bay — taking what was mostly a parking lot and rebuilding it into a blue and green oasis for the whole community. Phase 1 is already underway: coastal wetlands and mangroves restored, a sunset boardwalk extending out over the bay, mini-reefs, oyster and clam seeding, and reef balls designed to address runoff into Sarasota Bay. They are actively unbuilding what shouldn't have been built, and reconstructing what was lost. That is a genuinely different kind of development story, and it is happening right here.
The Bay Park Conservancy
Marie Selby Botanical Gardens
Marie Selby Botanical Gardens was one of the first places Emily took me when I came to Sarasota. Founded in 1973 when Marie Selby gifted her Sarasota home to the community "for the enjoyment of the general public," with the mission to provide 45 acres of bayfront sanctuary connecting people with air plants of the world, native nature, and regional history. Their Downtown campus is the only botanical garden in the world dedicated to epiphytic orchids, bromeliads, gesneriads, and ferns — and their botanists have discovered or described more than 2,000 previously unknown plant species through 150+ expeditions to the tropics. They run the world's first net-positive energy botanical garden complex. They're a Smithsonian Affiliate, accredited by the American Alliance of Museums, and Time named them one of the World's Greatest Places in 2024. "Local" does not do them justice — they are internationally significant and they just happen to call Sarasota home!
Marie Selby Botanical Gardens
Limelight Community Garden
Around 2022, volunteers started showing up to a formerly abandoned acre in Sarasota's Limelight District — presented by Every Child, Inc. — and began turning it into something. Their mission: foster community, sustainability, and beauty in the Limelight neighborhood through a shared green space accessible to all residents. Today, at 730 Apricot Avenue, there are plot rentals, community gatherings, and living green infrastructure where a vacant lot used to sit. It doesn't need a big frame — it just needs to keep going, and we're rooting for it loudly.
Limelight Community Garden
The Next Generation
These orgs are playing the longest game of all: growing the generation that will do this work next.
The Children's Garden
The Children's Garden was founded by Joan Marie Condon in 2003 because she watched something slowly disappear — the felt, physical, dirt-under-fingernails relationship between kids and the actual earth. Not the concept of nature. Nature. Mud. Weather. Things that grow and die and grow back. The mission: keep kids connected to nature through imaginative play and weekly nature and art programs. As a nonprofit since 2009, thousands of families a year are finding their way back to that through weekly programs, summer camps, and special events. The Garden also gives back — holding yearly fundraisers for All Faiths Food Bank, the Humane Society of Sarasota, and Make-A-Wish. You can't protect something you've never touched, and Joan Marie understood that before most people were even asking the question. We love her for it.
The Children's Garden
Mangrove School of Sarasota
Mangrove School started in 2000 as a literal playgroup — run by a small group of dedicated parents and Waldorf teachers who believed children needed to know the earth before they could care about it. Their mission: engage students through hands-on, nature-inspired, developmentally appropriate curriculum that builds the capacities kids need to meet an ever-changing world with creativity and confidence. What started as a playgroup is now a full school serving students through 8th grade — plus a high school mentorship program, parent-child classes, homeschooling enrichment, adult practical art classes, and free summer programming open to the wider Sarasota community. The premise is simple and it's everything: children who know the earth, care about the earth. That's the whole curriculum.
Mangrove School of Sarasota
Mote Marine Laboratory
Mote Marine Laboratory was founded in 1955 by Dr. Eugenie Clark — the "Shark Lady" — in a single one-room lab in Florida. Her mission, which has carried forward for 70 years: today's research for tomorrow's oceans, with an emphasis on conservation and sustainable use of marine biodiversity, healthy habitats, and natural resources. Seventy years of compounding later: 40+ Ph.D. scientists, 306 staff, 1,300 trained volunteers, more than 215,000 corals restored to Florida's reef tract across 27+ research programs. And in 2025, the brand-new Mote SEA facility at Nathan Benderson Park opened — 146,000 square feet built to reach 70,000 students a year. Dr. Clark started in one room. One room. The fact that that original bet turned into this is the story we want to be inside of.
Mote Marine Laboratory
Science and Environment Council (SEC)
Founded in 2001, the Science and Environment Council is a 501(c)(3) consortium of the leading science-based environmental nonprofits and government organizations in Sarasota and Manatee Counties. Their mission: increase science-based environmental understanding, conservation, and restoration through collaboration and public engagement in Southwest Florida. In practice, that means doing something that sounds obvious until you try to actually do it — getting nearly 40 organizations to work together, not just coexist, creating synergy and leverage for projects no single org would pursue alone. The SEC is the connective tissue of this whole ecosystem — the reason things happen here that wouldn't happen anywhere the infrastructure doesn't exist. We are so glad they exist.
Science & Environment Council of SW Florida
Florida Environmental Film Festival
Florida Environmental Film Festival was started by Elizabeth — a third-generation Floridian who came home from the film industry in LA and Martha's Vineyard and found red tide, dead fish, phosphate spills, a coastline in real trouble — and decided to use the exact skill she had. The mission: provide environmental films, educational debates, and events that broaden knowledge on conservation topics affecting Florida's gulf coast. In practice: day-long festivals with film screenings and panel discussions, community-group screenings, citizen lake monitoring through Florida LAKEWATCH, and land and watershed cleanup activities across Sarasota, Manatee, Charlotte, and DeSoto counties. Sometimes the most powerful entry point is just making people feel something before you ask them to do anything about it. Elizabeth understood that. The FEFF is the proof.
Florida Environmental Film Festival
Sarasota’s Environmental Nonprofits Are Doing Great Work
Every community reflects the people who've decided to stay and do the work. Sarasota has these. And sooo much of what makes this place actually livable — the water, the soil, the food, the next generation of scientists — exists because these specific people showed up and kept showing up.
We're grateful to be in this ecosystem with them.
Which of these organizations do you already know? Which one are you going to look up today?